Less than ten days ago I was standing at the doors on the west side of the US Capitol building as Trump supporters smashed their way into the hallways of power.
I watched people dressed in strange costumes charge up the stairs, clamber over walls and up scaffolding at the West Front, where Joe Biden will be inaugurated as president next week.
They were chanting "stop the steal", "our house" and "fake news", some were threatening to kill the Vice President, lawmakers and the media. It was shocking, at times terrifying, and completely surreal from start to finish.
From Brexit chaos to coronavirus
It is almost exactly one year since I touched down in Los Angeles to begin a posting in Nine's US bureau, and a new adventure for my family.
Flying across the Atlantic from London after a busy stint in our Europe bureau, I felt certain life in America would be calmer. The weather would be nicer, the time zone more manageable, and I was leaving the endless chaos and upheaval of Brexit behind me.
We had a two-month honeymoon period reintroducing our children – then aged three and five – to sunshine and settling them into school and preschool, as I started an exciting new job.
In early March coronavirus hit hard, and California enacted some of the strictest lockdown measures in the country.
Our son had just started at a fantastic elementary school and made some new buddies when school campuses closed "temporarily".
More than ten months on, they're still closed and we have no indication of when in person learning will resume.
Somehow, he has learned to read and write via Zoom classroom and his father's diligent supervision and efforts.
If you think work Zoom meetings are a slog, imagine 25 six-year-olds on the same screen yelling at each other, the teacher, and their supervising parent.
Here's an example: "MOM I can't find the right maths book!" yells Lyle, while another kid still in his PJs helps himself to a sandwich, and another wanders offscreen yelling "I'm going to the bathroom!" Lyle's mum runs through the background half-dressed waving the maths book.
It's mayhem, but everyone is doing their best. There are technical meltdowns, and of course a complete lack of real social interaction, not to mention sport or physical education.
I see my friends' Facebook posts from Australia about their children's kindergarten graduation, soccer matches and sleepovers and am filled with guilt about what our boy is missing.
Our three-year old daughter was begrudgingly attending preschool a couple of days a week when COVID-19 hit, and lockdown suited her perfectly.
We set up a tent in the living room. We ordered board games online, drew pictures for the grandparents back home, baked cookies and watched every Home Alone movie on repeat.
Even in a global pandemic, Home Alone 4 was a low point.
Preschool has closed several times since for COVID outbreaks (they only close the classroom with a positive case, the rest of the school remains open).
Our daughter wears a tiny unicorn face mask, but it's not an age group renowned for hygiene or social distancing.
It baffles me that preschools remain open – to be clear we support this, it has been our saving grace through ten months of homeschooling – while our son has to sit at home in front of a screen.
'I had to keep reminding myself I was not on a film set'
The inconsistencies in the coronavirus response on a national and state level have been confusing and at times infuriating.
While shooting in Kansas, locals and business owners constantly asked me and my crew to remove our face masks.
In Florida while waiting for a scrubbed NASA rocket launch, I visited a nail salon for the first time all year, baffled, but delighted, how it was deemed safe to get a pedicure on one side of the country but not the other.
Days later I found myself in the middle of thousands of BLM protesters opposite the White House, as they demanded government action and commitment to end years of systemic racism across America, and answers for the deaths of Black people at the hands of White law enforcement.
Standing in front of a giant bonfire on the street while rioters burned American flags and attempted unsuccessfully to breach the heavy police line holding them back from Donald Trump's doorstep, I was certain I would never see a scene like it again in US history. Last week I was proved wrong.
As we stood in a huge crowd at the Washington Monument, my cameraman and I listened to Donald Trump urging his supporters to "walk down to the Capitol","show strength" and "stop the steal".
We quickly got moving. Walking up the National Mall, Trump supporters harassed us, at times trying to smash the camera, or trip us, generally intimidating and threatening us.
Face masks were few and far between, and as the violence escalated, the threat of COVID was the last thing on our minds.
It was my impression that the majority of supporters who stormed the Capitol that day were surprised by how far they made it, and how much damage they did.
With my cameraman and security guard, I stood at a doorway while protesters smashed their way in with crowbars, metal poles, and their bare hands.
On the other side, armed guards tried to hold them off but eventually relented as the crush and power of the crowd overwhelmed them.
We didn't cross the threshold, as by then we knew one Trump supporter had been shot dead, and with intermittent phone signal, it was impossible to gauge how dangerous the situation was inside.
Some people came out declaring victory; bloodied, shirtless, red-eyed from tear gas, clutching documents and souvenirs from the Senate and House chambers.
Among them were conspiracy theorists and civil war enthusiasts.
Others were average Americans who emerged from Congress chanting, singing, even laughing; mum and dad Republican voters with a tale to tell the grandkids: "The day we stormed the Capitol and showed that Mike Pence who this country belongs to."
I suspect most of the latter group had no idea that a Capitol police officer had been bashed to death and Senators were cowered under chairs texting their families to say goodbye.
I had to keep reminding myself I was not on a film set.
The words that have stuck with me
In the days leading up to our move to America I was in Iraq, covering the fall out from Donald Trump's decision to have Iranian general Qasem Soleimani assassinated.
Four months before that I was up on the Iraqi-Syrian border covering the Turkish offensive into north-eastern Syria, sparked by the Trump Administration ordering US troops to withdraw from the region.
I'd seen first-hand the consequences of some of President Trump's "America First" policy decisions.
I also covered several global summits and state visits during which the US president regularly put world leaders offside, broke Royal protocol, and dropped loaded tweets from Air Force One which always left a diplomatic firestorm in his wake.
I expected the 2020 US Election campaign to be exciting, unpredictable, perhaps even brutal.
I did not expect it to culminate in thousands of Trump supporters turning on law enforcement and mounting a deadly insurrection.
Four years ago this week Donald Trump stood on a stage where his followers would stage their attempt to subvert democracy.
He spoke of the "orderly and peaceful transfer of power," thanking the Obamas for their "gracious aid" throughout the transition.
And he acknowledged the tens of millions who voted for him "to become part of a historic movement the likes of which the world has never seen before".
He sure was right about that.
Of all the Trump supporters I met and interviewed at the Capitol that day, the words of one man in particular have stuck with me.
He insisted that the so-called "revolution" was no longer about Donald Trump.
"This is for my teenage daughters, so that they can speak freely and think freely," he told me.
"We would rather die free than live under tyranny."
Millions of Americans agree with him.
I wonder how those convictions will manifest in the weeks and months ahead, as the phenomenal movement that is Trumpism enters the post-Trump era.
