From time to time I'll look back through the personal journals I've scribbled in throughout my life the keepers of my raw thoughts and emotions. The words poured forth after my dad died when I went through a divorce and after I was diagnosed with breast cancer. There are so many what-ifs scribbled on those pages.

In the 'Garnethill' trilogy people always forget that Maureen O'Donnell's dad was a journalist and she did art history at uni and her brother did law but no-one ever thinks they're middle-class - they're just working class because they speak with accents.

I knew I was going to be a journalist when I was eight years old and I saw the printing presses rolling at the Sydney newspaper where my dad worked as a proofreader.

I have to remind my dad 'Journalists - no matter how many cigars they smoke with you - are not your friends so don't talk to them.'

I have four shelves covered with journals that I've written. Dad and I are writing songs together. I've probably written 100 songs.

The courage in journalism is sticking up for the unpopular not the popular.

I started to send my work to journals when I was 26 which was just a question of when I got the courage up. They were mostly journals I had been reading for the previous six or seven years.

A lot of journalists like to suck up to celebrities and then as soon as they're a safe distance away at their computers they take shots. But that's the way society has become especially in pop culture.

Musicians and journalists are the canaries in the coalmine but eventually as computers get more and more powerful it will kill off all middle-class professions.

To conclude: good journalism is one of the models of good conversation and communication in the wider social context.