In a breakthrough win, the Lithgow Mercury's own Ciara Bastow has won the prestigious Chris Watson Award for Outstanding Regional Newspaper Journalism at the Kennedy Awards in Sydney on Thursday night. She joins other industry heavyweights like Samantha Maiden who was crowned winner of the 2021 Kennedy Prize for Journalist of the Year.
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It's her incredible work covering Australia's Black Summer Bushfires and the aftermath left around the Lithgow area that earned her the award.
As a result of her advocacy, the local council appointed a Community Recovery Officer to seek funding and assistance for the people in that community.
When Ciara would drive every weekend along the Bells Line of Road at Lithgow, the blackened ruins left by the fires were starkly laid out before her eyes.
As confronting as this was, Ciara's journalistic instincts kicked in as the weeks turned in to months, and the ruined landscape remained unchanged.
"I thought, this community needs help," Ciara said.
"You could see the frames of houses on the ground and that was six months after the fires. I wondered why houses weren't being rebuilt - why weren't these people getting help? I wanted at least to get local government to stand up for them."
Ciara set to work on a series of interviews with some of the people affected; an RFS captain whose house burned down while he was saving others, a family whose neighbours risked their own lives to protect their property, the home owner for whom no help ever came.
From all of us at the Mercury, we couldn't be prouder. Well done.
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Kathy Sharpe
