NO review of 2020 can ignore the enormous impact of COVID-19 since the first uncertain reports emerged of a deadly new virus creating havoc in the otherwise unremarkable inland Chinese city of Wuhan.
As December draws to a close, global cooperation has produced vaccines at unprecedented speed, and every country with the means is using debt-driven stimulus to counter job losses and business failures - the collateral damage of COVID restrictions.
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No country has been harder hit than the United States, which voted out President Donald Trump after a single term.
Democrat Joe Biden promises to be as measured as the Republican Mr Trump was chaotic, but the Democrats may be no less hostile to China.
After WWII, the Eisenhower administration's "falling dominoes" theory helped stoke Australian fears of Asian communist expansion.
The details are different this time around, but Australia and its exports - including the Hunter's all-important coal trade - are ingredients, none the less, in the boiling pot of Sino/Western politics.
Nationally, 2020 dawned to drought and wildfires, and a prime minister in Scott Morrison either unwilling or unable to take control, despite the huge political capital he had garnered through his "miracle" 2019 election victory.
Then coronavirus threw the Coalition government the lifeline it needed, and the Labor opposition has struggled to land even glancing blows ever since.
In the Hunter, 2020 saw a series of issues return repeatedly to the Newcastle Herald's front pages.
The coal industry is both a mainstay of our economy, and an Achilles' heel, as opinion hardens against fossil fuels.
This despite increasing evidence that power storage technologies are insufficient -as yet - to overcome the inherent unreliability of wind and solar power.
The Morrison government's support for a Kurri Kurri gas power plant "of last resort" certainly split opinion, as have NSW Environment Minister Matt Kean's plans for "pumped hydro".
In a year when the building industry boomed despite the travails of COVID, cranes and construction crews continued their wholesale transformation of the Newcastle CBD, as more of the old city gave way to the new.
This is but a snapshot of the news cycle this year.
As we circled the sun, the world went about its business as best it could, despite the terrible toll of a novel coronavirus that is yet to be vanquished.
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