In an astonishing year of upheaval, treachery and excess the readers of The Daily and Sunday Telegraphs did not miss a single crucial, intricate, salacious detail thanks to our team of award-winning journalists.

In Canberra, 2018 saw the end of a decade long feud between former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and the man he ousted from the top job, Tony Abbott. In their stead rose baseball cap wearing everyman Scott Morrison.

Before that we had already witnessed the departure of Deputy Prime Minister and Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce after The Daily Telegraph exclusively revealed his former staffer Vikki Campion was expecting his baby.

The year saw bone dry drought in the country and devastating bushfires in Tathra.

On the sporting field Australia’s cricketers finally agreed to clean up their act after being caught cheating and, finally, the Blues won Origin.

It was a time of TV upsets, off-screen wedding excess for Karl Stefanovic and romantic extremes on Love Island and Bachelor in Paradise. The real life romance of newlyweds Meghan Markle and Prince Harry during their visit Down Under put the republican cause back decades.

Every step of the way has been chronicled by Telegraph journalists who have brought the news to our loyal readers first, fast and accurately. Here are the highlights of 2018 as seen through the eyes of superbly informed Telegraph readers.

POLITICAL UPHEAVAL

In his valedictory speech ousted Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said the Australian people would be “dumbstruck” by the “disloyalty” that saw him replaced by Treasurer Scott Morrison in the top job.

“Many Australians will just be shaking their heads in disbelief at what’s been done,” he said after a leadership tilt by Peter Dutton ended with the Liberal Party’s reputation in tatters. He was right.

But he offered no dignity in defeat, quitting his seat of Wentworth and refusing to endorse the Liberal candidate. Voters in the blue-ribbon electorate showed their disdain by electing independent Kerryn Phelps.

Another leader who was tripped up, this time by his own actions in the past, was NSW Labor’s Luke Foley.

He was accused of sliding his hand through a gap in the back of ABC reporter Ashleigh Raper’s dress and resting his hand inside her underpants during a Parliament House party.

When the story broke she said Foley called her and said: “I’m not a philanderer, I’m not a groper, I’m just a drunk idiot”.

A drunk idiot who was forced to resign over the incident and hand over the Labor leadership to Michael Daley.

BALL TAMPERING

Australians watched cricketer Cameron Bancroft as he attempted to hide a strip of yellow sandpaper down his trousers while thousands of South African cricket fans watched on the big screen.

The cricket world reacted to the blatant cheating with shock. Shane Warne called it un-Australian.

However it turned out that it was anything other than un-Australian in terms of the win-at-all-costs mentality that had come from the top down in Australian cricket for years.

Captain Steve Smith immediately took responsibility and stepped down. He was banned for a year, vice-captain David Warner admitted to being the mastermind and was also banned. Bancroft received a nine-month suspension.

Coach Darren Lehmann also lost his job and Australian cricket chose to have a long hard look at itself and clean up its act. No more sledging.

Needless to say it lost the first test against India in Adelaide.

UNDERWORLD SHAKE-UPS

The masked assassin leaned in close to former Commanchero bikie boss Mick Hawi as he sat in his black Mercedes outside his Rockdale gym and shot him dead at point blank range.

‘Mummy, who killed Dad?’ his nine-year-old daughter still asks his 38-year-old widow Carolina Gonzalez. “The shooter and everyone involved are cowards for organising to kill my husband, the father to my children,” she said.

She claims Hawi, who did time for his role in an airport brawl that saw a rival bikie bludgeoned to death, had turned his life around. Others believe that if you live by the sword you die by the sword.

Lone Wolf bikies Yusuf Nazlioglu, 37, to whom Hawi was once a role model, and Ahmed “Adam” Doudar, 38, were arrested and charged over their alleged roles in the murder.

That’s just one crime The Telegraph’s crack team of crime journalists has delved into to reveal the hidden underbelly of Sydney and NSW’s criminal world.

Another was the mysterious Mr X who lawyers said had “better cash flow than the state of Tasmania,” and used his earnings from cocaine and heroin sales to fund his passion for gambling, prostitutes and fast cars.

A Sunday Telegraph investigation revealed how Mr X was caught on police taps about the proceeds of crime he put into an eatery owned by restaurateur Ramzey Choker, who established The Grounds in Alexandria.

BARNA-BABY

Readers of The Daily Telegraph were the first to learn then-Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce was expecting a baby with his former staffer Vikki Campion.

National political editor Sharri Markson won a slew of awards, including Scoop of the Year at the Walkley Awards, for telling Telegraph readers what was really going on in Canberra.

The scoop triggered a series of events that ultimately led to Joyce stepping down from the Nationals leadership. Voters in his electorate felt betrayed, as did his wife of 24 years Natalie and their four daughters.

