By Romy Stephens
If there’s one person who knows how events have shaped the Yarra Ranges over the past 40 years, it’s Sue Thompson.
The president of the Lilydale Historical Society has been involved in covering local news since 1976.
Sue started her career in journalism as a part-time correspondent at the Lilydale Express.
Considering she didn’t have a phone or car at the time, she would walk to cover local stories.
“I had a little typewriter that was my grandmother’s. I used to sit at the kitchen table with my boys crawling around and I’d write stories,” Sue said.
“I’d go where I could walk.”
When her two sons started school, Sue began part-time work at the Leader Newspapers.
“I found it was a pretty tired old situation. You had typewriters that didn’t work and you had desks that were old and wooden,” she recalled.
After finishing up at the Leader Newspapers, she spent about six years working at the Mountain Views Mail and Ranges Trader Mail.
She was involved in creating the Ranges Trader Mail 20th anniversary edition in 1999.
During her years of covering local news, Sue interviewed some exceptionally well-known Australians such as John Howard, Bob Hawke and Peter Brock – just to name a few.
She also witnessed first-hand the changing nature of the media industry.
“Journalism has come a long way from those days of the huge typewriters and single sheets of copy papers,” she said.
“It’s changed dramatically with the computerisation of the industry.
“But I also think it’s been its own worst enemy because everything’s become too easy now.”
Sue said when she was at the peak of her career, local news involved building relationships by meeting community members face-to-face.
She said nowadays, it’s become too easy for journalists to cover stories from behind a desk.
“We still have to make sure we do that face-to-face stuff because if you don’t do that you lose contact with your community,” she said.
“If you as a journo lose contact with your community, the paper loses contact as well.
“That’s not what you’re there for, you’re there to communicate with people and be the parish pump.”
Despite this, Sue agreed that technology has brought its benefits.
“It’s making it a lot easier for everybody to get background information and to call out truth and non truth,” she said.
She added that newspaper production has become more sophisticated and readers can now engage with the papers – through examples such as polls – because of technology.
Throughout her years of coverage, Sue has also seen major changes across the Yarra Ranges.
Urbanisation and dual occupancy were amongst issues that she said has altered the region dramatically.
But it was the creation of the Yarra Ranges Council in 1994 that she recalled as the biggest change she had seen over the years.
“I was a councillor at the time of amalgamation,” she recalled.
“I was part of those negotiations about what the municipality would be.”
She said the combination of Healesville, Lilydale, Sherbrooke and Upper Yarra councils into one had significant implications.
“That was a massive dislocation,” she said. “The council today is too big and too diverse.
“You went from about 40 councillors representing their constituents, down to nine.
“They have to cover everything and it’s a huge area. I don’t think the people are getting the level of representation they perhaps should be getting.”
Sue now spends most of her time involved in preserving the stories of the past with the Lilydale Historical Society.
But her many years involved in local news will never wear off.
She continues to advocate for the needs of local residents and always has a keen eye on the news and events that shape the shire.
