ANOTHER MONTH, or another year actually if one is to be quite honest. I'm sure there were plenty of happenings this year that would have made the pages of the Barkly News Pictorial had there been one.
I've had a busy year with my desktop publishing work, and in the absence of a helper, time has flown by before I could get it all together.
If anyone out there has a flair for magazine journalism or production, drop by after New Year and have a chat. A traineeship would be a good solution.
Making a magazine is like baking a cake. It doesn't help to have had some of the ingredients for a long time as you might notice in a few of this issue's stories. Nothing can happen until all the ingredients are laid out, mixed and the whole lot put in the oven, or in this case, sent off for printing.
There are, however, many articles in this issue with the ink still wet.
Ian Gray from the Barkly Enterprise Development Network has a vision for the town that should please many people. He sees Tennant Creek poised to be the crossover between North to South and East to West freight traffic. The Territory may even be able to steal Mt Isa and Cloncurry from Queensland - beautiful one day, gone the next!
Then there's the story of the dear departing Dr Di Natale. He has given it to us straight. The challenging assertions and allegations he has made will upset many people. It's the type of story that is easy not to publish but after showing it around a bit I decided to run it almost exactly as he wrote it.
I asked Kay Rose, owner of the Outback Caravan Park and Regional Tourist Association stalwart, to comment from a long-standing resident's viewpoint.
For me the trick here is to look at what Richard Di Natale has said and judge him on the content rather than on his right to say it.
Paul Cockram