Conversations

When artist Vincent Fantauzzo was a boy he was a street-fighting petty criminal with dyslexia and a blazing talent for drawing. He escaped jail time, and grew up to become one of Australia's most well-known portrait...

How a boy from Glasgow named Norman Swirsky grew up to become Australia's most famous doctorWhen Norman was 10 years old his dad decided to change the family's surname to Swan in a response to ongoing anti-Semitism in...

The author and actor thinks summer in Australia is done bigger, better and weirder than anywhere else. For three months of the year, life slows down and heats up. But for William, summer in Australia is an imperfect...

Journalist and author, Brigid Delaney looked into the ancient philosophy during an assignment from her editor. What she discovered led her to years of study and a brand-new outlook on life that focuses less on happiness...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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 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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...