Picture it. Texas, Queensland, 2015. Texas is a town of about 800 people. Just a couple of hours from the New South Wales border in the Goondiwindi part of Queensland. So we’re talking just your typical Queensland small country town and they don’t have like a lot of industries or claims to fame or anything. They’re just Texas, Queensland, and it’s a town Queenslanders know about.
Texas was having a country show and I adore country shows. I think they are one of the best parts of living in Australia because you get to see a lot of people from a lot of different backgrounds just enjoying seeing some cows and losing it over some amazing chicken or quilt they have seen in the show ring. So a group of friends and I decided we were going to drive to Texas, which I think was like 3.5 hours outside Brisbane. We we were just going to have a day at the show and we were just going to like look at cows and see horses jump and, you know, have a cup of tea. And it was going to be amazing. And it was all of those things.
We rock up and there’s everything you could imagine for a country show. There’s the rides you would probably risk your life on if you rode them but you put little children on them anyway because it’s part of the show experience. There’s people cracking whips. There’s people showing off their cows. I thought, I really have to go back to being a vegetarian because look at these lambs. How am I eating these lambs? And then I went and had a giant steak sandwich and it was incredible. It was a really good day.
We come to the end of the day and we find this little tent run by the Country Women’s Association and they have cups of tea and coffee for a dollar and a piece of cake for a dollar. And I lose my mind – oh my God, $2 for a cuppa and a cake. You cannot get better in Australia right now. This is living.
So I wait my turn, I get my cup of tea and then I look at all these cakes. Which cake do I want? And the woman behind the counter urged me not to get the chocolate cake. She said it was a bit dry or something. And she’s pointing at all these other cakes. “Date cake, date slice, oh, I wouldn’t be going for that one darl.” And then she offers up like this other cake. I think it was sultana. She’s like: “This is what you want.” Babes, love you. Yup. Give me my dollar cake.
I have my cake. It is incredible. I have my cup of tea. Just amazing. And we’re leaving the show and I just think: I’m going to write about our time at the show. Just a nice little colour piece. I was working for what was then Fairfax and thought, you know, people should know more about country shows. We should go and support these towns.
On the way back we get lost and I’m writing in the back of the car. This piece I’m putting together is full of love for Texas and what we had just been through, and I included the interaction that I had with the woman who sold me the cake and the cup of tea. I included what she said, but I gave her a pseudonym. I just chose a random name: Shirl. I was like, sure, Shirl, whatever. That’s going to paint a picture of the type of person that I was speaking to. I’m going to put this in. I did not add the asterisks that this is not her real name. I did neglect to do that. In my defence, I was filing from the back of a car in the pitch dark, lost in a forest. But I figured most people would know that Shirl wasn’t actually Shirl.
The piece runs, it does OK and I forget about it.
Then about two weeks later, I get a phone call from the local MP – I was covering Queensland state politics at the time – and he’s like: “Amy, I just need you to fix it.”
And I said, “What are you talking about? Fix? What? Have I got something wrong in the story?”
He’s like: “You have turned the town of Texas on its head.”
It turned out the name I used was actually the name of somebody in that tent. But it was not the woman who spoke to me. And the local CWA went to war over this. Who said what? Who was complaining that the cakes were dry? Who was complaining about the date cake? Did they actually say it? Why has this city journalist reported in the paper that you’ve said it when you actually haven’t said it? What is going on?
The town of Texas was absolutely outraged. There were town hall meetings about this, I’m told. The mayor was getting involved.
I have to impress on people that this was very serious. It was being treated very seriously by everyone – by the local member, by the CWA, by the newspaper editors, by the town itself. Everyone was very serious about what I had written about Shirl and the cakes and how that had caused so much drama within this country town. And then that just opened up everything about what had been happening in this CWA and what people thought about things.
Part of me was going: am I about to be shown to be on Candid Camera or Punk’d or something? Like, can this actually be real? And the bigger part of me was thinking: oh my God, have I managed to tear a town apart over cake? And that really bothered me because the chocolate cake didn’t actually even look that bad.
But it also reinforced for me the importance of journalism and how everything we write matters. And that is a lesson that I have never, ever forgotten. It has taught me not to be so flippant, even when I think I’m trying to do a good thing.
I had to do a big email explaining what happened, which was then apparently passed on to the CWA people and everyone who was upset. I was told they have a hotline to the prime minister, who at the time was Tony Abbott, and they would, if necessary, get the prime minister involved.
I had to speak to the editor of the local bi-weekly newspaper and explain what happened. I then get a lecture about journalism and how to do journalism correctly and that this would never happen in their local paper. Which is fair enough. I should have made clear that it was a pseudonym.
I then wrote a very long letter to the editor where I explained the situation and I’m very sorry to have caused so much ruckus in the town and that I know that the CWA is the backbone of country towns and I know how important the CWA is. And I’m very sorry that somebody thought the chocolate cake was dry. And I’m very sorry that I reported that. I have learned my lessons. Please don’t call the prime minister on me. I really do love the town of Texas and your show, and I’m very sorry this all happened. That letter got published.
I didn’t hear anything about it, but I did speak to the local member not long afterwards, who asked me to please avoid the town of Texas in the future – it has a long memory and perhaps if I returned to Texas I would once again cause a giant ruckus.
