The Other Side of the Frontier

Another Australia Day has passed with the clamour growing for a change of date because of pejorative connections for Indigenous Australians. I’ve written about this before. My view is simple: always make Australia Day the fourth Monday of January. It keeps the holiday at the end of summer and it removes the stigma of the connection with the British landing in Sydney in 1788, though it means Australia Day will still fall on January 26 every seven years or so.

The calls to remove the direct link are justified and those that cannot see that, are blind to Australia’s history. History may not be a popular subject in schools, but its resonance affects our lives and Australia’s failure to reach an accord with its Indigenous people remains the nation’s blackest stain.

Australia Day was a good opportunity to revisit Henry Reynolds’ ground-breaking 1981 work The Other Side of the Frontier. The book was the first to systematically explore life across the frontier after the British arrived in Australia with the intention as Reynolds put it “to turn Australian history, not upside down, but inside out.” A lack of written evidence had been an excuse not to use this approach to Australian history but Reynolds pored through official documents, first-hand accounts and oral testimony.

The book is “inescapably political” with profound conclusions still not fully accepted 35 years later. Reynolds destroyed the notion that Australian Aboriginal people were passive in the face of the newcomers. It begins with the first contact from white explorers, ghostly figures who came to country, usually carefully watched as they moved. They were often provided with local guides – as a courtesy, and to ensure they moved on quickly. Trade routes crisscrossed Australia bringing news as quickly as it brought goods. Explorers often found European artefacts and animals had preceded them into indigenous lands. Knowledge of the mysterious and dangerous power of firearms was particularly quick to cross the continent. The invaders were greeted with curiosity and fear.

The biggest problem was how to include newcomers in Indigenous cosmology. Many thought they were the pale ghosts of reincarnated ancestors so they could be absorbed into kinship networks, but younger ones could see their behaviour was all too human. Many white communities had their “foundations cemented in blood” as one Victorian protector of Aborigines put it. Violence led to resistance, which began in the early years of Sydney and fanned out through the continent as settlers moved in. The period of warfare depended on the number of settlers and whether the local geography allowed the native population to hide easily and conduct guerrilla tactics.

Aboriginal people had sophisticated concepts of land ownership and strict laws on trespass, particularly with sacred sites. Land use was complex with intermingling on territory and temporary hospitality based on the principle the visitors would eventually leave. The settlers had no such intention. They ruthlessly asserted exclusive occupation, taking the flat, open land and monopolising the water. Private property allowed for no reciprocity. They desecrated sacred sites and there was conflict over lonely white men taking access to Aboriginal women. When Aboriginal men took revenge, they were attacked as villainous murderers. Tension and misunderstanding drove conflict as did European possessiveness over land, competition for women and contrary concepts of personal property. Group punishment was common as was an ominous settler desire to end conflict “once and for all”.

Aboriginal civilisation was killed by a thousand cuts. Frontier conflict was “ragged, sporadic and uneven”. Indigenous people were courageous in the face of attack but there were only a handful of massed battles. Most large gatherings dispersed by use of armed police or strychnine poisoning of flour such as at Kilcoy. When there was open confrontation such as in central Victoria in the 1840s, Aboriginal shields were useless against armed, mounted whites. By the time the frontier reached Cooktown, the natives were more cautious using the knowledge of their scrubby hinterland to keep invaders at arm’s length. Native Police (usually from other parts of Australia under the direction of a white sergeant) used traditional bushcraft and knowledge of horses and guns to undermine resistance.

With their land taken from them and on the verge of destitution, many Indigenous people came into the settlements. They ended up as cheap or slave labour or beggars living in fringe camps subject to disease, malnutrition, alcoholism and social disintegration. While disease was a major killer, Reynolds calculated the Aboriginal death toll in conflict as 20,000 across the continent. Queensland had the highest toll as its conquest coincided with developments in weaponry, use of the Native Police and a new colonial leadership with a vested interest in pastoral property on Aboriginal lands.

