![\"Future\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nofibs.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/Future.jpg?resize=950%2C534\")
<\/p>\n1 December 2013<\/p>\n
I take the Gold Coast train to Brisbane airport, the plane to Melbourne, the sky bus to Southern Cross Station, the train to Seymour, and the bus to Wangaratta train station. Wayne Jansson leads me to his battered old car and drives me to the hamlet of St James.<\/p>\n
A late frost has killed the canola oil crop, and the farmers who couldn\u2019t afford to let the crop rot as fertilizer for next year have rolled it up into hay. The cherry trees look good.<\/p>\n
Wayne says his Mum Glenys and step father Mark will host my stay because he lives in a ramshackle rental a few miles past St James. They moved from Goulburn twelve years ago after buying the Post Office. Wayne was a Sydney photographer and one of the stage crew at the Sydney Opera house before moving to Indi 10 years ago after a work injury.<\/p>\n
He says he knew early on in the digital revolution that it would shape the future so he taught himself how to build, maintain and administer websites. He has enough clients to get by, just, supplemented with some professional photography, but he\u2019s shy and doesn\u2019t like selling himself. Like me. And he\u2019s reclusive. Like me.<\/p>\n
![\"Intrepid](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nofibs.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/BTiZ1pgCIAAy2Fg.jpg?resize=599%2C531\")
Intrepid @NoFibs citizen journo for #IndivotesWayne and Margo<\/p><\/div>\n
Wayne joined Twitter early and became a Twitter warrior, a left wing political junkie regular on its hard-core #auspol hashtag. But face to face he\u2019s an observer. He doesn\u2019t impose himself and he takes his time. He\u2019d reported full time in the end, after thinking he\u2019d just dip his toe in to see what happened.<\/p>\n
And he\u2019s found it hard to get back to work since the intensity of covering the Indi campaign for No Fibs<\/i> ended two months ago. Me too. Journalism as mask, gives you confidence.<\/p>\n
I\u2019d tweeted several times with increasing desperation for a citizen journalist to report Indi for No Fibs. <\/i>I\u2019d spoken to Wayne with a sinking feeling when he said in his laid back drawl that \u2018I sort of might give it a go but I\u2019m hopeless with words – I\u2019m only good with 140 characters. I\u2019m a photographer.\u2019<\/p>\n
Oh well, I\u2019d replied, that\u2019ll be different, a photo-journalism seat report.<\/p>\n
So why did he volunteer? \u201cI was silly enough to let a bunch of people on Twitter know that I lived near Wangaratta and they all hassled me. Do it, do it. Eventually I succumbed to the pressure.\u201d<\/p>\n
***<\/p>\n
We sit in the kitchen of an old wooden home Glenys and Mark renovated from the stumps up and extended with the help of a Croatian builder who never stops drinking and never gets drunk. I tell them Wayne was one of my star citizen journalist reporters during the election – curious, skeptical, persistent and committed. Glenys shows me her local paper The Moira Independent<\/i>, a monthly 14 page newsletter she\u2019s edited and published for many years. It runs in the family.<\/p>\n
Had they read his work?<\/p>\n
No, we didn\u2019t need to. We heard it all as it happened around this table.<\/p>\n
I pull up one of Wayne\u2019s pieces on my computer and we get talking about his campaign.<\/p>\n
![\"CJ-Indi\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nofibs.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/CJ-Indi.jpg?resize=600%2C300\")
<\/p>\n
Wayne\u2019s answer to writing nerves was to take a portrait of each candidate and ask them the same questions for publication as a Q and A. He wanted to do them all before publication so no-one had an advantage, but he had a Sophie problem. Her office would not say yes or no, and when he\u2019d asked her in person at a candidates forum she\u2019d said no, loudly, in Cathy McGowan\u2019s hearing, because SHE only had time for her constituents. So we published interviews with Independent Jennifer Podesta<\/a>, Green Jenny O\u2019Connor<\/a>, Labor\u2019s Robyn Walsh<\/a> and McGowan<\/a>, and a report on Sophie\u2019s boycott, But Sophie, @jansant IS a constituent and others are reading his posts<\/a>.<\/p>\n Wayne became immersed, and his writing confidence grew as he \u201cstopped thinking how to write and started thinking what to write\u201d. He engaged with candidates and local journos on Twitter and filed regular comprehensive updates with links, key tweets by locals and national tweeps, photos of campaign material and his assessments on the state of play, all of which proved astute (Mirabella under siege in Indi<\/a>, Coalition big guns and generic letters leave locals cold in Mirabella\u2019s Indi<\/a>, Mirabella in front, but McGowan claims support from all camps: @jansant #Indivotes update<\/a>, Indi locals protest Mirabella\u2019s claims on health centres – and her preferences stir bad bushfire memories<\/a>, Tactics get tough as McGowan\u2019s orange horde surprises Mirabella in Indi<\/a>.) He drove hundreds of miles to file blow-by-blow accounts with photos and live-tweets of ever more well attended and passionate candidates forums (Indi\u2019s grassroots QandA, with hashtag<\/a> and Wangaratta goes wild for democracy: @jansant reports hot #Indivotes forum<\/a>).<\/p>\n Wayne critiqued McGowan on her lack of policy detail and picked up early that she had significant National Party support. He pressed her hard in an interview on speculation that former National party leader Tim Fischer was advising her (McGowan a close friend of Tim Fischer, but denies she\u2019s a National Party front<\/a>).<\/p>\n Wangaratta volunteer meeting kicking off now! 35 brilliant locals raring to go. Energy here is really fantastic. pic.twitter.com\/TTG52JMhnD<\/a><\/p>\n — Cathy McGowan (@Indigocathy) June 29, 2013<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n