I started reading the Guardian Weekly in 1984. I was living in the 2m hectare Kakadu National Park in northern Australia in a village almost 300km from Darwin. The park had about 2,000 residents.
You can probably guess that the choice of newspapers was hardly great. As soon as I was introduced to the Weekly I was consumed with excitement. The paper itself was ever so thin, and it came via post usually within a week of being published. It did take all week to read with coffee or beer or wine.
Then I moved to the UK and kept the subscription even while discovering a bigger array of newspapers than I could have imagined, although many of them seemed to have a different view of what constituted news to what I could read in the Weekly. After a few years in the heavily populated UK it was back to Kakadu, and another change in address for my subscription, then to Sri Lanka for a few years, and now in southern Australia, where the paper doubles as fire-lighting material in the winter months, after being read from front to back.
The Weekly has lived with me for a long time and has seen many airplanes and airport lounges, and briefcases and carry bags across many countries. I still thank the higher beings that it is not a broadsheet and turning the pages is not a battle with dexterity. And it still has news, and that is not fake news.
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