Conversations

The Masterchef graduate shares what he learned from his grandmother, who won the lottery in Malaysia when she was a 25-year-old widow with three children to care for. After Adam's parents met and married, the family emigrated to Australia when Adam was three-years-old. He and his brother sped through school in Adelaide and Adam went on to become a lawyer. In 2010, he won the second season of Maste...

In 2023, Arnold Dix helped rescue 41 men trapped in a tunnel after it collapsed high in the Himalayas. As an engineer and tunnel expert, he was uniquely placed to assist, but Arnold also used another skill in the high risk operation: he listened to the mountain. The successful rescue made Arnold a hero to millions of people across India and it was in news all over the world, including back home in...

Angelica Ojinnaka-Psillakis grew up in Sydney, famous for its coastline and beachside existence. But for reasons beyond her control, she didn't learn to swim until she took the plunge as an adult. Angelica Ojinnaka-Psillakis has achieved a lot in her young life. She is a social researcher at Western Sydney University, she has represented Australia at the United Nations, she advices groups like UNE...

In 2013, Raynor Winn and her husband, Moth lost their beloved farm in Wales, it was where they'd lived for 20 years and raised their children. In the same week, Moth was diagnosed with a rare degenerative brain disease and doctors gave him just two years to live. Homeless and with their future together rapidly shrinking, Raynor and Moth decided to walk the South West Coast path. They camped wild i...

Writer and tour guide Simon Tancred on the little-known ANZAC story of how a group of POWs made a daring escape on foot to neutral Switzerland. Simon Tancred fell in love with Italy as a young man, and set up a job for himself leading hikes and tours across the country, and into the Alps.  So Simon was familiar with the old trails and passes that crisscross the mountains, and which have been used...

Justin Heazlewood fled a complicated early life in Tasmania searching for fame as an artist on the mainland. Recently he moved back to his home town of Burnie, and realised community is where you find it. Justin Heazlewood grew up in Burnie, a coastal town on the North West coast of Tasmania. For years he imagined his hometown as somewhere he had to leave, especially if he was going to be any kind...

The artist Loribelle Spirovski on her unusual childhood in the Philippines, meeting her father for the first time at 7 years old, and making her way as one of Australia's most exciting young painters. Loribelle Spirovski grew up in the Philippines, with her mum and her extended Filipino family. Her Serbian father, whom she had never met, was in Australia, driving taxis and waiting for the visa tha...

As a child, before she escaped communist Hungary, Bo Remenyi had no ambitions. But when she got to Australia all of that changed. She's gone from cruising the casino floor as a high-stakes professional poker player, to saving the lives of children in remote Australia. (R) In 2018, Dr Bo Remenyi was made the Northern Territory’s Australian of the Year for her work as a paediatric cardiologist.  But...

Journalist Kerrie Davies with the story of how novelist Miles Franklin went undercover as a maid for a year, in Sydney and Melbourne's wealthy houses, well before gonzo journalists became household names. The real-life story of novelist Stella Maria Miles Franklin had an unexpected chapter after publishing My Brilliant Career. In 1903, Miles became a 'girl stunt reporter' by going undercover as a...

Song propelled Morris Stuart from his early life shepherding sheep in British Guyana to an unlikely love story in London. In his retirement, he found himself shaping a choir of Central Australian Aboriginal women, who had been breathing life into 138-year-old Lutheran hymns. Morris Stuart met his Australian wife, Barbara in London in the 1960s. The pair led a youth group attached to a nearby churc...

Nature writer Andrew Darby on what he learned from his rambles through the wilds of Tasmania, communing with the world’s oldest surviving trees. In particular, his ‘buttock clenching’ ascent up a 60-metre-tall eucalyptus known as The Vibe Tower. Nature writer, Andrew Darby spent more than 20 years as a Fairfax correspondent based in Tasmania. His stories involved the natural beauty of the bush, in...

Anh Nguyen Austen's family fled Vietnam by sea in 1982, on a wooden boat bound for the Philippines. When a once-in-a-century storm struck in the South China Sea, they thought all hope was lost (R) Anh is an academic and community volunteer who grew up in Vietnam in a Catholic family. Anh's childhood was idyllic, with a big extended family and a close friendship with her cousin named Joe. But life...

