Conversations

Gardening Australia's Hannah Moloney on the heartwarming and heartbreaking reasons humans continue to lovingly tend to their gardens — for healing, beauty and joy.

For thousands of years, tending to a garden or a small farm meant human survival. 

But now, with massive commercial farms, genetically modified crops, refrigerated freight and modern irrigation, we don't need to tend to our own gardens to survive.

So why, then, d...

Zenith Virago was a married mother of two, when she left her family to begin again as a lesbian.  Then she found a new path as a death walker, helping people navigate their life's end. 

Zenith grew up in England, and she was still at school when she fell in love with another student. 

At seventeen, she married Richard, Head Boy of the local Comprehensive school. 

They had two children, Jodie and Todd.

Then at 24, Ze...

Conductor Alexander Briger has led orchestras all over the world. But his niche occupation is not the only fascinating thing about him. Alex's family history is wild.

Alexander Briger has stood in front of musicians all over the world, summoning a gigantic, beautiful noise from them.

Classical music was a huge part of Alex’s story growing up.

He is the nephew of the famous conductor, the late Sir Charles Mackerras; and descended...

Adele Dumont was a teenager when she first started pulling out her hair, an urge that became so uncontrollable she was left with a bald spot.

She would sometimes enter a trancelike state, covertly sitting on her bathroom floor, picking at her scalp for hours on end.

The urge to pull at her hair was uncontrollable, and secret.

When Adele finally put a name to her behaviour, she learnt that trichotillomania has a complex history and psy...

Ralph Jackman was a sports journalist who retrained as a teacher in midlife, and got his first job at Melbourne’s Parkville Youth Detention Centre, where he was tested by the troubled and bright, charismatic young men.

At the centre he found students who struggled with basic literacy, and he also met boys who were yearning for more than juvenile justice could provide.

Ralph created bonds with some of the boys that proved his te...

After a near-death experience, Kate Clinch became drawn into the astonishing, Gothic story of a young Australian woman named Eileen O'Connor, who is buried under the floorboards of a home in Coogee.

Kate was working as a GP in country South Australia when an ectopic pregnancy nearly killed her.

She had a vivid near death experience, which prompted her to start interrogating inexplicable and miraculous events.

Kate hadn't grown up Cath...

Costume designer Tim Chappel on the chance discovery at a train station that led him into a life of designing for films and the stage.

Tim can’t remember all the places he lived, growing up on Army bases around the country, and overseas. 

His one constant as a kid was nature. 

He’d look for stick insects to pin into his collection and draw endless terrestrial orchids. 

Tim was ready to focus his life on botan...

Growing up, para powerlifter, Hani Watson’s passion for lifting had been ignited by her dad and the pack of Arnold Schwarzenegger-types in their string singlets who would accompany him to lift weights. The gym has seen Hani through agonising moments in life, and all the way to the Paralympic Games. Warning: discussion of sexual assault.

Throughout her childhood she was having operation after painful operation, to try to straig...

At just 15 years old, Jarvis Cocker wrote a manifesto that laid out his vision for a band he hoped would take over the music industry.

Jarvis discovered the document while sorting through the boxes of stuff from his early life that he’d stashed away in his attic.

It was in an an old school exercise book from when he was a fifteen-year-old schoolboy in Sheffield.

He'd filled it with detailed plans to form a band called Pulp that ...

Hannah had a beautiful love story with her husband Matt. After he died in a surfing accident, grief broke her open and changed her life in unexpected ways 

As a young couple, writer Hannah Richell and her husband Matt left London for a new life in Australia. 

They loved the ocean, the sun, and the people.

Then one morning before work, Matt went for a surf at Bronte Beach, and, in a tragic accident, drowned.

Hannah was lost to...

During her two terms as PM, Jacinda gained global attention for her response to the terror attack in Christchurch and for giving birth at the same time as running the country.

Jacinda grew up as a good Mormon girl who planned on making a difference behind the scenes.

But when she unexpectedly became head of the Labor Party, only weeks away from a federal election, Jacinda discovered she had a talent for leadership.

Jacinda's memoir ab...

The much-loved actor Sam Neill had an unusual path into acting. Raised in New Zealand as a shy boy with a stutter named Nigel, he was 30 when he got his big break (R) Sam, who has died at the age of 78, was an acclaimed actor, a winemaker, an author, a cancer survivor and a Dad to four children. 

In recent years he had cared for cows, pigs, ducks and horses on his farm in New Zealand while making Pinot Noir.

In his remarkab...

Fairytale expert, Kate Forsyth travels back in time to the stories of her youth, to a dark, fantastical and eerie world where cruelty and mischief abound.

As a young girl, Kate was sent to stay with her great aunts in Newcastle and there was introduced to the darkness, magic and mystery of Scottish folklore.

These stories lit Kate’s imagination on fire, and let to a lifetime of study into these powerful stories and the messages...

Travel writer Pico Iyer was at the peak of his career when an accidental layover at Narita airport saw him begin to question everything.

Pico began flying around the world solo at the age of nine.

His parents lived in America and he had become a boarder at the Dragon School in Oxford.

To get to school and from school he took several flights each year alone.

The formative experience of travel stayed with him, and he grew up to become a ...

Paul Kelly, Editor-at-Large of The Australian, investigates how the country went from the great reform age under Hawke, Keating and Howard, into the tumultuous Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison era of prime ministers, and arrived at the current existential crisis facing the Liberal Party.

Paul started his career as a political journalist in the 1970s and was at old Parliament House when Gough Whitlam was dismissed.

In his latest book, Paul ex...

Wongaibon woman, Gayle Kennedy tells the story of her childhood, punctuated by years of treatment for polio. A bright child, she blitzed school and was drawn to comic book writing, which led to an award-winning career as an author.

Gayle was two when she contracted polio. The family was living in a camp outside Condobolin when little Gayle collapsed at her aunt’s house.

Gayle’s mother was in hospital at the time, where sh...

Troy grew up travelling between two very different worlds with his Indigenous mum and his Maltese Dad. At just 17 he started on his path to becoming one of Australia's biggest country music stars (R) CW: Mentions suicide, please take care when listening

Troy Cassar-Daley is a proud Gumbaynggirr and Bundjalung man, and one of Australia's most beloved country music stars.

As a 17-year-old musician just starting out, Troy joined a band ...

The filmmaker on her series which documents a period some historians call the most important war Australia has ever fought in.

Rachel Perkins is one of this country's great storytellers, translating distinctively Australian stories for the screen, including a television series first released in 2022 called The Australian Wars.

It tracks the bloody conflicts that broke out across the continent after the arrival of the British col...