Reynolds said the evidence contradicted the early 20^th century view Aboriginal society was “pathetically helpless” to European onslaught. Indigenous people were not passive objects of European charity or brutality. White explorers depended on them, early settlers feared them and it took superior firepower and disease to eventually overcome them across the continent.

Reynolds asks when their dead will be accorded the same respect as the white Australian dead in overseas wars. Australian frontier violence was political violence and cannot be ignored because of its time and distance. It is something – as the Australia Day debate testifies – the nation has yet to come to terms with. “If we are unable to incorporate the black experience into our national heritage,” says Reynolds, “we will stand exposed as a people still emotionally chained to our 19^th century British origins, ever the transplanted Europeans.”

A helicopter flight over Mount Isa

Today was the highlight of my three weeks in Mount Isa so far. I was a guest of Nautilus Aviation to try out their new helicopter joy flights. The 20-30 minute flight took me out to Lake Moondarra – Mount Isa’s water source – and then over the town and the mine that dominates it.

The flight path follows the Leichhardt River, named for German explorer Ludwig Leichhardt. Leichhardt named many rivers as he crossed the Gulf of Carpentaria in his first south-north expedition in 1844-1845 from Sydney to Port Essington. According to explorer tradition he did not name any river after himself. However he missed this river later named in his honour. The river rises in the Selwyn Ranges south of Isa and meanders north emptying into the Gulf near Burketown.

About 15km north of Mount Isa is the human-made Lake Moondarra which dams the Leichhardt River. It provides water to the city and the mines. The lake is a beautiful spot with great birdwatching and is home to water sports and fishing.

In 1956 the growing Mount Isa Mines was desperate for water to feed its copper and lead plants. They selected a dam site and started building but summer floods smashed the uncompleted wall. It was eventually completed in 1958 along with a 12km bitumen road to the city. It was the largest water scheme in Australia financed by private enterprise.  On July 11, 1961 the dam officially became Lake Moondarra.

Lake Moondarra has a surface area of 23.75 km², a maximum depth of 11m and can store 107,000 megalitres. It’s currently around 65pc full after the cyclone that hit the Gulf late last year but has been under 20pc. It has also exceeded capacity on occasion with water spectacularly cascading over the spillway – which faces away from the city.

Mount Isa is Kalkadoon country. Kalkadoons lived across this rugged landscape of the Selwyn Ranges for thousands of years. They offered fierce resistance to white settlers until defeated by force of numbers and weapons at Battle Mountain in 1884. Their country is rich in minerals and the first white settlers noticed the telltale specks of green that denoted the presence of copper. Lead is also extensively mined as is silver and zinc.

The earliest mines in the region were at Cloncurry. In 1923 John Campbell Miles stumbled across a lead lode on a trip to the Northern Territory. Miles named the area Mount Isa in honour of Mount Ida gold mine in WA. A town slowly grew around Mount Isa Mines which started by mining lead, and later copper. In MIM’s heyday in the 1960s, it employed 5000 workers in its factories and pits which scarred the landscape. Low copper prices almost forced the closure of the copper mine last year but it has had a reprieve to 2022. MIM is now owned by embattled Anglo-Swiss multinational Glencore and remains the town’s biggest employer.

The distinctive smoke stacks dominate Mount Isa’s skyline. The lead smelter stack stands 270m tall, built in the 1970s and it used to be Australia’s largest structure.

The city mostly lies across the Leichhardt River from the mine. The population is now around 22,000 which although down on the 1960s-1970s, is still easily the biggest Queensland city west of Townsville and north of Toowoomba. Mount Isa is the commercial hub of north-west Queensland.

The Barkly Highway cuts through town from Cloncurry and goes north at the river junction to the mines. East it is 900km to Townsville via the Flinders Highway, linking with the Landsborough Highway near Cloncurry which goes all the way to Brisbane. The state capital is 2000km away, a two-day drive or a two-and-a-half-hour expensive flight away. Mount Isa is nearer Darwin than Brisbane, and probably has more in common with the tropical capital than the Queensland capital. North of Mount Isa the Barkly Highway links the city with the Northern Territory. On the right of the picture below is the city’s lookout towards the mines and also north (not pictured) to Buchanan Park, home of Australia’s largest rodeo, Mount Isa’s biggest event, which takes place every August.

