Hit by a car covering Johnny Depp’s court case, it became emblematic of my time in the US

I had just returned home from covering another day of testimony in the bitter defamation trial between Hollywood stars Johnny Depp and Amber Heard when the car came barrelling towards me.

One minute, I was walking along a pedestrian crossing to grab a coffee at my local cafe. The next minute I was on the ground, shaking and in shock, having just been hit by a dark Honda CRV.

“Ya’ gotta call 911!” yelled a man who had witnessed the incident and taken down the registration number of the car before it sped off. “That was a hit-and-run! That just ain’t right!”

The collision, only a few months after I’d moved to Washington, was far from fatal, and more like the human equivalent of what Americans call a “love tap”: when a car knocks a bumper bar and the damage is minimal.

Fortunately, the Honda, which police would later inform me had been stolen, wasn’t moving fast enough to bowl me over completely, and somehow, amid the sound of screeching brakes, I had managed to swerve just in time, so the impact was confined mostly to my left hand and part of the left side of my body.

But in many ways, this incident was emblematic of the wild and unpredictable roller coaster ride I’ve experienced over the past three years as North American correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.

I had only been in this posting for a few weeks when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, not long after I had landed in Florida to attend a Conservative Political Action Conference with Republicans.

Since then, there have been escalating wars in Europe and the Middle East, two assassination attempts against Donald Trump, the successes and failures of Joe Biden and the spectacular but fleeting resurgence of Kamala Harris.

I’ve seen the devastation of hurricanes and wildfires, been at the forefront of the abortion debate and culture wars and covered more mass shootings and domestic terrorist attacks than I care to remember.

And for the past few years I’ve had a front-row seat to the biggest story in the world – and for many, the most frightening: the political comeback of a twice-impeached, four times-indicted, convicted criminal to the White House.

My first Trump encounter

My first encounter with Trump and his Make America Great Again movement came during his first term, when I was sent to the US on a brief secondment to help cover the 2020 presidential election.

At the time, America was the epicentre of the COVID pandemic, with 134,000 people already dead – almost a quarter of the worldwide death toll.

Protests had erupted across the country, sparked by the murder of black man George Floyd under the knee of a white police officer. And as the 2020 election race intensified, so too did the nation’s anxiety.

I landed in Washington for that assignment on July 4 – Independence Day – just as Trump was hosting a “Salute to America” at the White House. Army planes and Black Hawk helicopters put on a spectacular air show as a military band played to VIPs enjoying the festivities on the south lawn, even as the coronavirus raged.

Outside, while fireworks lit up the Washington Monument, a group of Trump supporters clashed with protesters from the Black Lives Matter movement, as scores of masked police officers tried to break up the violent altercation.

As a citizen, I felt like I’d landed in a dystopian tinderbox that was ready to explode. But as a journalist, there was nowhere else I wanted to be.

When I eventually returned to Washington as our correspondent in 2022, Biden had been in power for a year, and America felt like it had taken a Valium.

Things were so calm that an editor asked me before I left Melbourne how I felt going back to a country where Trump was no longer fuelling a 24/7 news cycle.

“He’ll be back,” I replied confidently.

What no one could predict was the scale of his resurgence, rooted in the resilience of surviving an attempted assassination, multiple indictments and relentless political attacks.

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In the final stretch of the campaign, as I crisscrossed the seven battleground states, Trump’s rallies were sometimes a third empty and he’d often look flat as he’d come on stage to the sounds of Lee Greenwood’s God Bless the USA, before reeling off his greatest hits: migrant crime, witch hunts, drill baby drill.

Harris, on the other hand, seemed to have momentum and her supporters genuinely believed that the “highest, hardest glass ceiling” in politics was finally going to break.

“Is America really ready for a woman president?” I would often ask.

“Absolutely – and it’s about time,” said Pennsylvania voter Eileen Fields, in a sentiment I’d hear over and over. Clearly it wasn’t.

The accent held me in good stead

Being a journalist on any given day is a privilege: a rare opportunity to give a voice to the voiceless, shine a light in dark places and hold the powerful to account. But living and working in a country as dynamic as the US during such a historic period has truly been the adventure of a lifetime.

In trying to make sense of the US in such a volatile time, my aim was to get out of deeply Democratic Washington as often as possible and speak to as many people as possible across the country about their lives.

I often joke that a positive attitude and an Australian accent go a long way in America, and I’ve always been grateful that so many people are willing to chat, no matter what their views are.

One particularly amusing experience took place in the small Midwest town of East Palestine, Ohio, a former factory hamlet where a train filled with toxic chemicals derailed in February 2023.

On the day that Trump was coming to town, I met a woman who tried to convince me that Joe Biden was at the centre of a Satan-worshipping left-wing cabal.

Partway through trying to convince her otherwise, this pleasant but ill-informed QAnon conspiracy theorist suddenly looked at me quizzically.

“Where is that accent from?” she asked.

“Australia,” I replied.

