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Aug 21, 2024 | 
narratively.com | Sue Smethurst
It’s sunset on a late autumn evening, and a river of suits flows along the streets of one of Australia’s biggest cities: the Friday evening flush of Melbourne’s corporate tide. Accountants, stockbrokers and financiers bob along the sidewalk clutching briefcases, immersed in their own worlds, heads down and eyes glued to phones, rushing toward the subway — until a ghostly figure stops them in their tracks.
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Aug 20, 2024 | 
womensweekly.com.au | Sue Smethurst
One Saturday afternoon last August, a gumbootclad Nathan Hersey was in the paddock, checking on his beloved Scottish Highland cattle, when his phone rang. The call was from a journalist seeking comment on rumours that a triple murder had occurred in the area. Taken aback, the first-term councillor, who’d only recently been elected Mayor of the South Gippsland Shire, politely declined to speak, then rang his council colleagues to alert them to “the most unusual call”.
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Jul 9, 2024 | 
womensweekly.com.au | Sue Smethurst
Charmaine Sellings keeps a close eye on inky clouds rolling around the horizon. “Just one crack of lightning on a stormy day could be disastrous,” she says, looking across brittle paddocks sweeping up to the edge of the parched forest surrounding her community’s 5000-hectare home.
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Jul 1, 2024 | 
womensweekly.com.au | Sue Smethurst
Rob Farnham places his hand on his heart as he talks about his father, unwittingly drawing attention to a bold tattoo poking through the top of his shirt. The swirling cursive letters spell the title of his favourite song, Playing to Win, one of his dad John Farnham’s biggest hits. A mantra the family has lived by for decades. “I was in my 20s when I got it. I thought it was a good outlook to have on life,” says the 42-year-old actor and musician.
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Jun 29, 2024 | 
womensweekly.com.au | Sue Smethurst
On the morning of August 15, 2021, Fatima Yousufi was lacing up her runners, getting ready for soccer training, when one of her teammates came banging on her door. “She was yelling, ‘Have you heard what’s happened? The Taliban has arrived’,” Fatima recalls. The 18-year-old instantly knew what she had to do. She dug a hole in the front yard of her family’s Kabul home and buried her soccer uniform, trophies and any trace of her involvement with the Afghanistan Women’s National Football Team.
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Apr 29, 2024 | 
womensweekly.com.au | Sue Smethurst
Jock Zonfrillo sadly passed away on April 30, 2023. A few years before his untimely passing, the beloved chef sat down with Australian Women’s Weekly to speak about his family – including his adorable son, Alfie, who was three-years-old at the time. “I’m a complete clown – totally immature most of the time,” Jock said, laughing, speaking about his family.
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Jan 31, 2024 | 
medicalxpress.com | Sue Smethurst |La Trobe
Scientists from La Trobe University and the Hudson Institute have demonstrated that cells from placentas could have therapeutic benefits for patients suffering from high blood pressure. The research, led by La Trobe senior lecturer in physiology and pharmacology, Dr. Michael De Silva, and published in Scientific Reports, has advanced La Trobe's recent studies into using placenta cells for stroke recovery and has passed human safety trials.
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Jan 24, 2024 | 
womensweekly.com.au | Sue Smethurst
As she had done many times before, Dassi Erlich walked through the revolving glass doors of Melbourne’s County Court last August, arm in arm with her sisters, Nicole and Elly. She took a deep breath and steadied herself to speak to the jostling media pack as lights and cameras flashed furiously around her. Tears flowed freely at the emotionally-charged press conference, but this time they came from a place of sheer joy and almost disbelief.
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Dec 14, 2023 | 
womensweekly.com.au | Sue Smethurst |Alana Landsberry |Mattie Cronan
Thick tufts of couch grass poke through cracks in the floor, plaster peels away in sheets from the walls and a menacing dark brown stain creeps across the ceiling of Andy Lee and Bec Harding’s dream home. “As you can see, she needs a bit of work … the house … not Bec!” Andy quips of the derelict property on the banks of Melbourne’s Yarra River. It was once described by a real estate agent as “something out of a horror film”.
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Oct 23, 2023 | 
westpac.com.au | Ben Young |James Thornhill |Thomas Corwin Evans |Sue Smethurst
In a world of growing cyber security threats, history tells us that it pays to test and explore new technologies rather than ban or resist them. There’s no doubt that we need to understand how these technologies can be used for malicious purposes, but it’s just as important to find out how they might be harnessed to help our customers, improve our business processes, and bolster our defensive cyber security capabilities.
