The PR Blog

As told by Roderick (Whiskers) McNibble, Chief Correspondent, Fence Sitter & Marmalade Analyst

Before the soy candles were lit and the press gallery wept into their oat milk, before city think tanks declared tradition a hate crime and the Bureau of Meteorology rebranded clouds as “emotionally nuanced vapour clusters,” there was a rat.

Not just any rat. A visionary with a cravat and a cause.

This isn’t just a story about marmalade and mischief. It’s the origin tale of Ratty News... the only media outlet that broadcasts truth straight from the grain bins and cocky sheds of the forgotten bush. It began in dust and defiance, under a full moon and a sky full of broken promises, when one rat dared to stand up (on a paint tin) and say:

“Bugger it. Someone has to remember who we really are.”

It all began in the summer of the Big Plague.

Not the COVID one. No, this was far worse -  the Rat Plague of Western Queensland, when the ground moved and the grain bins screamed. The rogue rats were everywhere, ankle-deep and cheeky as ever, chewing wires, terrifying city journos, and doing the devil’s work in hay sheds from Charleville to Cunnamulla, from Winton to Windorah.

But not me. I had… vision. You see, I was a bushrat, not some sewer rat from the city. 

While my cousins chewed through combine harvesters, I was working on something grander: a typewriter made of scrap metal and wit, a broadcast tower hidden in a hollow log, and an orange biplane stolen (sorry, liberated) from an old crop duster named Paddy who mistook me for his dead mate come back as a reincarnated aviator from Belfast.

Ratty News was born that night under a full moon and a sky lit with election exhultation from America.

I remember it clearly. Trump was about to be inaugurated. CNN was weeping. The ABC was puzzled. The Guardian staff were lighting soy candles and reading Jung. But out here in the real Australia .... the bit with dirt, dust, and dignity .... we didn't cry. We poured another cup of billy tea, threw a barcy snag on the fire, and said, “Good on him.”

Ratty News didn’t start to change the world. It started because nobody was telling our story -   the story of the bushies, the battlers, the marmalade smugglers, and the silent blokes who get stuff done while the cities get stuck in their own navels. The cities had gone woke. But the rats? Oh, mate. This city rats went rogue. And I was not one of them. 

Meanwhile, I broadcast from cocky sheds, from under the veranda at Dusty Gulch, from water tanks and windmills and once ... memorably .... from the inside of a disgruntled kangaroo's pouch. I stood with the bushies and we bushies were everywhere. And unlike the media elite, we didn’t speak at the people. We spoke with them. Or at least over them, with a tinny in one paw and a sausage roll in the other.

Because that’s what Australians do.

We laugh. We push back. We take the mickey and then take the win. We don’t fold because a university mob says we’re outdated. We just shake the dust off our boots, salute the kookaburra, and say, “Bugger off, we’re not done yet.”

So if you ask me why Ratty News began, I’ll tell you this: It began because somebody had to remember who we are.... sneaky, scrappy, sunburnt and sovereign .... the last line of defence against the nonsense, the last bushrats standing for the real Australia.

Yes, we are rat cunning out in the bush. 

Now, any proper yarn about Ratty News has to include the day I met The Bloke from Dusty Gulch.

No one really knew his name. Some said it was Trevor, others claimed it was Johnno, and a few old-timers swore blind he was once a Navy diver who went bush after a run-in with a penguin trafficking ring off the coast of Tasmania. Whatever the case, we just called him Dusty...... Dusty McFookit. 

He lives just outside of Dusty Gulch, population 11 humans, 5 pubs, and a statue of a goanna named “Sir Itchy.” Dusty wasn’t famous for much, except for one thing: five massive, murderous, man-hating cats who ruled the yard like it was ancient Rome and they were Julius Fluffin' Caesar.

Word in the paddock was that they’d taken out two drones, an RSPCA van, and a Chilean film crew trying to make a documentary called Outback Mysteries and Dead Things.

I was flying solo in the orange biplane that day, scouting for a possible HQ location. Landed in the dry creek bed near Dusty’s place after a rogue emu tried to take me out over Bourke. I was low on marmalade and morale. The cats spotted me before I even touched down.

Five of them. One cream, one ginger, one white elderly matriarch and two with expressions that said “we’ve seen things.” They stalked towards me in formation. I knew death was coming, but I wasn’t ready to give up the dream.

So I did the only thing I could do.

I stood up tall (on an old tree stump), adjusted my cravat, and saluted.

I said, “Gentlecreatures. I come not to steal your kibble, but to offer an alliance. The cities have gone mad. The media is lost. The marmalade reserves are low. But out here, we can hold the line. You lot have claws. I’ve got a printing press made out of an old VCR. Let’s build something together.”

And just like that .... well, after a brief 14-minute scuffle and the loss of a tail tuft... Dusty stepped onto the porch with a battered akubra on his head and said:

“Fair dinkum. You’re the first rat those cats haven’t eaten. You must be alright.”

And that was it. Dusty shook my paw. The cats blinked their approval. We sealed a truce and right there, under the dust-choked sun and the war cries of corellas, the movement was born.

We called it the Regional Rodent Resistance.

Dusty pointed me in the direction of a shed we now call the hangar. He got me on side with the Resistance: the CWA of Dusty Gulch. 

What began as a one-rat operation became a furry uprising. News started flowing from sheep yards, mailbox tops, and water tanks. Cats joined the cause. So did disgruntled chooks, cockatoos with a grudge, and one very old echidna who typed opinion pieces with his nose. And we wiped out the rogue rats who had sought to destroy the bush. 

And Dusty? He became our spiritual advisor. Said little, smoked a pipe, ( filled with ivermection ) and once stopped a hostile wombat coup by simply staring at it.

We were patriots, truth-tellers, and bard-bellied broadcasters of the bush.

And from Dusty Gulch to the front bars of Broken Hill, from cattle country to coast, the sneaky, stubborn spirit of the real Australia stirred.

So next time you hear the static of a signal coming from a hollow log, or see a biplane buzzing low over the mulga with a banner that reads “Still Not Sorry”, spare a thought for the real Australia... the one that still brews billy tea, still builds with baling twine, and still has a laugh when things go sideways.

Because we’re still here. Still sneaky. Still sovereign. Still stirring the pot.

We’re the rats they couldn’t tame. The cats who joined the cause. The chooks with grudges and the goannas with honour.

And as long as there’s one old echidna typing truth with his nose, Ratty News will never fold.