David Bowie Was

Photo of hoarding from David Bowie Is exhibition: Chicago Tribune

It’s almost a week on from David Bowie’s death and I’m still getting over it. In that, I’m no different from millions of fans across the world, all coming to terms with the shock announcement on Monday of his death from cancer, aged 69. I shouldn’t be surprised he died at 69 (another great English creative artist of similar background Alan Rickman passed away at the same age later in the week), but it seemed David Bowie always had an ageless quality about him that seemed to defy the ravages of time.

Despite having cancer for 18 months (a fact miraculously held from the media, increasing the shock of his eventual death), he kept busy to the last. His 25th and final studio album Black Star was released only a couple of days before his death. The title song has got under my skin and I’m playing it on background as I write these words. The Pitchfork review is particularly poignant. “David Bowie has died many deaths yet he is still with us,” it begins, talking about him as a Lazarus (the title of one of the songs on the album) who constantly rises in different guises.

The timing of the album is sure to make it one of his best-ever selling and certainly it’s the most intriguing of his 21st century work, the best since Heathen in 2002. It’s also the only one not to feature a cover photo of Bowie himself. In astronomy a black star is the last phase of the life of a star while it may also refer to a cancer lesion. Whatever the meaning, it is a fitting farewell for a great artist.

Bowie was (and still is) my favourite musical artist and has been a part of my life for almost 40 years. In 2012 I used the occasion of Bowie’s 65th birthday to write about how he entered my life, through the musical influence of older cousins. Of course, it is the astonishing body of work from the 1970s that entranced me then and still does to this day. I was less interested in the personae of Ziggy Stardust or the Thin White Duke (and his acting career left me cold) than I was by his wonderful diverse songs with their dense and sometimes incomprehensible lyrics. Though I didn’t understand them, I knew every song he wrote from 1969 to 1983 and they constantly jostled for attention in my head.

Those songs have been amplified since his death and I find myself singing them on repeat, often close to tears, all too aware of my own mortality as well as his. In the days after Bowie’s death, a video was doing the rounds of his 1999 interview with Jeremy Paxman of the BBC, now widely hailed as predicting the impact of the Internet on music. However for me, what was most striking was when Bowie was talking about growing up and how difficult it was to find music to listen to. This seems odd today where the entire discography of the world is barely a click away but it was true for Bowie in the early 1960s and it was true for me growing up a decade and a half later. Bowie was one of those geniuses that changed all that and he adapted to the MTV age with aplomb.

I saw him live twice, and both on the same tour within four days of each other. It was after his best – the 1987 Glass Slipper tour, which critics deride as being over-produced. I was living in England at the time but got tickets to his concert at Slane Castle outside Dublin. I loved that gig and looking back on the set list I can see why. It was full of great songs from the 1970s and 80s. No wonder when I went back to England after the weekend, I jumped at the offer of a ticket to see him again the following day at a wet Maine Road in Manchester. He played exactly the same set as Slane, but I didn’t care. Singing in the rain, Bowie’s magnetic presence lit up the stage like no other.

I’m so glad I saw him live and my one regret is that I didn’t see the David Bowie Is exhibition when it came to Melbourne last year. But unlike the man himself, that can – and probably will – return.

Goodbye Lazarus, the black star man, you were a musical genius that lit up many lives.

Standing tall in the dark

Oh and we were gone.

 

A Yule Tour to Tasmania

When looking for something to do over the festive season, the idea of a Hobart Christmas proved attractive. My only prior visit to Tasmania was over 20 years ago and was a wet and cold week in the middle of winter. I was expecting better weather this time round and apart from a rainy Boxing Day I was not disappointed. Flying in, I could see the Derwent river valley in all its glory with the majestic Mt Wellington in the background. The only concern was the fact the plane seemed to be landing well away from Hobart. On a small island it was a surprise to find the airport so far from the city though for just $18 a friendly bus driver took me almost to the front door of my apartment in the hills of West Hobart.

