Speaker 1: Hello, if Daniel James, here was some very exciting news.
Speaker 1: Last week. We let you know that my co host
Speaker 1: Ruby Jones is taking a break from seven AM while
Speaker 1: she works on a story for Four Corners. While she's away,
Speaker 1: I'm going to be sharing hosting duties with a wonderful journalist,
Speaker 1: Nicole Johnston.
Speaker 2: On the edge of the city of chun Chun, a
Speaker 2: towering monument to the China Dream and its demise. Is
Speaker 2: the first time in the United States in the midterm
Speaker 2: election that they're having to recount three statewide races, and
Speaker 2: these are big races all.
Speaker 3: Night throughout the Gaza Strip.
Speaker 2: The latest information that we have is in the last
Speaker 2: few minutes we have heard about an air strikeing probably
Speaker 2: just heard one of those air strikes that I meet.
Speaker 1: There aren't many corners of the Earth, many front lines.
Speaker 1: Nicky hasn't reported from from the Middle East to Africa, Europe,
Speaker 1: the US and Asia. For two decades, Nicole has covered
Speaker 1: the events that have shaped the world.
Speaker 2: People from Mosul's Old city have been broken, bodies, ravaged
Speaker 2: by hunger, beaten down by months of war. And this
Speaker 2: is how it ends. Men stripped to their underwear to
Speaker 2: show Iraqi forces they're not wearing a suicide vest.
Speaker 1: And now she's back in Australia unpacking the biggest news
Speaker 1: stories for us. Nikki, thanks for joining us.
Speaker 3: Great to be here.
Speaker 1: Now, you say you left to go traveling for a
Speaker 1: year and it teened into seventeen years. How did that
Speaker 1: get out of hand?
Speaker 2: It really got out of hand, didn't it. It started
Speaker 2: with a year of backpacking. But then once I got
Speaker 2: to London, I'd always had this big dream of being
Speaker 2: a foreign correspondent. I didn't know how to go about it,
Speaker 2: and I thought the best way was to try and
Speaker 2: specialize in a region and learn it and then take
Speaker 2: all of that back to Australia. But I got distracted.
Speaker 2: I ended up focusing on the Middle East. I did
Speaker 2: a master's in Middle East studies at the University of London,
Speaker 2: even though I'd never been to the region, knew nothing
Speaker 2: about about it, but I was fascinated very quickly, and luckily,
Speaker 2: not long after that, Al Jazeera decided to launch an
Speaker 2: English language channel based out of Doha.
Speaker 3: I signed up.
Speaker 2: I thought, this hopefully will be my ticket into the
Speaker 2: Middle East.
Speaker 1: And so, what are some of the stories that have
Speaker 1: stayed with you during your time with Al Jazeera and
Speaker 1: in the Middle East.
Speaker 2: I think I would start off by saying that my
Speaker 2: first big break or deployment with Al Jazeera was in Gaza,
Speaker 2: and I first went there for three months and that
Speaker 2: was when the maybe Mamara attack happened.
Speaker 1: A deadly battle has taken place off the coast of Gaza,
Speaker 1: as Israeli forces stormed at.
Speaker 2: Least one ship attempting to break the blockhead of Gaza
Speaker 2: commanders lower them so a Turkish flotilla was attacked by
Speaker 2: Israeli forces. A number of people were killed. It was
Speaker 2: a huge incident, a huge international story.
Speaker 3: Two people have been confirmed killed.
Speaker 1: Five year Israeli army have now asked all the passengers
Speaker 1: to go in.
Speaker 2: Suddenly Gaza was on air every single day. I then
Speaker 2: returned to Gaza the following year and I spent twelve
Speaker 2: months living there. Last few minutes, let's get the letters
Speaker 2: now from Nicole Johnson who is in Gaza for.
Speaker 3: US and Nikki. What's going on? Is that another Israeli
Speaker 3: air strike.
Speaker 2: It certainly seems that the border area around Gaza is
Speaker 2: really being targeted at the moment. And we did all
Speaker 2: sorts of stories. Obviously there were air strikes and conflicts.
Speaker 2: But the big one for me then came at the
Speaker 2: end of the year, and that was the Gillard Shale
Speaker 2: prisoner swap story, when one Israeli soldier was swapped for
Speaker 2: one thousand Palestinian prisoners. Waya Collab was twenty three years
Speaker 2: old when he became a prisoner in Israel. He was
Speaker 2: jailed in nineteen eighty eight for killing two Israeli soldiers
Speaker 2: in Gaza City. Now he's free under the prisoner swap deal,
Speaker 2: but he's suffering from Parkinson's disas and his son says
Speaker 2: his problems are also psychological. To be there during that
Speaker 2: was incredible because on both sides it was one of
Speaker 2: those rare occasions when there was an agreement, it worked,
Speaker 2: and it was actually a very positive story in the end.
Speaker 1: Why don't we talking here in terms of your coverage
Speaker 1: of the Middle East and with Al Jazeera?
Speaker 3: Oh, oh gosh, it's hard to remember.
Speaker 2: I think I went to the region almost eighteen years
Speaker 2: ago when I was there for a decade. In that time,
Speaker 2: I had the year permanently based in Gaza. I spent
Speaker 2: about a year in Jerusalem, and then I went to
Speaker 2: Egypt and I was based in Cairo, and it was
Speaker 2: after the Arab Spring, immediately after it, so it could
Speaker 2: have been a pretty quiet, sleepy time in Egypt because
Speaker 2: the big revolution had happened. But I arrived and a
Speaker 2: few months after that there was the military.
