Home Sweet Home: Journalist Heather Ewart on what keeps her busy

Heather Ewart, journalist and television presenter

What I'm watching: Operation Buffalo on the ABC. It's about life at Maralinga when there was nuclear testing in the 1950s. Robert Menzies allowed the British to try nuclear testing after the Second World War. And the after-effects, particularly for the Indigenous community, carry on to this day. I'm also finding it interesting because I've actually been there. Back Roads did our very first episode on Ceduna in South Australia in 2015, so about three hours drive from Ceduna is Maralinga. We had a look at the old airport and ate in the mess halls and we actually stayed in one of the old houses. It was just before the government was allowing the place to be opened up for campers - it had to be many years before the government was satisfied that there was no danger of exposure to the nuclear fallout. And for many years the locals would tell you that birds wouldn't even go near the place. It's quite eerie.

In our house, because my husband is Barrie Cassidy and we've both specialised in political reporting over many years, we are news and current affairs junkies. The ABC News channel has been on a lot. And we never, ever miss a Monday night on the ABC because it's jam-packed information and news, you've got Four Corners, Q+A, 7.30, the news. That was a pretty important diet in our house, certainly in the first part of the lockdown.

What I'm listening to: We have a beach house on the NSW South Coast, so we have spent most of the lockdown there. I've been listening a lot to the local ABC radio there, ABC Illawarra, just because it's a nice change to hear all of the local news. Post the bushfires, we were there during that period when bushfires were spreading through the South Coast, it's still a very live issue. People are really struggling to get their houses rebuilt and get their communities back.

What I'm reading: A book recommended by my daughter who actually works in a bookshop as her student job. It's called The Eighth Life by Nino Haratischvili. It's almost a thousand pages long, so it's a big, thick book and I wouldn't have bought that if I'd seen it in a bookshop. I'd think, "Oh my god, that looks so overwhelming." But once you start it, you can't put it down. It's a story over many generations based in Georgia but it begins with pre-Soviet Union days and goes through the Soviet period and the collapse. It takes you on this journey through history through the eyes of one family.

What made me laugh recently: The Trump rally [last month in Tulsa]. He was claiming that a million people had registered wanting to go, when in fact it was the TikTok teens who had tricked him and his organisers into thinking that there were a million people who wanted to go. Just the very fact that only 6200 people turned up at a venue that could take close to 20,000, it made him look so ridiculous and it was very laughable, I felt.

Trump has hardly excelled himself during this whole shocking period. I was a foreign correspondent for the ABC in America in the '90s and have very fond memories of the place but there's no way in the world I'd want to be living there now. It's just appalling the way the crisis has been handled over there. We still have a lot of friends living there who are tearing their hair out.

I'm most looking forward to: Just being able to have a beer in a pub with your mates or girlfriends. But I think all of that's a long way off, isn't it? With the distancing, pubs aren't going to be the same as they were for quite a long time. But that's what I'm looking forward to, Friday night rounding up your mates and meeting for a drink.

Heather Ewart hosts Back Roads on ABC and iview.