“Australia? That can’t be right?!” she said, seemingly shocked that someone of Asian appearance could sound so … white. “You don’t sound like you look!”

My DC mates would grimace when I’d tell them that story, profoundly embarrassed that a fellow American had said something they perceived to be quite racist.

For me, however, it was a fascinating insight into a country where ignorance, insularity and falsehoods fuelled in the dark corners of the internet can shape the way some people see the world.

But while it’s easy from the other side of the globe to typecast Trump voters as hillbillies, conspiracy theorists, or right-wing extremists, they are a much broader multiracial coalition.

They’re folks like Billy Hope, an intimidating-looking security officer with an AK-47 tattooed on his neck, who I met at a rally in the Bronx, and who turned out to be a kind, softly spoken father, fed up with cost of living pressures.

They’re also people like Arizona resident Jose Castro, a Latino who used to vote for Democrats but wholeheartedly embraced Trump last year, citing his anti-establishment rhetoric.

And they’re voters like Georgia school psychologist Lisa Wells, who voted for Trump to fix the economy and immigration, while her husband voted for Harris.

“I wish he would stop the name-calling,” she told me at a polling booth in suburban Atlanta, “but I had to look beyond that.”

Eating my way around America

My infatuation with the US began as a teenager in Dandenong, a working-class suburb in southwest Melbourne. Travel was a luxury my family couldn’t ever afford, and I distinctly remember looking at images of the US yearning to visit this big, diverse country.

While it might sound ridiculous, there are still days I’ll walk around the grounds of the White House or the Capitol building and pinch myself that a once-angsty kid from a broken home ended up in Washington.

America is a place where folks are encouraged to dream big, devoid of the “tall poppy syndrome” that sometimes afflicts Australia.

There’s also no shortage of stories to tell – and some of my most enjoyable ones have had nothing to do with politics.

A few years ago, while much of the world was still reeling from the COVID-19 pandemic, I wrote a story about New Jersey native Tom Turcich, who had spent seven years walking across the globe with his best mate Savannah, a rescue pup he’d picked up in Texas not long after setting off on his journey.

I later joined the pair on the final leg of their adventure, from Philadelphia to New Jersey – mostly to meet Savannah, the first dog to traverse the world.

I figured readers could do with a feel-good follow-up story about the pair’s homecoming, but truth be told, I was also months out of a devastating divorce and missing my own best mates – two cavoodles named Prince and George Michael – whom I reluctantly agreed to leave in Australia in the care of my ex-wife while I met the relentless demands as a foreign correspondent.

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I’ve also made it a mission to never leave a state I’ve been lucky enough to work in without sampling a dish that helps define it: the Philly cheesesteaks of Pennsylvania; the street tacos of El Paso, Texas; the creole and cajun seafood of New Orleans.

So I wrote a feature about my American food odyssey, inspired in part by the late Anthony Bourdain.

But America is also a country of frustrating contradictions, such as abortions being banned more willingly than assault weapons, which is something I will never understand.

I’ve covered mass shootings with painful regularity, but things got a little too close to home one Sunday night when gunshots rang out along the bustling U-street corridor, where I live.

I went downstairs to see sections of my usually safe street smeared with blood and cordoned off with police tape. Tragically, a 15-year-old boy was killed, and three other people were injured that night, including a police officer. The perpetrator was just a 15-year-old kid.

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The first mass shooting I covered for the paper was in May 2022, when a gunman inspired by New Zealand’s Christchurch massacre entered a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, with an AR-15 assault rifle and a sole purpose: to kill black people and livestream the attack on the internet.

Less than two weeks later an even deadlier shooting took place in Uvalde, Texas, in which another 18-year-old armed with an AR-15 rifle killed 19 students and two teachers.

The shocking attack was the worst in the state’s history, and yet, three days later, I found myself covering a National Rifle Association conference in which Trump once again vowed to protect the Second Amendment right to bear arms.

These are the kind of things that prompt friends to often ask me: are you sure you want to stay in this crazy country?

The answer, despite everything I’ve seen and experienced, is a resounding yes.

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I’ve had a wonderful career with our mastheads, particularly at The Age where I’ve spent years working alongside some of the most passionate and talented journalists in the country.

Indeed, some of my most cherished stories have emerged from our Melbourne newsroom: an investigation on the insidious world of gay conversion therapy in Australia (multiple states now have laws banning this practice); exposing the ongoing impact the nation’s biggest education rort (which led to a government apology and students being reimbursed); being at the forefront of social policy reform (LGBTQ rights, voluntary assisted dying; donor conception laws).

But somewhere along the way I fell in love with America, a place that gave me a renewed lease on life after it upended during Melbourne’s pandemic lockdown, and has taught me so much. As such, I’ve made the difficult choice to say goodbye to the loyal readers of the Herald and The Age – and to Australia, at least for now.

It’s hard to know what this emboldened Trump presidency will bring over the next four years. But I’m willing to take a chance and leap into the great unknown. What better place to do it than the Home of the Brave?

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