The other day I took a call from our Deputy Prime Minster.

 

This is the guy who gets the sash and crown should the actual Prime Minister perish in a great firey mishap while riding on the head of giant gasoline-soaked swan (it could happen). If the big bopper has a cold or goes on a trip, this is the bloke they call in to take the metaphorical reigns (although in an election year, I wouldn’t put it past any politician to jump on a horse on front of the cameras) of our country.

 

He may wear crocs and Stubbies on a trip to the hardware store, but he’s still kind of a big deal. We once put a photo of him eating a piece of fruitcake on our front page.

 

Here I was, a few years out of uni with just a couple of years of experience under my belt having a yarn to the second-most powerful man in the country (behind whoever is handing out the roses on The Bachelor, obviously).

 

On the other hand, I’ve also written a story about a local woman planning on treating her grandchildren to a Red Rooster dinner. Now, being so far away from the Darling Downs, I appreciate the joint for attempting to fill the void that Super Rooster has left in my heart. It sells chips in family-sized-box-form. It offers garlic bread as a suitable snack option. It can hook you up with half a litre of gravy like it comes from a tap. It’s an excellent establishment by any stretch of the imagination, however, you wouldn’t think that someone thinking about frequenting a chicken vendor for dinner would make the news.

 

But that’s where you’re wrong.

 

The grandmother at the centre of the story was special. Our chicken-loving heroine was a winner, you see. Our sales staff were running a promotion with local businesses in which shoppers were given raffle tickets to win a $100 jackpot of vouchers for participating stores.

 

And my girl Pat was one lucky duck.

 

She was the winner one week, and to keep the momentum going, the editorial staff were asked to include a small piece about the competition. Nothing huge, just enough to put the promotion in the forefront of readers’ minds. And on the day of Pat’s momentous victory in the lottery of life, I was called upon to cover it.

 

She was given the fistful of vouchers, and presented with a list of participating businesses at which she could exchange the printouts of a templated ticket for actual goods and/or services. The list was reasonably extensive, but it didn’t take this savvy shopper to make up her mind: Red Rooster it was.

 

This woman could have made sensible choices to trade her winnings in for linen or plastic storage containers or even the medication needed to keep her alive. But she was courageous enough to listen to her instincts. Sometimes you just have to follow your heart, especially when it is pointing you in the direction of a hot chook.

 

And being the hard-core, dedicated journalist that I am, I couldn’t ignore the potential for a story in her bold choice, nor the opportunity to make a “winner, winner chicken dinner” reference in my copy.

 

We put that story on page 2, from memory.

 

This juxtaposition, my friends, is the real beauty of small-town journalism, and Australia by extension. It’s a world where the guy who controls the nation from time to time starts a telephone conversation with you with a casual greeting followed by only his first name (although, there aren’t too many other people with the same name as his, so fair enough). A world when a chinwag with the Deputy Prime Minister is nothing major, but a grandmother wanting to buy a hot chook and chips for dinner makes the paper.

 

Small-town journalism is beautiful world in which the delightful quirks of our society are highlighted and revelled in – except for that whole rampant inter-generational institutionalised racism thing, but we don’t need to talk about that because it doesn’t affect anyone you know, so who cares? Right?