Conversations

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...

Bunurong/Boonwurrung actor and author, Tasma Walton was enjoying her big break on TV show Blue Heelers in the 1990s in Melbourne when a transformative visit from her grandmother launched her in a new direction.

Boonwurrung/Bunurong woman, Tasma grew up in windy Geraldton, in Western Australia in the 1970s, hearing stories from her grandmother about baby whales and women who lived in kelp forests. 

These stories alwa...

Historian William Dalrymple had a rarefied childhood on the windswept coast of Scotland. As an adult he fell in love with India, and later discovered his family's own deep ties to the country.

Born into the Scottish aristocracy, William followed his three older brothers and left for boarding school at just 8 years old.  While still an university William set off to follow Marco Polo's journey across the width of Asi...

Ten years ago, Michelle Payne became the first woman to win The Melbourne Cup but in the years since she's had to face many challenges, including a life threatening injury and family heartbreak.  Fortunately if there is one thing Michelle knows a lot about, it's how to get back up.

Michelle Payne grew up on a farm, the youngest of ten kids, in a family were everyone was mad about horses and horse racing.  Her dad a...

Writer, Ianto Ware on growing up in the suburbs of Adelaide in a single-parent, single-child family, when such an experience was rare. (R)

Ianto Ware was raised in the suburbs of Adelaide in a house surrounded by a tangled garden of oak trees and vegetables, and furniture foraged from hard rubbish.

Aside from the family pets, it was just Ianto and Dimity at home.

His family was different to most in his street, as his...

Kate Reid inherited her love of Formula 1 from her dad. She put her heart and soul into qualifying for a job with the renowned racing team, Williams, but her dream job turned out very differently to what she expected. Then, a public library turned out to be a bridge to Kate's recovery.

Growing up in Melbourne, Kate was an asthmatic child who developed an extremely close bond with her dad.

He would care for Kate duri...

Walter Marsh with the surreal tale of Colin Wyatt, the ski champion, mountaineer, wartime camouflage expert, artist, and naturalist who committed one of the world's biggest-ever museum heists in the 1940s.

In January 1947, by chance, it was found that over 3,000 rare and precious specimens of butterflies had vanished from museums in Sydney, Melbourne, and Adelaide. 

Alarmingly, the missing insects included many pric...

Katie Treble grew up crying at about how all the king's horses and men couldn't put Humpty Dumpty together again. It was that compassion that made her the perfect candidate for doctoring during war as an adult.

When Dr Katie Treble decided to swap the good vibes and beautiful beaches of Byron Bay for work with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) she knew she would be in for a shock. 

Nothing could have prepared her for t...

Aaron was living on the tip of Cape York when he borrowed his uncle’s dinghy to make it to his first acting audition on nearby Thursday Island.

He won the role that day in a TV show called Remote Area Nurse, and many other TV series followed, including the crime dramas The Straits and East West 101.

He also presented the Torres Strait Island Cooking show, Strait to the Plate, and he was one of the stars of the comed...

The singer, podcaster, writer and comedian on living big with neurodivergence, and owning her manic, creative energy.

Growing up in Melbourne in the 1980s, Em was a serious young athlete, focused on hurdles, when a high kick up-ended her ambitions.  

She was a creative, energetic child who seemed to always be busier than everyone else. 

As a young, stay-at-home mum, Em appeared on Australian Idol, having never perfor...

From fairground palmistry to the science of fingerprinting, historian Alison Bashford explores the secrets, history and psychology of the hand.

Alison was in a London library when she discovered a ginormous palm print of a gorilla, taken two days after it died at London Zoo in the 1930s.

She had no idea whatsoever about why someone had made this mysterious print, or why it had been kept in pristine condition for all...