The ABC’s flagship current affairs program, 7.30, wanted to interview my partner, Erin, about her Find A Bed charity. I helped.
Obviously, it was not supposed to go down like this.
On New Year’s Eve, at the height of the climate-changed induced (don’t @ me) bushfire crisis, Erin accidentally started a charity.
Find A Bed, born of a tweet that quickly escalated out of hand, helped provide shelter and other items for families displaced by the fires.
It got a reasonable amount of attention and helped a lot of people.
Then COVID arrived and Find A Bed pivoted to providing housing for nurses, doctors and other medical workers looking to self-isolate from their families and flatmates to protect them from the risk of exposure.
While still supporting people who lost houses in the fires.
7.30 wanted to interview Erin and get some additional filler shots to help flesh out a report on Find A Bed.
As this coincided with the rise of COVID as a real risk, they asked if it were possible for someone to help film Erin’s side of the interview and some additional pickup footage of her around the farm to provide some context.
Of course, being the (semi-)retired videographer and the one that had some equipment around that would assist in making this better than a “here’s my bookshelf in the back of a Skype call” shot, I was drafted in to help.
In the end, they used maybe a minute of footage. Erin’s appearance was brief, sadly. A couple of soundbites to say that Find A Bed was helping where they could. Without reaching for the stopwatch, I suspect the chickens actually got more airtime.
You can view the segment on the ABC’s website.