Raising Hell: Photoessay: On The Road To Narrabri

What timing, huh? There’s so much happening right now — so much weirdness — but once again I’m absent from field. Between heading out on the road for weeks at the time, illness and tying of a few extra obligations, once again I have not been able to put together the full newsletter this last fortnight. That will be fixed next time around. In the interim, I thought I’d post some of the long-overdue photos from the incredible photojournalist Isabella Moore who accompanied me on a fieldtrip to Narrabri, New South Wales. All credit goes to Raising Hell’s paying subscribers who helped fund this trip which will serve as critical research for an upcoming book I am currently working on. Isabella’s portraiture is incredible — you should check out her other work at her website if you haven’t — and it is to my shame it has taken me this long to get them to the Raising Hell readership.

If you’re new to Raising Hell (welcome and thank you) I also wanted to include a brief note to make sure you know just what you’re getting into. I started up this newsletter around the time of the pandemic when advertising revenue was being pulled and newspapers were getting nervous about their budgets. The original idea was to use this newsletter as a way to help promote my work and smooth my income as a precariously employed freelance reporter. Over time, the vision for Raising Hell has evolved. Now this newsletter serves as a vehicle which helps me fund and conduct the raw research on investigative stories which catch my interest and may not otherwise get picked up in the ordinary course of the newscycle. Often, I will go on to pitch or be commissioned to write a more developed work of journalism from what appears here. Think of what you read here as the raw bones of future stories.

You do not need to be a paying subscriber to read Raising Hell. I have made a deliberate decision to publish for free to enable anyone interested to follow my work. If you do wish to become a paying subscriber, know that I deeply appreciate your contribution. I use this money to pay my bills and fund primary research. In terms of what you are getting for your money: Raising Hell is a fortnightly newsletter published on Tuesday mornings that provides a deeply ironic, caustic and absurd news-wrap of the weirdest stories from the last fortnight. It can be quite long, but you only hear from me every two weeks so it doesn’t get too annoying. The general tone, tenor and quality depends largely on the time I have available as I’m also writing this between picking up other commissions. Sometimes you’ll get finely researched deep dives into an issue; other times it will be top-level analysis with a couple of typos. Every so often I use Raising Hell as a vehicle to deliver large, more ambitious investigative projects. At the moment, however, things will be a bit quiet as the bulk of my attention is being directed to researching a new book. This is quite demanding on my time but I will, at some point, be releasing teasers to all and publishing early chapters for paid subscribers only.

Once again: thank you. And enjoy the pretty pictures.

Before You Go (Go)…

• Are you a public sector bureaucrat whose tyrannical boss is behaving badly? Have you recently come into possession of documents showing some rich guy is trying to move their ill-gotten-gains to Curacao? Did you take a low-paying job with an evil corporation registered in Delaware that is burying toxic waste under playgrounds? If your conscience is keeping you up at night, or you’d just plain like to see some wrong-doers cast into the sea, we here at Raising Hell can suggest a course of action: leak! You can securely make contact through Signal — contact me first for how. Alternatively you can send us your hard copies to: PO Box 134, Welland SA 5007
• And if you’ve come this far, consider supporting me further by picking up one of my books, leaving a review or by just telling a friend about Raising Hell!