Speaker 3: Coup, the removal of Egypt's first democratically elected president and
Speaker 3: has opened one of the bloodiest chapters in the country's
Speaker 3: modern history.
Speaker 2: And when I saw the military helicopters flying in above
Speaker 2: Tuckery's Square with thousands and thousands of people underneath, you
Speaker 2: pause and go, oh, I don't know how this girl
Speaker 2: from Country Regional Australia ended up here in Cairo in
Speaker 2: the middle of this big story. And I mean I
Speaker 2: was always very grateful and just so excited to be
Speaker 2: in the middle of.
Speaker 1: It all, coming up Nikki on reporting from China and
Speaker 1: what she gets up to when she's not on the road.
Speaker 1: What kept you on the road for all those years
Speaker 1: was that first to be in the thick of it?
Speaker 2: I think, so, I love the job, and it's not
Speaker 2: easy to get these jobs. So when you finally do
Speaker 2: get the job, it is a hard thing to give away.
Speaker 2: And I don't think I ever really would want to
Speaker 2: entirely give it away. I would go back overseas at
Speaker 2: the drop of a hat tomorrow because it's so fascinating,
Speaker 2: it's so interesting. I love the people that you meet,
Speaker 2: the range of stories that you can do working with
Speaker 2: a team, and most of all, my most recent deployment
Speaker 2: was one year in China, and I thought of it
Speaker 2: like this. Obviously, China is not my background or my
Speaker 2: academic area. But to be paid to go to China,
Speaker 2: it's like spending a year doing a master's in China
Speaker 2: studies and your employer is footing the bill, and they're
Speaker 2: flying you all around, and you get to meet Chinese
Speaker 2: people and make Chinese friends, and explore every type of
Speaker 2: story from economic to rare earth minerals to the military
Speaker 2: to great geopolitics with Putin in town, and every day
Speaker 2: was like a new chapter of a book.
Speaker 1: You mentioned you from country New South Wales. Whereabout some
Speaker 1: country New South Wales.
Speaker 2: I'm from a little place called Bimbi. Actually it's about
Speaker 2: thirty forty kilometers outside of a small town called Grenfelle,
Speaker 2: population maybe fifteen hundred people. But if you're in Sydney
Speaker 2: and you drive five hours southwest, you'll reach it. And
Speaker 2: Grenfell just to say was the birthplace of Henry Lawson.
Speaker 2: So I went to the Henry Lawson High School.
Speaker 1: There.
Speaker 3: I had wonderful teachers at school.
Speaker 2: I had decided at a really pretty young age, I
Speaker 2: guess maybe ten, that I wanted to be a journalist.
Speaker 2: A teacher had suggested it to me in primary school
Speaker 2: and the idea just stuck, and my parents would often
Speaker 2: joke later that at one stage I said, if I
Speaker 2: end up at the ABC in Woggle Wogger, I will
Speaker 2: be really.
Speaker 3: Pleased with myself. So it's funny anyway.
Speaker 2: The worldview got bigger after traveling abroad, and I have
Speaker 2: just tried to push it and keep the show on
Speaker 2: the road and take as many interesting opportunities and meet
Speaker 2: as many great people as I could.
Speaker 1: Well, you've landed with us here at seven AM, and
Speaker 1: we're very very very happy about that and very very
Speaker 1: grateful to have someone of your caliber with us. What
Speaker 1: type of stories are you hoping to cover for seven Am?
Speaker 3: Oh, that's a good question.
Speaker 2: I think the kind of stories that I want to do,
Speaker 2: aside from the wonderful Australian stories, are international stories. That's
Speaker 2: really my bag. I've spent so long overseas and it's
Speaker 2: reached that point where it all sort of starts to
Speaker 2: come together. So to be back in Australia and able
Speaker 2: to ring old journalists and buddies in different countries and
Speaker 2: bring them back to people in Australia, to hear their
Speaker 2: stories about what it's like to live there, to put
Speaker 2: up with the governments that they have, and what they
Speaker 2: think is changing in the world is really exciting. I
Speaker 2: think the other thing is the fallout from this Trump presidency.
Speaker 2: Every day is something new, it's whiplash. I'm really excited
Speaker 2: to be able to cover those kinds of stories and
Speaker 2: interview people all over the world about it.
Speaker 1: So what do you do when you're outside the news bubble?
Speaker 1: What do you like to do when you're not involved
Speaker 1: in your calling.
Speaker 2: I think I'm a bit of a tragic and I
Speaker 2: must admit that you'll often find me on the beach
Speaker 2: at Bondi reading the news or at Kuljie. I love
Speaker 2: the ocean, swimming, just being on the beach. What could
Speaker 2: be better than that? I think the other great thing
Speaker 2: to do in Sydney is to go down to the
Speaker 2: Sydney Opera House, especially during the winter, listen to the
Speaker 2: wonderful Sydney Symphony Orchestra or Australian Chamber Orchestra and just
Speaker 2: get some music. I think it's a great way to
Speaker 2: relax and try and chill out from all of this hard.
Speaker 3: News that we're often doing.
Speaker 2: And then I also love to just get in the car,
Speaker 2: drive out to the countryside five hours west and and
Speaker 2: see the family, see my little nieces riding their horses,
Speaker 2: and just enjoy this great Australian lifestyle that we have.
Speaker 1: We are incredibly lucky to be in this country and
Speaker 1: we're incredibly lucky to have you with us on seven am, Nicole,
Speaker 1: so thanks for joining us and good luck with it all.
Speaker 3: Thank you, thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: That was Nicole Johnston. She will be with us until
Speaker 1: the end of March when Ruby Jones will be back
Speaker 1: from Hursted at four quints