Having dropped my bags off and got some vital supplies for the week it was straight into town and down to the docks. Constitution Dock would be the landing place of the Sydney to Hobart race and I hoped to see some of the earliest arrivals before I left a week later. (Unfortunately the first to arrive came just hours after I left Tasmania). It’s a bustling area full of yachts, fishing boats and pleasure crafts, all gleaming in the sunshine. I settled in for a beer and later some fresh fish and chips straight out of one of the crafts in the dock (the serving counter is low in the water and I wonder whether anyone has fallen in while bending over to make the transaction).

Next to the Docks is imposing Hunter St. Unlike Brisbane which has ruthlessly razed its past, Hobart is full of streets that still speak to older times. At the turn of the 20th century, Hunter St was bristling with factories, pubs, chandlers, offices and warehouses. There was also the jam factory, home of Henry Jones and Co IXL makers of fine jams and conserves, established in 1891. The IXL brand – “I excel in everything I do” was Henry Jones’s personal motto.

Salamanca Place is at the other end of Sullivans Cove from Constitution Dock, nestled in behind Battery Point. It too housed wharfside warehouses and it too has escaped the ravages of time. It was named after the Duke of Wellington’s victory in the 1812 Iberian campaign at the Battle of Salamanca. Salamanca boomed during the whaling days of the early 1800s and many laneways were built to cope with milling crowds. Every Saturday the Place comes alive with a market. The Saturday I was there was Boxing Day and non-stop rain kept me away.

Tasmania has a sea-faring culture a lot older than 200 years. At the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery near the docks, the restored ningina tunapri Tasmanian Aboriginal gallery is a rich, enlightening and inspiring experience. Ningina tunapri means “to give knowledge and understanding”. The exhibition explores the journey of Tasmanian Aboriginal people and is a celebration of all Tasmanian Aboriginal generations. The centrepiece is a reconstructed canoe used to cross the D’Entrecasteaux Passage.

The highlight of the second day was a 12.5km walk to the suburb of Berriedale, home of the Museum of Old and New Art. MONA didn’t exist when I was last in Hobart so I was excited about the visit, though determined to take my time about it. You can get to MONA by a superfast ferry from the centre of town taking just half an hour up the Derwent (indeed this was the pleasurable way I got back) but with plenty of time on a beautiful Christmas Eve I was in the mood for a two hour walk. The first half of the walk has great views of the Derwent estuary (with two majestic bridges) before following the old railway line inland through the suburbs of Moonah and Glenorchy.

Finally the impressive property which holds MONA comes into view. MONA is the brainchild of wealthy gambler David Walsh. He opened MONA in the middle of a winery in 2011. Walsh has said it’s not altruistic or his attempt at immortality but a “theatre of curious enchantments”. There is plenty for the eyes to feast on in a deceptively large building over several floors.

The highlight of my visit to MONA was the art exhibition of Gilbert and George. I didn’t know much about these distinctively well dressed British artists and I had assumed they were stuffy upper-class toffs. I couldn’t have been more wrong. They certainly enjoy putting themselves in their work (either immaculate dressed or completely starkers) but their themes are political, sexual and confronting. I loved their canvasses based on media headlines and their bright colours were also enchanting.

Enchanting isa great description for kunanyi Mt Wellington, standing 1627m high 15km west of the city. Having walked 12.5km on Christmas Eve, I was in the mood for an even bigger walk on Christmas Day, though I didn’t take into account Hobart’s incredible weather. It was 30 degrees – possibly Hobart’s hottest Christmas day ever. I was well stocked with water as I started along the Hobart Rivulet path but my hopes of getting to the summit in three hours proved hopelessly optimistic. I’d heard someone did walk to the summit that day – but took five and a half hours. I turned back after two hard hours and I was nowhere near the summit climb.

The day provided one outstanding sight. Struggling in the 30 degree heat, I was awestruck by the beauty of the Cascades Brewery with the mountain in the background. Cascades estate was originally a saw mill beginning operation in 1825 and the brewery started six years later taking advantage of the clean water of the Hobart Rivulet. It remains the oldest continuing operating brewery in Australia with tours – though not surprisingly was closed on Christmas Day when only mad dogs and Irishmen were out in the noon day sun.

