ON the road for Channel 10 in 2011, Hamish Macdonald emerged as one of the brightest stars on the news landscape: surviving a few war zones, the Japanese tsunami and the axing of the George Negus news experiment.
Returning home to front the network's nightly national news bulletin brings with it new challenges over summer.
What a big year in news (2011) ...
Probably the biggest I will ever experience. It's hard to imagine another year like it in terms of action. I lost count of the trips I did. I remember getting to early March and thinking, "Wow this has been such a ridiculous start to the year", and then I was sitting in the studio presenting one night and the Japan tsunami happened. I've done Egypt three times, Libya twice, Japan twice, Malaysia, London twice, Afghanistan, Tunisia, New Zealand, Israel and there are probably some that I'm forgetting.
Was there one particular story that stays with you?
Purely from a sense of being overwhelmed, Japan was incredibly confronting. We started up north near Sendei, then went to places like San Nami San Ricu - it was the town that was completely wiped out. It was so intense. It was a disaster that kept unfolding because of the nuclear situation as well as the human toll.
Did you feel the added pressure of that nuclear threat?
Not really, because you're too busy to think about it. You're not sitting there watching 24-hour news channels so you're not focused on it. People back here were more worried than we were. That's not to say it doesn't have an impact. As you can imagine, turning up to a town and finding no survivors affects you and I hope I never see anything like that again. We did have the opportunity to go back there a few months later and follow up with the people that we met the first time and that was pretty moving.
How do you de-stress from the confronting stuff you see on the road? I hear you don't mind an early-morning jog in the war zones of Afghanistan.
I've done less jogging than I would like. I always take my running gear but in places like Egypt and Libya it was impossible. It was so dangerous you couldn't contemplate it, but the physical outlet is important for me. The most recent trip I did to Afghanistan, the hotel where we stayed had invested in a treadmill, but I broke that on the second day. It seemed to overheat.
Given the intensity of this year, does it make the demise of the Negus program you were part of more difficult?
I don't think there was ever any question about the quality of what we were doing. I'm obviously pretty passionate about what I do but I feel it's the responsibility of people like me, journalists, to keep making news interesting for people to watch. The world is changing so much, particularly this year. There are major seismic shifts: America and China, east and west, democracy or autocracy, all of these things are in play at the moment.
What about your role for 2012 - more work on The Project, on the road, or at the newsdesk?
Good question; "I don't know" is the answer. I am pretty optimistic at the moment about where things are going, but there's nothing to say just yet. I can say I do like the people at Ten a lot and am keen to continue that relationship. I have a lot of enthusiasm for finding new ways of telling stories.
