It feels like the issue has actually been around since the dawn of time, but it was 2007 that Gunns Ltd’s proposal for a pulp mill in Bell Bay in northern Tasmania was given the OK by the Federal Government. 

Five years later the pulp mill is no closer to being built and Gunns Ltd has gone into receivership. But the issue of the pulp mill is still refusing to die like a stubborn old relative no one likes.

Fires, elections and flashbacks

In 2007 the Myer building in the centre of my home town, Hobart, burnt to the ground in a massive accident involving a makeup counter. Luckily no-one was hurt, but one of the older building in the centre of torn was totally destroyed. Five years later and there’s still just a hole where the building used to be.

At the end of 2007, we had a change of government in Australia, with the conservative coalition being replaced by the Labor Party led by Kevin Rudd.

In Estonia, years after the country regained its independence from Russia, riots broke out in Tallinn sparked by the relocation of a bronze statue. Ethnic Russians fought ethnic Estonians are both sides clashed over the interpretations of the statue and the history of occupation.

Block partying with knights

Music in 2007 was a bit on the dull side. But I guess I’m just getting older and grumpier.

Muse’s Knights of Cydonia was a hit in Australia and Block Party were everywhere. 

I can’t think what I was listening to back then. Not much, as I was concentrating on trying to get a job.

I’m employed

At the beginning of 2007, I was working in a casual position at a retirement fund and living in a share house that was so badly heated there was actually ice on the ceiling in the bathroom in winter.

I was applying for anything I could find that was vaguely related to media and then I thought I might go back to uni and try to finished the master degree I’d dropped out of. I applied for a job as a part time receptionist at uni as well. I got the part time job and was accepted back into the degree, but a day later I was offered a job as online producer (as the job was called back then) with the ABC in Hobart. I took that and dropped out of uni for the second time. I’m still at the ABC.