I tried to book onto a Bruny Island tour before Christmas but they were all booked out. I knew the Boxing Day weather forecast was dismal so I booked in for Sunday, December 27. First stop is Kettering, 30km south of Hobart, where the ferry leaves for Bruny. Traffic was heavy for the ferry and we had a chance to hop off the bus and explore this pretty port.

After the ferry ride (which takes 15 minutes across the D’Entrecasteaux Channel) there is a 40 minute drive along narrow and winding roads to Bruny’s settlement: Adventure Bay. A small beach is mostly deserted but there is a cafe for morning tea (and lunch later) nestled next to Captain Bligh Creek. Bligh and Cook both anchored here on their voyages to Tasmania.

Then it’s off for a three hour roller-coaster ride down Bruny Island’s eastern seaboard with Pennicott’s yellow boat tours. The boats hold 45-50 people and I was told that if you want a smooth ride you go to the back of the boat. I sat right at the front and experienced the belly flop of every breaker. But it was fabulous with magnificent sea stacks, rock formations and blow holes wherever you looked.

At the bottom of Bruny Island was what we all came to see: Arctocephalus pusillus doriferus, the Australian fur seal. It was the highlight of the day though the albatrosses gliding in the breeze were special too. There were hundreds of seals sunning on the rocks. The Australian fur seal can be seen around the islands of Bass Strait, parts of Tasmania and southern Victoria and occasionally drift up to the islands of NSW and South Australia. There is a huge colony of a thousand seals living in the rocky outcrops and craggy islands off the southern end of Bruny. The seals are agile swimmers who can dive up to 200m to catch bony fish, squid and octopus. Despite a cumbersome appearance they showed they could be mobile out of water on on rocky terrain using all four limbs to get around (their four limbs, their external ears, and two layers of fur are what differentiates them from true seals). Fully protected, their numbers are rising after being hunted to near extinction for their coat in the 19^th century.

Monday was my last full day in Hobart and with the help of friends with a car I finally got to the top of Mt Wellington. The view was amazing in every direction. I saw most of where I went the day before to Bruny and out east towards the Tasman Peninsula. I couldn’t see the Sydney to Hobart fleet who were just a bit too slow for me and I missed them by one day. It can get cool up at the top. On rainy Boxing Day when it was 13 in the city it was minus six up on kunanyi. A bit warmer today.

Back in town it was time to indulge. On my last day it was a good excuse to relax with a friend and enjoy the Taste of Tasmania festival on the dockside. On now for over 20 years to coincide with the Sydney to Hobart, the Taste of Tasmania closes off the roads and brings Hobart’s gorgeous waterfront alive with great smells, sights, sounds and of course, tastes in abundance. Entry was free and inside you are spoiled for choice of great Tasmanian food and drink. There was seafood, great cheeses, berries, boutique beers and ciders but I plumped for a cool fruity Tasmanian chardonnay which slid wonderfully down the throat. It was a great island at its best. Tasmania, I’ll be back.

One final photo and proof that although the word is recent, the concept of a selfie is nothing new. Louis Bernacchi was the first Australian to spend a winter in Antarctica. Bernacchi was born in Belgium but grew up in Hobart. At the turn of the 20th century he joined the London Southern Cross expedition to the Antarctic and wrote a book called “To the South Polar Regions”. Family responsibilities later saved his life when they forced him to turn down a spot on Scott’s ill-fated expedition. But he kept a lifelong interest in polar matters. The dockside monument commemorates a photo he took of himself and his dog Joe in the Antarctic. Just one of many reasons to spend time by the water in lovely Hobart.

Media person of the year 2015: Clementine Ford

Woolly Day’s 2015 media person of the year is Australian writer Clementine Ford. Ford is an experienced columnist who has written about identity politics and feminist issues for many years at Fairfax, Murdoch and elsewhere. However this year she has gained wide attention for her uncompromising stance in publicly outing misogynist behaviour, bravery attracting praise and hatred in almost equal measure. The title of her forthcoming book Fight Like A Girl speaks to her battling qualities and an entry in her companion blog, describes why many men are so intimidated by Ford’s actions. “Women can’t go around pointing out sexism and RUINING SEXIST MEN’S LIVES with it,” she wrote.

