Vikki Campion was young journalist on the rise, former boss recalls

IT was soon clear the cheeky, confident cadet reporter from rural Queensland was going to make an impression, a former boss says.

Vikki Campion prepares for a Tiger Moth flight in her early career as a journalist.

WE have to go back more than three decades, to the Atherton Tablelands in Far North Queensland to understand what made Vikki Campion.

The young woman who now finds herself at the centre of an Australian political scandal grew up among the potato fields and green grass of one of Australia’s most beautiful landscapes.

She was always a tomboy, destined to lead her siblings into mischief. When I met Vikki, in 2006 when I was deputy editor of the Townsville Bulletin, it was immediately clear this cheeky, confident young cadet reporter was going to make an impression.

A former deputy editor says Vikki Campion has the stamina, intelligence and heart to be a good mother.

She radiated energy and the sheer inquisitiveness of a born reporter that took her all the way to London as News Corp’s Young Journalist of the Year just 18 months later.

She got ahead through hard work, long hours and good old-fashioned nous.

Nothing was too hard and nobody was spared her enthusiastic pursuit of a good story. Underneath all the bravado, though, was a kind-hearted, sensitive person.

It’s that person I worry about now.

Vikki Campion reports on speed dating in 2005.

Former editor Ann Roebuck.

No one suggests this scandal is easy for any member of the Joyce family. It must be sheer hell, and Natalie Joyce and her four daughters have every right to be angry.

But what of the 33-year-old woman, pregnant with her first child, who finds herself and her unborn baby the butt of jokes, the subject of national innuendo, and victim of some of the nastiest commentary since Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s private life was so viciously dissected?

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Vikki’s is a lonely place to be. At a time when other young mothers are filled with wonderful anticipation, she is hiding out from friends, family, everyone, wondering what fresh opprobrium tomorrow brings.

If the recent same-sex marriage postal survey taught us anything, it’s that you can’t help who you fall in love with, and that Australians back the right of people to make their own decisions, no matter how hard they may be.

I hope, for Vikki’s sake, that she has every opportunity to savour the joy and close bonds of friends and family that the birth of a new baby brings.

That she’s done things differently from others’ expectations is not a surprise in the end but I’ve no doubt she will be a good mother.

She has the stamina, the intelligence and the heart for it.

Ann Roebuck is a former editor who worked with Vikki Campion at the Townsville Bulletin.