Conversations

Cult survivor and psychotherapist Dr Martina Zangger on her ten years devoted to an Indian mystic and how she learned to stand on her own two feet.

When Martina Zangger was 19 years old she became a devotee of the Rajneeshee Movement led by the Guru, Bhagwan.

The cult had its headquarters in a huge ashram, built in rural Oregon, and Martina decided she needed to go there to be closer to Rajneesh to find the healing ...

When Helen Garner began following her grandson Amby's under-16s football team, it was a chance to spend more time with her youngest grandchild before he became an adult and she was fascinated by the spectacle.

She went along to all the games, and to every training session, shivering on the sidelines at dusk, it also gave Helen a new writing project.

As Helen began writing about Amby and his season, she began to real...

At the very end of World War Two, Australian soldiers were sent to Borneo to dislodge the occupying Japanese Forces. The story of their brutal fighting was largely forgotten by their own compatriots, who never understood why they went in there in the first place.

It was one of the largest amphibious landings of the whole war, and what followed was months of brutal fighting on an island that was both a hell and a pa...

While fighting anorexia Lexi Crouch was admitted to hospital 25 times and placed in an induced coma twice. When doctors told her she would die, she began the slow climb up and out to health (CW: discussion of eating disorders)

Lexi was 16 when she was first admitted to hospital and diagnosed with anorexia and spent the next decade in and out specialist clinics.

When she overheard doctors talking about how she was go...

Mark Winterbottom grew up in outer Western Sydney, in a family with not much money to spend on expensive hobbies. But by an extraordinary twist of fate, Mark won his first mini motorbike in a shopping centre raffle at the age of 8.

Immediately, he was off, speedily rising up from bikes to kart racing, and then to V8 Supercars.

Mark won race after race, earning him the nickname 'Frosty'.

But for years, he could not wr...

Heather's brother and grandfather died in a tragic drowning accident when she was 12 and from that day, she began looking for a way to commune with what lies beyond. 

The quest has taken the Stella award winning writer to Buddhist monasteries, Native American dance rituals and sweat lodges, and to the discipline of writing.

And Heather has had an intuitive sense of life's mystery ever since she was a little girl gro...

Louise O'Sullivan spent 10 years with the ADF, including deployments with the Special Forces in Afghanistan which eventually left her with PTSD, but a bigger battle lay ahead, the fight to save her premature twins.

After leaving the military, Louise wanted to begin a family but cancer treatment had left her unable to carry her own children so she found a surrogate in Ukraine.

But when her twins were born prematurely...

After the death of her father, a spiritual moment with the life-size wooden statue of Bob at Nine Mile convinced queer rapper, Jamaica Moana that everything would be alright.

Jamaica was born to the music of Bob Marley on the Central Coast of NSW.

Her dad loved Bob’s music more than anything else and would listen incessantly on his interstate truck driving routes.

Jamaica was the beloved baby of six children, growing...

Tens of thousands of 'van lifers' and 'grey nomads' drive around Australia each year. But the iconic road trip has a surprising origin story involving a pair of missionaries, a retired butcher and a gun-slinging mother-daughter duo.

David Riley is a pastor and father who was on a lap around Australia with his wife and three children when he heard about the surprising origin story of this great road trip.

In 1925, tw...

Despite being a stand-out young player, many NRL clubs initially rejected Johnathan Thurston because they thought he was too small and wiry but he went on to become one of the best rugby league players of all time.

Johnathan showed his rare talent for rugby league early on but his parents didn't have the money to help him travel to games.

So in his late teens, Johnathan moved to Toowoomba to get a start in rugby lea...

Artist, author and Stolen Generations survivor, Rhonda Collard-Spratt, on bush hugs, beehives, emu bumps, and finding peace.

Aunty Rhonda Collard-Spratt is a Yamatji-Noongar elder and Stolen Generations survivor who grew up on the Carnarvon Native Mission in Western Australia.

As a little girl she would escape from her dormitory into the bush to feel the love and warmth she was missing from her mum.

After leaving the...

Dr James Loxton on how modern democracies can crumble as authoritarian regimes take hold, but also how freedom and democracy can rise again, from the Americas to Europe and into Asia.

James grew up in stable Canada, where he spent his summers herding sheep in the middle of forest plantations.

As a teenager, he hatched a plan to escape his "rough as guts" bush town and the life of a shepherd, moving to India on his o...

Eric Philips has always loved cold weather and from young age became fixated on the idea of polar exploration and following in the footsteps of the adventurers he read about in National Geographic.

And he went on to lead gruelling expeditions to the North and South Poles, pushing his body and mind to the limits.

Eric also had dreams of travelling into space and had assumed the would be impossible.

But while on a ski ...

Screenwriter Samantha Strauss on her grandmother's vibrant last years in a Gold Coast retirement home where love, sex and startlingly pragmatic conversations about dying were all part of daily life. (CW: not suitable for children) (R)

Samantha Strauss started dancing from the age of 2, and as she grew up, she became increasingly serious about it.

Sam was 18 when her budding ballet career was cut short by a shocking ...

Reuben Kaye has always known he was going to be a performer and grew up a house that encouraged his love of the limelight.  But in the background was the weight of his family history full of complicated characters and stories of cruelty.

Reuben's parent both came from Jewish European families who were forced to flee their homes because of World War 2.  And there were other more secretive stories, involving a return...

Petal Ashmole Winstanley was just a teenager when she left Perth on her own to sail to London. There, in the swinging 1960s, she began her wild adventure of dance, love and heartbreak.

Petal got her first big dancing break in a Christmas pantomime, and then she had a spin as a Go-Go dancer in a Parisian nightclub, before eventually working her way into some of the most prestigious ballet companies in the world.

Alon...

Editor-at-Large of The Australian, Paul Kelly looks back at the most profound crisis in Australia’s democracy, including the off-the-record information he was given five days before it took place.

In 1975 Paul was a young press gallery journalist, working in the cramped old Parliament House, where all it took was a flight of stairs and a few steps to find himself in the Prime Minister’s office.

Paul was on close ter...

When Ben Gillies was 15 he began touring around the world in his band called Silverchair. After the band broke up, Ben had to work through anxiety and addiction to make an entirely new life for himself.

Silverchair toured America, supporting the Ramones and the Red Hot Chilli Peppers. They played on the roof of the Radio City Music Hall during the MTV awards.

And when they weren't working, they were back at high sch...

How does Ben Crowe get elite athletes to the top of their game? What he asks footballers, surfers and tennis players to do seems counter intuitive, and a lot of the work happens off the field. (R)

Ben Crowe is a mindset coach who has worked with elite athletes like surfer Steph Gilmore, tennis superstar Ash Barty, and the Richmond Football Club.

But Ben's method of coaching seems counter-intuitive.

Rather than tellin...