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2 weeks ago | 
abc.net.au | Nicola Harrison |Alice Moldovan |Sarah Kanowski
NSW Northern Rivers chef, Graeme Stockdale was only a boy when he was introduced to the power and ferocity of fire. As a nine-year-old living in Albany, Western Australia he lit a fire out of curiosity on a neighbour's property. It was the look on his mother's face that turned his experience from awesome into terrifying.
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2 weeks ago | 
abc.net.au | Carmel Rooney |Alice Moldovan |Richard Fidler
In 1971, five intricately carved Maori panels were unearthed in a swamp on the North Island of New Zealand. The panels are known as Te Motonui Epa, and they were buried for two centuries for their protection and preservation. Rachel Buchanan is a descendent of Taranaki, the place where the panels originated. She explains that once they woke up, they went on an adventure to New York, Geneva and London, before they were returned to their home.
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3 weeks ago | 
abc.net.au | Nicola Harrison |Alice Moldovan |Richard Fidler
Nathan Dunne was swimming in Hampstead Heath in London in the middle of winter in 2008 when a psychological catastrophe struck him. Nathan felt his sense of self split in two, and an unbearable pain overtook him. He was driven to attempt suicide, and endured years of misdiagnoses from doctors and medications that didn't work. Nathan didn't have the words to describe the confusion, pain and splitting of self he was experiencing. For years, water was the symbol of his undoing.
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1 month ago | 
abc.net.au | Nicola Harrison |Alice Moldovan |Sarah Kanowski
Claire Keegan is an Irish novelist whose books are loved by readers around the world. Her works Small Things Like These and Foster have both been made into movies. Her stories often take place in the landscape where she grew up — the farms and small towns of Wexford in Southeast Ireland. Claire was the youngest of six children, and when she was born their farmhouse had no running water and few books. Instead, Claire fell in love with horses.
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1 month ago | 
abc.net.au | Nicola Harrison |Alice Moldovan |Sarah Kanowski
Author Rosalie Ham grew up in country NSW in a town three streets wide and three streets long. During a mouse plague, the rodents were so prolific that their droppings would appear at the bottom of the cereal packet, and the town's children — unsupervised — would chop the mice up with a downpipe in the farmyard shed. When Rosalie was a child, her mum received a devastating diagnosis, and moved out of the family home to find herself before it was too late.
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1 month ago | 
abc.net.au | Carmel Rooney |Alice Moldovan |Sarah Kanowski
Warren Ward's patients are often critically ill with diseases like anorexia. Warren says asking someone with anorexia to eat is like asking an arachnophobe to put their hand in a jar full of spiders. As a psychiatrist, Warren uses psychotherapy to help his patients. He encourages those with an eating disorder to approach their mental illness as one part of their whole self.
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1 month ago | 
abc.net.au | Carmel Rooney |Alice Moldovan |Sarah Kanowski
Winnie Dunn was born into a big Tongan family in Western Sydney but she felt conflicted about her heritage growing up. While at high school the Chris Lilley character, 'Jonah from Tonga’, became a national joke and her first trip to Tonga as a teenager was a disaster. But over time Winnie’s understanding of what it means to be Tongan evolved, and at the age of 28, she became the first Tongan Australian to have a novel published.
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1 month ago | 
abc.net.au | Nicola Harrison |Alice Moldovan |Richard Fidler
Jamila’s craniopharyngioma had been growing for years, unbeknownst to her. In hindsight, it was her son who gave the first clue, when he stopped breastfeeding overnight at 11 months old. Today Jamila is an author, a broadcaster and the deputy managing director of Future Women, dedicated to achieving gender equity in Australian workplaces.
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1 month ago | 
abc.net.au | Nicola Harrison |Alice Moldovan |Sarah Kanowski
Whale and dolphin researcher, Barry McGovern’s love of sea creatures started in Cork, Ireland, when as a child he met the county’s solitary, friendly dolphin, named for the singer Dusty Springfield. Barry grew up on Ireland’s West coast, in a tiny surfing village where he knew all the bird calls off by heart. His interest in animal science led him to Edinburgh Zoo, where he fed cassowaries and regularly, accidentally spooked a flock of Chilean flamingos.
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1 month ago | 
abc.net.au | Nicola Harrison |Alice Moldovan |Sarah Kanowski
Erna Walraven is a former senior curator and was one of the first women to work at Sydney's Taronga Zoo in the 1980s. She was born in The Netherlands, to parents who were involved in the Dutch resistance during World War II. Erna's love of languages took her to Spain, where she lived for many years with her widowed sister and young nephew. Erna met a penniless Australian backpacker and fell in love, settling in Sydney.