Some makers of sexist remarks have lost their jobs after Ford called out their behaviour. Ford has also done a superb job calling out institutional sexism in the media, often to withering effect making many enemies. How she has dealt with them has made her an inspirational figure in the fight for women’s equality in public and private life.

Clementine Ford has long been a forthright media defender of women’s rights in Australia, never afraid to back it up with the honesty of her own experience. When almost 10 years ago, Tony Abbott pushed an anti-abortion pregnancy hotline as Health Minister in the Howard administration, Ford attracted condemnation and praise for her revelation that she had undergone two abortions without shame. Her only feeling was one of “intense relief”.

In 2013 Ford told her story to Mamamia as a “lifetime struggle to accept her body.” She said her body had endured 18 years of “punishing self-hatred.” Ford identified her struggle as dysmorphia. “Society drowns women in an ocean of narcissistic self-loathing, until eventually the only thing they can see is themselves and how incomplete they are, and they’re oblivious to the thousands of other bodies being sucked under the waves around them,” she said.

Ford’s solution was to articulate the problems her female body posed, in a way that was eloquent, honest, political, and fiercely critical of cant. As her media profile grew, so did the critics. In 2014, right-wing Daily Telegraph columnist Tim Blair included Ford alongside Marieke Hardy, Catherine Deveny, Vanessa Badham, Margo Kingston and others in his poll to find “Australia’s craziest left-wing frightbat”. “Frightbat” was Blair’s own invention and these were the women, he said, “whose psychosocial behavioural disorders are becoming ever more dramatic following Tony Abbott’s election.” Instead of being outraged, Ford took the challenge head on, pleading with people to vote for her. In the end she attracted 5438 votes narrowly losing out the “frightbat” title to Badham by six votes.

Despite the humour, Ford, Badham and the others were all too aware of the institutional sexism that dominates Australia’s public life, especially in the media. Sydney shock jock Alan Jones spoke of how women were “destroying the joint” while Kerry-Anne Walsh’s book The Stalking of Julia Gillard was a forensic examination about the media’s merciless role in the downfall of Australia’s first female prime minister. Yet the “frightbat” and the “destroying the joint” campaigns also showed how feminists were using the language of their enemies to win their battles. Ford in particular fought hard against the practice of victim blaming, the archetype of the woman who invites rape by dressing too sexily.

In June 2015 Ford entered the limelight over a stand against a now deleted Channel Seven Facebook post. Seven were talking about an American revenge porn website which had posted illegally obtained naked photos of 400 South Australian women. But instead of attacking the website for its behaviour, Channel Seven blamed the women. “What’s it going to take for women to get the message about taking and sending nude photos?” they posted. A furious Ford saw this as making it the responsibility of women to stop others from exploiting them. She posted a nude photo of herself on her public Facebook profile. The photo showed text on her chest that read “Hey #Sunrise, get fucked”. Her reasons were twofold. “I wanted to oppose the message of victim blaming that forms so much of our social narratives about crimes against women’s bodies,” she said. “Secondly, I wanted to show solidarity to every woman who has been made to feel afraid or ashamed for engaging in a form of intimacy that should be bound by trust and respect but instead was marked by betrayal.”

The photo went viral. It was shared 45,000 times and liked by over 200,000 people. It also attracted thousands of comments, many supportive but many others rude and misogynistic. She shared screen grabs of some of the viler private messages she’d received which included requests for nude photos, explicit photographs of naked men, and many insults. Facebook banned Ford from accessing her account for 30 days because her messages violated their community standards. Ford launched a community protest and the ban was rescinded. “No one should be punished for speaking out against abuse, especially not the kind of cowardly abuse sent under the banner of ‘private correspondence’,” she said. “Private correspondence is a conversation mutually entered into by more than one party and defined by respect and sometimes discretion. It is not someone sending you unsolicited emails calling you a filthy whore.”

