About Genevieve Jacobs
Genevieve Jacobs has been a journalist for 30 years, working in print and radio. Her career began with rural newspapers on the South West Slopes, she has freelanced for national magazines and spent a decade with ABC Radio Canberra.
She works with a wide range of organisations including the Tara Costigan Foundation, and Gift of Life ACT, sits on the ACT’s advisory committee for Historic Places and the boards of the National Folk Festival, Canberra International Music Festival, M16 artspace and the Conflict Resolution Service.
Genevieve has an enduring interest in building community, and creating discussions that include us all. And she still loves nothing better than a good yarn.
All Articles
Community
For more than 20 years, Rodney Plumb has quietly enjoyed one of the best views in the Eurobodalla, if not the whole NSW South Coast. Perched high in the little cabin atop Batemans Bay bridge, he raises the span twice each day and sits 15 metres above the water, gazing out to the Tollgate Islands while the ferry passes beneath....
News
Many Canberra commuters who pass Parliament House on a daily basis will have noticed that the flags are flying at half-mast. The flags recognise Australia's longest-serving deputy prime minister and former Country Party leader Doug Anthony, who is being farewelled at a state funeral on the NSW north coast. The funeral service is being held at the Twin Town Services...
News
On Australia Day, what does it mean to be an Aboriginal nominee for the highest honours our nation gives? "It's a bittersweet moment," says Pat Anderson AO, the ACT's Senior Australian of the Year. A human rights and social justice advocate of long-standing, the Alyawarre woman from the Northern Territory is known internationally for her work on improved health, and...
News
As vigorous arguments continue over the War Memorial's proposed $500 million expansion, have the voices of those involved in post Vietnam conflicts been missed? Ian Lindgren is vice president of the Australian Peacekeepers and Peacemaker Veterans' Association, whose members include Defence veterans but also Commonwealth and sometime State police officers, DFAT and intelligence personnel deployed to operations as varied as Cambodia...
News
A journalist investigating what she believes may be the longest running case of false imprisonment in Australian legal history has furthered her quest to exonerate the convicted man through a residency program at The Australia Institute in Canberra. Amy McQuire is a Darumbal and South Sea Islander journalist with over 13 years’ experience working in primarily Aboriginal and independent media....
Community
Target's announcement in 2020 that many of its rural and regional stores would close hit many country towns like a bombshell. In southeast NSW, Target stores in Cooma, Cootamundra, Merimbula, Nowra and Wagga Wagga have all been slated for closure in early-to-mid-2021, among other regional stores across NSW. In the ACT, the store in Weston Creek will close in early-to-mid-2021....
News
Eurobodalla Shire Council has ploughed open a channel for Coila Lake after its waters surpassed the two-metre trigger level. Photographs on social media before the channel was opened on 4 January show the lake brimming with water and close to the roadway and pedestrian footbridge at Tuross Head. When overly full, Coila Lake threatens tanks at Coila Service Centre and can...
Opinion
Despite protests from multiple sources, Environment Minister Sussan Ley announced before Christmas that the controversial extension to the Australian War Memorial will go ahead. The $500 million cost of expanding an already well funded and major institution has been the subject of robust debate as critics and proponents argue over whether it's necessary or wise. The ANU's Professor Mark Kenny,...
Environment
They'll probably never beat the chocolate chip as favourite biscuit ingredient, but bogong moth biscuits are a life-saving treat for the high country's endangered mountain pygmy possums. The biscuits have been produced with the help of school students from across the Snowy Mountains region, in partnership with the NSW Government’s Saving our Species (SoS) program and NSW National Parks and...
Arts & Culture
Internationally acclaimed festival director Lindy Hume will head up the next two Four Winds Festivals at Bermagui, with a focus on creatively energised, locally embedded performance drawn from her deep attachment to the place she has called home for the past 15 years. The role of Creative Director is a new leadership position and the COVID-safe Easter 2021 event also...
News
3pm, January 1: Bega Valley mayor Russell Fitzpatrick has urged all visitors to the Great Southern Hotel in Eden and the Beachside Cafe in Bermagui on December 30 and 31 to get tested for COVID and self isolate immediately. "The NSW Government has today announced two visitors to our region have tested positive to COVID-19", Cr Fitzpatrick said. The cases...
News
2020, the year that never stops giving, has had a last hurrah in the Eurobodalla, where a storm described by locals as "a supercell" belted the community late on Boxing Day. There's extensive damage in some areas and George Bass Drive has been closed to motorists after the wild weather lifted the bitumen seal completely off the road on George Bass...
Arts & Culture
Two-time political cartoonist of the year Cathy Wilcox reckons you can tell a lot about a country by the state of its cartooning. Accepting an award from the Museum of Australian Democracy as cartoonist of the Year, Wilcox (whose work appears in The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age) noted that in some countries, cartoonists are harried, pilloried or even...
News
Back in the early '70s, junior journalist Paul Kelly had a favourite position between the two chambers in what's now Old Parliament House. Top left-hand corner, beneath the pillars in Kings Hall. He'd linger there, hoping to pick up news about the roiling constitutional crisis that was devouring the Whitlam Government as ever-more frantic messengers scurried back and forth through the...
News
In the wake of revelations that Australian forces were involved in the unauthorised killing of 39 men in Afghanistan, a UNSW Canberra researcher from the Australian Defence Force Academy says that "root and branch reform" is fundamentally necessary to combat toxic cultural issues in the ADF. The Brereton Report, released today, has revealed that 25 ADF personnel were involved in...
Community
The tiny South West Slopes Village of Wallendbeen has both a big history and a big-hearted historian. Local Marcia Thorburn has just released her second history of the district following the success of The Wallendbeen Story, and says she was inspired by the district's larger than life characters including Donald Mackay, immortalised as the last of the great Australian explorers....