Joyce, 50, and Campion, 33, went on to have a son called Sebastian and scooped up $150,000 in a soft soap interview with Channel 7’s Sunday Night. Few people watched — Telegraph readers had been following the soap opera as it unfolded first and in real time.

THE BIG DRY

Little Eve Holcombe brought home the devastating impact of the bone dry drought to Telegraph readers in the cities.

The little blonde youngster’s parents, Peter and Kathleen, are among thousands of NSW farmers battling to keep their properties as their once lush paddocks turn to red dust bowls.

The Sunday Telegraph launched a campaign on behalf of farmers to overhaul drought relief packages that were tangled in red tape. It helped, as did the $500 million Premier Gladys Berejiklian announced a month later.

What they still need is rain.

That rain would have helped in Tathra at the end of the bushfire season in March when a fast-running inferno swept through the Bega Valley town.

In total 69 homes and 30 cabins and caravans were razed.

It took investigations by The Telegraph to reveal that The Rural Fire service knocked back two offers from Fire and Rescue NSW to send emergency crews to help battle the flames.

It was three hours later, as fire tore through the South Coast town, that the RFS finally asked for help.

TV DRAMAS

The real dramas in television have happened off screen, where the Telegraph’s reporters and photographers have been on the spot to keep readers up to date on all the action.

Today host Karl Stefanovic’s ratings have slumped with the departure of co-host Lisa Wilkinson and in the wake of his marriage breakup, after 21 years, to children’s author Cassandra Thorburn.

His no-expenses spared, over-the-top four-day December wedding to shoe designer Jasmine Yarbrough in Cabo, Mexico, took on reality TV style proportions with his ex-wife sniping from the sidelines about his “fake” life.

While on reality TV the Honey Badger held out to the end on the Bachelor and left the show a bachelor. And on Married At First Sight hearts were broken as couples split. The show’s villain, Davina Rankin, ended up alone and lamenting “I get a lot of d*** pics but no one wants to date me.”

AMAZING NRL VICTORIES

“It was the most heroic thing I’ve seen in 20 years,” said Roosters medico Dr Ameer Ibrahim after Sydney’s 21-6 premiership defeat of Melbourne at ANZ Stadium.

Cooper Cronk played the grand final with an incredible 15cm break in his scapula — an injury consistent with a motorbike accident.

“He would have been in 11 out of 10 pain coming here to the game,” said Dr Ibrahim.

He was injected with the maximum dose of anaesthetic before the game and his jersey cut off and injected again at half time. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” said the medico afterwards. Neither had the fans.

And to prove that magic can happen on the football field — the blues won State of Origin for the first time in four years.

LIGHT RAIL CHAOS

Sydney is in the middle of its biggest ever spend on infrastructure — however for residents and business owners around the CBD light rail construction zones that means harrowing experiences so bad they are considering booking into psychiatric facilities.

The Telegraph revealed the $2.1 billion project is running so hopelessly late that in order to meet its original deadline the Spanish contractor would have had to lay track 10 times faster.

A Public Accountability Committee heard from former Book Kitchen owner Amelia Birch that 100 business owners had been told to go to Bali for the six months the construction would take.

“I think all of our jaws dropped at that point firstly due to the severe oversight of what a stupid comment like that means to a group of business owners,” she said.

The project has cost her marriage as her husband became depressed.

“It takes a toll not just financially, not just physically but emotionally … there’s no words,” she said.

“I’ve curled up in the foetal position many times … I wouldn’t wish this upon anybody because it’s demoralising.”

The Telegraph will continue to follow this debacle into 2019 … and beyond.

ROYAL VISIT

Republicans saw their dreams left in tatters by the arrival of a young couple from London in October.

Prince Harry and his new bride Meghan Markle arrived in Australia for a royal tour timed to coincide with the inspirational Invictus Games for wounded, injured or sick armed forces personnel.

Interest was intensified by the announcement that Meghan was pregnant. However it was their trip to drought-stricken Dubbo that won Australia over.

“I know that life has not been easy, you have just lived through two years of drought … it must be hard not to lose hope when you endure so many dry months end on end knowing that you are powerless to do anything about it,” he said, before referring to his own issues in the past.

“You must not silently suffer and, if I may speak personally, we are all in this together, because asking for help was some of the best decisions I ever made.”

KILLER PODCASTS

Subscribers have also loved a string of amazing podcasts including:

Voodoo Medics: Revealing for the first time life inside the world of the combat medics who serve alongside the SAS.

Eight Minutes: The six month investigation that uncovered new evidence in the 16-year-old cold case murder of David Breckenridge.

Gatecrash: The full story of 17-year-old Nathan Garriock who was killed at his best friend’s party in Camden.