As I cover the world's biggest stories, my mind always returns to that Australian classroom

The Age

09-05-2025

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Rome: Right now, I'm sitting in a quiet corner of Rome, the Vatican's chimney stack just visible in the distance, waiting for the puff of white smoke that will declare a new pope.
It's a moment wrapped in tradition, symbolism and centuries of history – the kind of global story I could have only imagined reporting on. The kind that once lived only in the margins of a high school history textbook, brought to life by a woman named Ms Needham.
Three and a bit years ago, I left Australia with a suitcase, a passport and a quiet sense of disbelief. I was to cover Europe's biggest stories – the politics, the protests, the wars and the wonders. I've since stood inside a centuries-old chapel as Elizabeth II was laid to rest, and witnessed the pomp of a king's coronation. I've watched firelit protests engulf Parisian streets, heard air raid sirens in Kyiv and wandered the cobbled corners of Berlin, imagining the wall still looming above.
In Krakow, I met survivors of the Holocaust. In London, I stood at the door of 10 Downing Street and watched four prime ministers walk in and out. So often, I was struck by deja vu – that eerie sense I'd been here before, only I hadn't. It was Ms Needham who'd taken me there first.
As the world awaited smoke and meaning, I found myself returning to a simpler, more personal question: How lucky am I? And more quietly: Did I do Ms Needham proud?
It was she who, from a classroom in Traralgon, made me feel the weight of Robespierre's guillotine and the grit of Mao's Long March. She made the horrors of Auschwitz more than just a name in a book, and the bravery of people such as John Monash something I could understand as a teenager. She turned faraway places and long-ago people into something intimate. Real.
Not long ago, I came across a thought in a book from Greek philosopher Nikos Kazantzakis that stopped me cold: 'True teachers are those who use themselves as bridges over which they invite their students to cross; then, having facilitated their crossing, joyfully collapse, encouraging them to create bridges of their own.'