I’m writing something at the moment that caused me to reflect on the highlights of my career in journalism. I was thinking back about what was the biggest story of that career.

Maybe I peaked too early because it was in my second year in the business that I had a ripper of a front-page story for The Morning Bulletin in Rockhampton.

I happened to be on the afternoon shift when, during my rounds, I came across breaking news of a mass food poisoning at a seniors lunch. Around 100 people were affected and I was dispatched to the Rockhampton Base Hospital to interview them as they were carried in on stretchers. Nobody died, thank God.

It was a big story for Rocky and I won the only award I have ever won in journalism for it, The Morning Bulletin’s story of the year.

But was that my biggest splash? I thought so until I remembered one that I have generally tried to forget. It was also a front-page story in the short-lived Sunday Bulletin on the Gold Coast.

It was a story about the possibility of a tidal wave wiping out the Gold Coast which sounds like the basis of a pretty good disaster movie.

This was, I think, in 1982 although I can’t confirm the date. I have searched my scrapbooks for the story but it is not in them which suggests I may have tried to erase it from memory.

It started quite innocently. I had an eye for unusual fare and I had met a bloke who lived on Mount Tamborine who was writing a novel about the Goldie being wiped out by a tidal wave. I thought this was interesting so I went up and met him and his wife who were quite safe up on the mountain.

I wrote a story about this as a bit of fun somewhere deep in the paper. Having filed it I didn’t think of it again until a few days later when the news editor asked me to beef it up a bit. Make it more of a news story.

I protested that it was not a news story but it was a slow week and the editor, a well-known Gold Coast journalist named Roy Chapman, must have been desperate. So, I beefed it up a bit but not as much as they wanted. I think they maye have tweaked it a bit more after I left the office.

Anyway, the next morning my mum woke me up with a copy of the newspaper in her hand. “You better have a look at this,” she said.

And there on the front page was the headline “Tidal Wave!” with my byline beneath it.

That was a bit embarrassing. I was actually meeting some colleagues for a drink that afternoon and when I got to the pub where we were gathering one of them had an umbrella open at the bar. “I’m just getting ready for the tidal wave,” he said.

I was mortified but these are the things that happen in the world of tabloid newspapers.

There was quite a bit of fallout and I was denounced by local tourism and real estate spokesmen and was a laughing stock for a week or two. That paper folded not that long after my story. Funny that.