Pam Muxlow has clocked up 30 years as the Tinonee correspondent for the Wingham Chronicle.
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Her popular column Tinonee Topics was first published in the newspaper on September 21, 1988.
“It’s been hard yakka sometimes,” she admits.
Deadlines and changes in technology have been the biggest hurdles for Pam to overcome in order to fulfil her role with the paper.
Pam originally took over the column from Jan Dyson who was busy with her florist business.
According to Pam, Jan talked her into it.
Pam was thrown into the deep end with her very first column covering the bi-centenary celebrations taking place in and around Tinonee.
But she took easily to life as a columnist and was soon writing about anything and everything that happened in the historic little town.
Babies being born, events at the hall and of course Pam’s own involvement with the Tinonee Historical Society, Wallamba CWA and the Tinonee Red Cross provided valuable content for the column.
As did the latest updates from the local school and church.
Back in those days Pam was free to write her column as long as she wanted and so she needed a technological upgrade to keep up with all the typing.
Luck was on her side.
“My brother gave me a you beaut electric typewriter,” she said.
Now of course Pam uses a computer to submit her column each Monday.
She’s had to learn to send her written report and photos to the newsroom via email.
“I’m still not very good at it all,” she laughs.
“My kids told me ‘as long as you don’t touch the delete button, you’ll be alright.”
As well as her column and her tireless volunteering, Pam is well known for taking photos.
Her love affair with photography began when she sold some Angora rabbits to buy a box Brownie.
When she got a job at Beaurepaires in 1962 Pam saved up for a Voigtlander camera but damaged it while travelling through the Panama Canal during an overseas trip a few years later.
Her cameras have been upgraded over the years, just like her writing tools and today Pam attends local events with her trusty digital camera in hand and provides all the photos for her column.
Pam seems happy to continue writing her column, “as long as there’s a newspaper,” for as long as she can.
“If I go another 30 years I’ll be 101,” she said last week in her anniversary column.