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 artists. VIncent Fantauzzo is one of Australia's most successful portrait artists. For his luminous, photo-realistic paintings he's won the People's Choice Award at the annual Archibal...

Rebecca Huntley, Rick Morton, Julia Zemiro and Sarah Kanowski bring you stories of human failure, misadventure and outright fiasco in a live storytelling event recorded at Adelaide Writers Week. A few weeks ago, some former guests of Conversations, and our two presenters gathered at the Adelaide Town Hall. The event was a live storytelling hour, with the theme 'Mistakes were made', in front of a r...

Josie McSkimming on growing up with her bohemian sister, the poet Dorothy Porter, and how their lives took off on wildly diverging paths as they grew up. Sisters Dorothy and Josie Porter grew up in an interesting and sometimes volatile home on the northern beaches of Sydney in the 1970s. Together with their middle sister Mary, they lived in a world of books, a backyard menagerie of animals, and re...

Hilton Koppe was a beloved country GP for 30 years before an unexpected health crisis of his own forced him to reassess everything (R) Hilton Koppe grew up knowing his parents wanted him to become a doctor and so when he got the marks to make it into medicine, they were overjoyed. By the time he was 30, he'd started working as a country GP.  Hilton then became a beloved local doctor in Northern NS...

Journalist and author Sonya Voumard on the rare neurological condition that has stalked her since a family tragedy during her childhood. Sonya Voumard was on the precipice of teen hood when her father suddenly and unexpectedly died. In the months following his death, Sonya developed a tremor in her right hand, not dissimilar to the shaking she sometimes noticed in her father when he was cutting th...

Loneliness is a universal experience, for each of us at some point in our lives. Journalist Ros Thomas travelled the world to investigate, and find the antidote.  To binge even more great episodes of the 'Conversation podcast' with Richard Fidler and Sarah Kanowski go the ABC listen app (Australia) or wherever you get your podcasts. There you’ll find hundreds of the best thought-provoking intervie...

The chief investigative reporter on her work exposing criminals and corruption, including former politician, Eddie Obeid and financial fraudster, Melissa Caddick. Kate McClymont is chief investigative reporter for The Sydney Morning Herald. She grew up on a farm in NSW, and during university, funded her start in Sydney by setting up a busking booth in Kings Cross. Passers-by would pay her to answe...

As a young woman, Krystyna thought her father had taught her everything about Poland’s history, but she didn’t know that what he’d left out would become a focus of her life (R) Growing up, Krystyna Duszniak's father didn't speak a word of English to her, instilling in her a love of the Polish language, literature, history and culture. As the child of immigrants who had survived World War II, histo...

Peter Norris's father was a notorious bank robber who lived life on the run, dragging his boy across the country with him, until Peter refused to go with him one last time. It was the hardest decision he ever had to make. Peter Norris grew up on the run with his criminal father, Clarence 'Clarry' Norris. Every time Clarry was arrested, he would find a way out of custody and fulfil his promise of c...

Martha Jabour was a young mum when her baby son Michael died suddenly. In the thick of her grief, she worried for the devastated young police officer who had come to her home that day, before he unexpectedly reappeared in her life (CW: this conversation discusses the death of a child). Martha Jabour has lived through the worst possible day for a parent.  When she was a young mum, she put her baby...

While working as an undercover cop, Nick Kaldas played a drug baron in the market for vast quantities of hemp oil, tracked a fugitive with a penchant for hair transplants, and posed as a hit man for a spurned lover. Nick was a 21-year-old immigrant lad from Egypt when he decided to join the NSW Police Force. He soon rose up the ranks from working as a junior constable on the beat, then as one of t...

Football tragic Andy Paschalidis was in his 50s when a dear friend and fellow player died during an over-35s soccer game. The tragedy inspired him to begin a whole new story for himself, and the sport (R) Andy grew up in Sydney's Balmain when it was a working-class suburb, full of migrant families. His parents had arrived in Australia from Greece a few years before, seeking a different life. Andy...

Australian writer Tim Winton on the stories which inspired his latest novel, 'Juice', a story of determination, survival, and the limits of the human spirit. 'Juice' is an astonishing feat of imagination. It takes us to a far-off future on a superheated planet, where people must live like desert frogs in Northwest Australia.  They go underground for the murderously hot summer months, before emergi...