Australia in the News.

I have noticed how, while being away from my little town in the UK you really do have to make a concious effort to stay in touch with news and events back home unless it is Michael Jackson's death which 7 News had an extended 1-hour bulletin for last night.

For example, Michael Schumacher being outed as the Stig (or not) and Michael Owen signing for Manchester United?!

Of course with the digital media we now have it is so much easier - today for example, in my lunchtime I have been job searching back in the UK (not much going I'm afraid...) and visiting websites such as Press Gazette, The Guardian, Google News, BBC News and so on to try and keep track of what is going on back on the other side of the world.

Surprisingly a lot of Aussie-related stories popped up. I haven't done this nearly as often enough as I should so am unaware if it is common or not but I suppose with the World Wide Web it is. By searching UK-based websites I was (rather stupidly) believing that I would just be looking at UK content - with the mainstream exceptions of course - but I haven't caught up with this global conglomeration thing yet. Just because Australia is nearly a day's flight away it is about a minute away on the web.

There is the debate about Uluru (Ayers Rock) , a lovely story (albeit, not the worst idea ever either) about Bundanoon = an Aussie town banning water bottles , fire warnings being available on Facebook and Twitter and other social networking sites (and why the hell not the way the world is going, or has already gone?) Although it will be very weird with one minute JournoJoe tweeting/facebooking something mudane and then JournoJoe has just received a fire warning to flee!

I could keep the examples going for a while but let's not. The basic point is that I am naive, whether in the UK or Australia I will always be able to access the news and continue to sparadically blog from the other side of the world at an instant...this internet is a wonderful thing right?