Comment by Jesse Graham
A lot can happen in five years.
People come and go. Community groups form and disband. Lives are made and broken, and there is much joy and despair in between.
Though I spent my first 23 years in Healesville, I never truly grasped the importance of community newspapers until I worked for one.
Whether the articles in our pages are about the opening of an art exhibition, a political issue, a new development on the horizon, the grim news of another death on the roads or a family’s final words on a lost loved one, every story in the Mail details our collective history.
I started my first days of work experience at the Mail in April 2012, still halfway through my university course, unsure of myself and full of information about journalism not yet put into practice.
I came in officially later that year, and in the time that has passed, I’ve become more confident as a writer, more headstrong as a journalist and photographer and I’ve been in the privileged position to have witnessed that collective history unfold, in pieces I’ve written and in those written by my colleagues.
The proverb goes that it takes a village to raise a child. I can look back on my time at the Mail and say that every interview, conversation and occasionally raised voice from people in this community has shaped the person I am today.
I am truly grateful for the time and confidence given to me by people throughout the Dandenong Ranges and Yarra Valley who have spoken to me – on or off the record – and trusted me with their words and their stories.
There have been highs and lows over the years – the opening of Tecoma McDonald’s, the campaigns to save Healesville’s Indoor Pool and Olinda’s outdoor pool, fights over the environment, court cases, fund-raising successes and community triumphs, as well as the harrowing experiences of road trauma and bushfire.
Good or bad, it’s all part of our history, and these stories need to be told.
But after this week, it will no longer be me telling them.
The 28 February edition of the Mail will be my last. On Thursday, 2 March, I’ll leave this office for the last time, before starting communications work for the Yarra Ranges Council next week.
Hopefully, I’ll still see many of your faces again, only in a different context.
Jesse Graham
Journalist,
Mail News Group.