In August, Ford drew fire again from the Murdoch Empire. This time it was page one criticism in The Australian from Sherri Markson. Markson complained that a “foul” Ford freely used profanities in her Twitter stream but celebrated Mark Latham’s sacking as a Fairfax columnist over his misogynistic comments. Markson also noted Ford had attacked The Australian’s columnists Rita Panahi and Miranda Devine. Markson sought comment from Ford’s employers Fairfax, who declined to say if she had breached their social media policy. The coded message was News Ltd was watching what Ford was saying and if she does slip up she could lose her job. Mike Carlton (sacked by Fairfax after News called out offending comments he made on Twitter) said it was part of a News Corp campaign to shut down dissenting views and journalists should not have a responsibility to act with professional objectivity on Twitter.

If it was a warning to Ford, she ignored it. In November she launched a stinging attack on the hypocrisy of White Ribbon Day, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. While Ford applauded how the day brought better dialogue around the impacts of men’s violence, she said not enough people called out the links between violence and casual misogyny. Ford castigated the campaign as a way “of reassuring every man listening that this isn’t really about him and therefore he doesn’t really have to do anything about it.”

Once again her post attracted the ire and abuse of many men. As she did after the Sunrise affair, Ford shamed her sexual harassers by screenshotting messages of abuse, unsolicited dickpics and requests for nude photos, and then publishing them. When one abuser lost his job over it, the vitriol against Ford increased but so did her support. Fellow “frightbat” Badham said the man deserved it. “The belittling and bullying, threats and harassment, cyberstalking and outright hate speech directed to women on the internet every day is real-world behaviour with real-world consequence and it should oblige real-world punishments,” Badham said.

The chatter around Ford hit her US namesake, actress Clementine Ford who had received some of the abuse intended for the Australian.  The American Ford reached across the Pacific in support. “I have the pleasure of sharing a name with a strong brave journalist who pissed of (sic) some mysognists,” she tweeted. When the Australian Ford apologised to her for being caught in the crossfire, the American told her not to be sorry. “Fuck them,” she responded, “I’m proud to be mistaken for you.”

By the end of the year Ford was a major figure in the world of feminism and not to be messed with easily. It was probably not the right time for independent left-wing publication New Matilda to get its hands dirty publishing a piece by a naive young man critical of Ford’s methods. Jack Kilbride defended Ford as “courageous” but said her strategy of outing sexist offenders may be doing more harm than good. When that post was attacked as risible, New Matilda editor Chris Graham (who has many runs on the board for attacking racism) openly admitted it was a test in the interest of seeing “how much abuse he (Kilbride) cops”.

Graham found out Ford’s supporters did not enjoy being trolled in the name of a subscriptions drive. Her support is massive because her readers respond to her unflinching honesty and bravery under massive provocation. For all of these reasons Ford is a deserving winner of my media person of the year. I have given this award since 2009 and Ford would not be impressed – though not surprised – to find she is my first female winner, which says more about my male-dominated media interests than the work of outstanding women in the field. Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya would have won in 2006, the year of her assassination, had I done it then. Of those who have won it, three were fighting the Murdoch Empire (two with the Guardian, and one a judge), two (Assange and Snowden) were fighting for freedom of information (and are still in legal limbo) and last year’s winners the Al Jazeera journalists Greste, Fahmy and Mohamed – all jailed on trumped up charges when doing their job – were the good news story of 2015 when Egypt finally released them without charges.

My first award in 2009 went to ABC managing director Mark Scott for his defence of strong public broadcasting and it is fitting that as he stands down this year, Michelle Guthrie becomes the first woman to head the organisation. Depending on how she tackles her job, she will be one of main candidates for my award next year. In the meantime, happy new year and congratulations to Clementine Ford.

Woolly Days media person of the year

2009: Mark Scott

2010: Julian Assange

2011: Alan Rusbridger and Nick Davies

2012: Brian Leveson

2013: Edward Snowden

2014: Peter Greste, Mohamed Fadel Fahmy and Baher Mohamed. 

2015: Clementine Ford