Andrew Thomas

Andrew Thomas's picture
Andrew Thomas
Sydney Correspondent | Australia
Biography
After 11 years based in his native London, Andrew moved to Sydney with his Australian wife tasked with bringing all things Antipodean to Al Jazeera English. Since he started in December 2010, Andrew has covered a long line of natural disasters and the very human responses to each: the Christmas Island asylum boat sinking, the floods in Queensland and Victoria, the earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand and the triple-whammy of the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis in Japan. In London, Andrew worked for Channel 4 News and at the BBC's Newsnight.

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By Andrew Thomas in Asia on May 22nd, 2012

Just occasionally when covering a science story you get the feeling you are showing something that seems incredible right now, but will seem quite routine in just a few years.

The development of “Bionic vision”, being developed by scientists at Monash University just outside Melbourne in Australia, is one such story.

At the moment their technology - artificially stimulating neurons in the brain of a blind person to create computer-generated "images" of what a camera is seeing - is in its earliest stages. They haven’t yet implanted their chip into anyone’s brain: no blind person has yet "seen" their images.

That makes it a hard story to show on TV - and explains why I made myself the guinea pig.

By Andrew Thomas in Asia on May 10th, 2012

Stereotypes. Do you deliberately illustrate them, deliberately debunk them, or ignore them altogether?

It’s a tricky one. 

On TV, you have two minutes to tell often complicated stories. Sometimes pumping up a stereotype, if only to then beat it back down, is the most straightforward way to structure a story.

I was doing a piece about a new scheme to temporarily house refugees in Australians’ spare rooms.

The stereotype is that red-neck Australians are furious about a wave of grubby asylum seekers, ‘invading’ their shores.

The scheme is partly about debunking that myth to show there are Australians who care. But it’s also about changing attitudes in order to address what truth there is in the stereotype. 

Tags: Australia
By Andrew Thomas in Asia on April 12th, 2012
Photo: AFP

The ingredients were for a disaster that would be unimaginable, were it not also a potential re-run.

A massive earthquake, just offshore from Indonesia's Aceh province; a tsunami warning active.

Just over six years ago, the result was an actual tsunami so devastating that 170,000 died in that one province alone.

At Sydney airport, "Tsunami - The Return" was what I thought I was heading to cover.

It didn't turn out that way. At a 4am stopover in Kuala Lumpur, the smartphones of all the journalists abroad started to buzz with better news. No tsunami had materialised. Damage was light. For some, that was the end of the trip.

Journalists told by their newsdesks to turn around and head home. Few deaths; no story.

I carried on. How people dodged the bullet can be as interesting as any disaster. I took my connecting flights.  

Banda Aceh's people know they were lucky. In 2004, so many died because so few expected what came.

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By Andrew Thomas in Asia on March 6th, 2012

His tone was plaintive.

“We’re poisoning that harbour.  All the crap we’re stirring up; all the rubbish being spewed out. It’s just too much.”

Ordinarily, when someone uses "we" in that context, they only include themselves as passive (usually resistant) individuals, reluctantly part of a national "we" – against both their better judgement and will.

The man describing to me how Gladstone Harbour was being "destroyed", however, counted himself as an active part of that "we": a hands-on, knowing participant in the harbour’s destruction. 

It’d be instant dismissal if anyone heard him tell me these things, he said, so he wouldn’t speak on camera.  But as a bulldozer driver, helping to clear land for a Liquefied Natural Gas plant on adjacent Curtis Island, he realised he was contributing to what he saw as an environmental catastrophe. 

So why was he doing it? 

He spelt it out, literally: "M-o-n-e-y."

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By Andrew Thomas in Asia on December 18th, 2011
Protesters have gathered to vent their frustrations over the mounting political crisis Photo: AFP

Lifts are the worst.  The confined space means the smell can be intolerable: the body odour reeks.  A hot, humid climate is the chief culprit – but now Papua New Guineans have another reason to sweat. 

A country with a history of violence, crime and corruption is effectively leaderless: when two men claim the country’s top job, it means no one is really doing it. 

Their style is very different. Peter O’Neill is the more professional. His handshake is firmer; his suit sharper; his message more carefully honed.  Michael Somare would call all that gloss. He may be frailer, and somewhat more dishevelled – but right, he says, is on his side.

By Andrew Thomas in Asia on October 28th, 2011
Photo by AFP

Of all the signs, my favourite called for 'Land Rights for Gay Whales'. But there were also people 'So Mad That I Made This Sign' and people against 'Science Corrupted by Money'.

Then the more expected causes: in favour of renewable energy, against excessive mining, disgusted that 'war criminal' President Rajapaksa of Sri Lanka had been invited to Perth.

The 'Protest CHOGM' rally - held to coincide with the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Perth - Australia, saw an eclectic mix of groups.

And that says a lot about the Commonwealth meeting itself.

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By Andrew Thomas in Asia on October 23rd, 2011

File 50951

Forty-seven matches down. As I write, just one left to go. The Final: New Zealand – the home side, and the hottest of favourites – against France.

It's not just the players who will feel the finish line for this World Cup is now tantalisingly within sight.

A tournament of this size – nearly 1.5 million tickets have been sold in all, and the matches are broadcast live to hundreds of millions around the world – takes months and months of planning.

The office that Al Jazeera is based in Sydney, shares space with a company that is providing the satellite trucks to broadcast the games.

Those working on the plans for those trucks were pouring over their maps, spreadsheets and ferry timetables for two years.  

By Andrew Thomas in Asia on August 24th, 2011

 

By Andrew Thomas in Asia on August 2nd, 2011

Not many shop owners grin, on camera, when they tell you how expensive their goods are.  But Moery Najib, who owns Emiles Fruit and Veg in the Balmain district of Sydney, knows that his prices aren’t exceptional.

By Andrew Thomas in Asia on July 27th, 2011
Photo by Andrew Thomas

I never thought I would stand in a battery-chicken farm and think, what impressive progress!.

But however unpleasant for the birds - cooped up, two to a shoe-box sized wire cage - its owners show off the Railaco farm with pride.

Its eggs are replacing ones that would otherwise have been brought in from abroad; it employs people and operates for profit. It is an East Timorese business success story.

They are becoming more common. Tony Jape - East Timorese but of Chinese descent and fresh from a fortune made as an émigré in Australia - is building the country’s first ever shopping centre.

Though still not quite finished, it is, he says, already 60 per cent let. And Timor Corp - one of the country’s two big coffee producers - is proud it exports beans right around the world.

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Andrew Thomas
Sydney Correspondent
Roving correspondent based in Sydney, Australia

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