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Dec 23, 2024 | 
irishtimes.com | Sarah Moss
I have never been any good at Christmas. I remember feeling sick with the rising excitement at primary school, a nervous child afraid of people losing the run of themselves.
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Nov 30, 2024 | 
abc.net.au | Sarah Moss
The 1980s was a decade that put the fun in fluoro, fully embraced the punk scene and symbolised the right to work. It also birthed Redback Graphix, a Wollongong studio creating screen-printed posters. The posters originally sold for a couple of dollars each, but they now sell for much more.
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Nov 9, 2024 | 
abc.net.au | Sarah Moss
In a growing trend across New South Wales, churches are closing due to diminishing congregations. Inside many of those buildings are purpose-built pipe organs; some are sold, some are scrapped but many lie dormant — mothballed for future use. Inside Wollongong's Wesley Uniting Church, constructed in 1882, is a pipe organ older than the neo-gothic building itself. Now both the building and its assets are at risk.
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Oct 4, 2024 | 
abc.net.au | Sarah Moss
They are miniature buildings, but Jim and Sue Roach's passion for making them is so big, the couple has had to erect a shed to house their creations. Over the past decade, the Roaches have made eight miniature buildings, from a row of terrace houses in Sydney's historic Rocks district to a Queenslander-style pub in the tropics.
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Sep 16, 2024 | 
irishtimes.com | Sarah Moss
I was intrigued by the controversy around a British 15-year-old boy travelling around western Europe with a friend. At the same age, a friend and I travelled across the US on Greyhound buses. It was her first international trip without an adult but I’d been crossing France and Germany from Manchester by bus and train for several years. There were no mobile phones. I had barely enough cash for food on the journey, no credit card.
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Aug 10, 2024 | 
abc.net.au | Sarah Moss
Before the romance book and TV phenomenon that is Bridgerton, Mills & Boon had long been a staple of the romance fiction world. While the company launched in 1908, it wasn't until 1974 that it set hearts aflutter among Australian readers in its first venture outside of Britain and North America. As the publishing house marks 50 years in Australia this month, there's a growing appetite for romance novels. Sales of romance fiction were up 37 per cent last year in Australia.
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Aug 8, 2024 | 
abc.net.au | Brooke Chandler |Kelly Fuller |Sarah Moss
The first national Indigenous allyship summit has been held in Wollongong, bringing together Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leaders and allies from across Australia. The group gathered to map out the next steps for the future of Uluru Statement from the Heart. The Uluru Dialogue co-chair Pat Anderson is calling for the prime minister to confirm his commitment to Makarrata, a formal process for agreement-making and truth-telling.
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Jul 23, 2024 | 
abc.net.au | Nick Rheinberger |Sarah Moss
If you attended a musical workshop at a conservatorium you'd probably expect a fairly serious occasion filled with precious instruments. Not if it's run by Jon Madin, who makes instruments out of old bikes, tyres, and other ordinary hardware items for the audience to bash, jump and spin as they giggle. Madin's main instrument is the marimba – basically, a wooden xylophone. He's taken this instrument and made endless variations, including huge ones that take three people to play.
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Jul 6, 2024 | 
abc.net.au | Sarah Moss
Truffle producer Tanya Moroney lives with therich aroma of the fungus which, during the chilly months of truffle season, infuses her New South Wales Southern Highlands home, her clothes, and her nose. She is, however, grateful to smell them at all because a decade ago she lost her sense of smell. "I had thyroid cancer and had to have radioactive iodine therapy. One of the side effects was losing your sense of smell," she says.
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Jun 22, 2024 | 
abc.net.au | Sarah Moss
Andrea Boltresz knows a lot about books: how to procure them, sell them and, more recently, she has been making them, accidentally setting two precedents and catching the attention of collectors worldwide. Ms Boltresz, who operates the bookstore Armchair Adventures at Robertson in the New South Wales Southern Highlands, has created 25 miniature books with jewelled, embroidered covers.
