We finally left town today, whilst we where doing so we caught a caption of the news. This news severely emotionally affected at least five of the group and we decided that it would be best to wait until we could find out more information.
To wait for information in this day and age does not take long. Our technology permits us to send messages with E-mail, talk to people with telephones and satellite telephones, and our televisions use satellites transferring images within the minute.
The question that I kept asking myself today was “is this for the good or the bad?” in my opinion ‘no news is good news’. If we had left yesterday we mightn’t have heard the news till Darwin, though back around 100 years ago people wouldn’t find out about news that occurred a month ago in another country; as the message had no means of getting to the receiver.
This could be reversed - what if something happened on a remote station or community; they had no means of sending an instant message to the press, doctors or family.
This occurred to us today. Some of us felt that we were privileged to receive news, and others felt as though ‘we are in the Australian outback, if we wanted to do something about something we are going to have to put if off until we get back to civilisation.”