As we bid farewell to the year, we have asked some people in our community to take a look back on the past 12 months.

We started publishing these insights last week, with the first one by real estate agent Frank Spilsbury looking at how that industry has been affected by low interest rates, COVID-19 restrictions, the popularity of working from home and restrictions on overseas travel.

Armidale's newly-elected deputy mayor Debra O'Brien was next and she starts with a good point: "The thing about 2020 is that it's hard to complain when everyone in the world had it bad."

But Cr O'Brien adds that it is through the bad times that we learn a lot about our communities, our country and ourselves.

This morning we published a piece by Cr Dorothy Robinson where she reflects on some of the battles inside Armidale Regional Council this year. I've lost count of the number of weekly newsletters like this one where we had to examine that topic!

We also had an idea that we should look through the 2020 archives of what we published and relive some of the events where people gathered. We could give those photos galleries another run, we thought. But then there was doubt.

With so many events cancelled and restrictions imposed this year, we covered far fewer events than we normally would in a year.

But once we looked back at our photo galleries we found there enough events to look back on, despite the coronavirus.

We published the first one on Boxing Day, taking a look back at the Armidale Cup and the racegoers at the beginning of March.

Last night we dug out the photos from the opening of the Curtis Park playground where lots of kids were enjoying the new equipment.

Over the next week we will continue to publish these snapshots of the good things that happened in 2020 each evening.

Thanks for reading and I hope you have a great new year. Here's to 2021!