Radical Australia

Arborist and life-long rock star. That's this week's guest, Andrew Matters, calling in from Adelaide. Andrew has been shaping, saving, planting and assessing trees for over 20 years. He loves planning and planting gardens and is currently crushing on the Crepe Myrtle tree. He spent his young adulthood in Sydney with a panel van and a band - Neptune Lolly Shoppe. The spectre of illness hung over hi...

Jeannie Erceg was one of 5 residents who resisted the demolition of their homes on the Barack Beacon public housing estate in Port Melbourne just a little while ago and says 'They can't make me disappear. I can say what I want'. Jeannie says the estate had a 'friendly feeling' and it was a 'wonderful community'. Like every resident on the estate, Jeannie found out her home was due to be demolished...

Greg returns on the blower from Queensland to the Radical Australia studio talking about his new research on West Papua and its shady colonial history. Definitely one for the enthusiasts and for anyone wanting to enlighten themselves about colonial wars on the doorstep of our nearest neighbour. Freedom for West Papua.

I want to lead the way in having difficult conversations says this week's guest, Ruth Clare. Ruth is perhaps best known either for her acting job in a genital herpes commercial or for her memoir about growing up with her returned serviceman father. One lighthearted and one serious fact about Ruth and we straddle both ends in our conversation with her this week. Ruth is a Rocky girl and went to Roc...

Pauline Klemm is the woman behind the social media juggernaut, The Baba Desi Story, on Facebook, where she has taken some stunning pictures of Belgrave wizard, Baba Desi. She has been taking pictures for the last 6 years after coming to care for her brother's camera when it came into her possession. It was a sliding door moment and Pauline learnt there is another life in front of the camera. It ha...

Antoinette Pitt used to roadie for 73 Bob Bob and was Australia's first female wrestling referee. She is a woman of many surprises. Antoinette is a nurse and an executive for Australian Progressives who have 6 pillars of E's: Ethics + Empathy + Evidence + Equality + Engagement + Empowerment. Learn all about Antoinette's goth phase in Lilydale and her time as an apprective spray painter. Antoinette...

This week's guest, Ribke Ovide, is a volunteer at the the West Papua Office in Docklands. She has been living in Australia for the last couple of years, coming here on a scholarship to further her studies in aviation mechanics. Ribke hails from Timika in West Papua and speaks 4 languages. She was born in 200. Her faith is very important to her, as is her family, along with her dream to become an a...

This week's guest, Tim Hollo, is kind of like Green royalty in Australia. He heads The Green Institute, a think tank focussed on transformative issues in the green space, he founded Green Music Australia, he was the communications director for Christine Milne, and he has been at the environmental game since university in the 90's. His first love, however, was the violin. He's been playing it since...

In case you missed it - here is the second part to our talk with Kutcha Edwards. Kutcha is a legend of 3CR, steering our annual Beyond the Bars NAIDOC prison broadcasts for many a year. In this chat, we are taken on a trip down the memory lane of aboriginal Fitzroy of the 1990s. From the MAYSAR/ Fitzroy Stars Youth Club gymnasium and Uncle Herbert Jock Austin, to singing opera while on homebrew ou...

We are thrilled to broadcast a couple of chats we recently had with the mighty Kutcha Edwards. This week, we learn the origins of Kutcha's name and some things about his early life. Kutcha tells us that he was born before The Referendum and politics has played a big part in his life. Kutcha went to high school in Taralgon before moving to the city to be with brothers and sisters. He went to Koori...

A life full of mentors and a-ha moments. That has been the story of this week's guest, Rob Brown, a big tall Scotsman indeed. Rob was born in 1960 in the Gorbals, tenement housing in Glasgow, sharing one toilet among five families. That's just how things were. Rob's mother scrubbed the steps of the school on her hands and knees with a brush. That's where he says he probably got his work ethic from...

We spoke with this week's guest, University of Sydney Professor of Law, Simon Butt, on Indonesia's Presidential Election Day. Simon came on to talk about some of the legal infrastructure in Indonesia, during the pre-1998 Suharto era and now. On paper, Indonesians have more legal rights than Australians, but corruption runs right through the system. Simon did a big job researching this during COVID...

The only left-winger in the family. That's Sue Bolton, well-known to many in Melbourne's left and socialist communities, long-standing councillor at Merri-Bek. Sue is always standing up for what is right, for people's rights, in her community. Sue hails from Western Queensland and says the class divide was really vivid in the bush. After boarding school she went and studied psychology for a little...

This week's guests, Mecedes Zanker and Joe Lorback, are members of the Renegade Solidarity Audio Force crew who have been involved in all kinds of local radical activism, from #freeassange, to Melbourne's Palestinian motorcades, the Park Hotel protest actions and every Sunday Palestine rally to date. Joe joined us from his weekend at the Women's tennis finals where he delivered a pro-Palestine ver...

This week's guest, Alexandra, has had an interesting life so far, most of that spent in England with radical collectives. She is a dancer who grew up in Canberra. Alexandra is currently our Wednesday afternoon reception volunteer and has an interesting story to tell. Thanks for being with us, Alex.

A fashion brand for people who give a shit. That's how this week's guest, Nick Savaidis, decribes his label, Etiko, winner of an Australian Human Rights Award and the most ethical fashion brand in the country. Nick started making sports balls under the label before branching into clothing. He has always had a thing for the underdog and has used this feeling for some good deeds. Nick introduced No...

This week's guest, Gatwech Wal, is a war survivor from South Sudan. When Gatwech was 11 years old, he had to flee his village with his older brother and he spent 11 years in a refugee camp on the border of Ethiopia. We hear this story and what it was like. Since coming to Australia, Gatwech has worked incredibly hard to have a successful life and is now a Family Law - Family Violence lawyer. This...

On our last live show for the year, we welcome the return of popular guest, Robert 'Smokey' Wolfgramm. We find Robert in conversation with Joe about his PhD on the ethnic identity. Robert set out on his research to answer the questions 'What does it mean to be Fijian? What does it mean to be ethnic? How do we know who we are?'. Find out what answers Robert came to in this engaging conversation. We...

Jill Lockwood is a community-minded gardener from the Dandenong Hills, currently volunteering her time at the Knox Environment Society in Ferntree Gully with all the other 'seedy ladies' and 'HAGS' cleaning seeds and preserving the indigenous flora of the area. Jill was born in 1944 at Epworth Hospital, worked in insurance and also as a medical receptionist for 26 years. The greatest love of her l...

Baba Desi. The Wizard. The Doctor. Desmond Bergen. He is known as many things and has been many things in his long life: jazzer, hippie, bodgie, pirate. In fact, he's 'been them all', he says. We are delighted to welcome Baba Desi to Radical Australia this week to share with us some tales from his long life of 94 years. Baba Desi was born in Wangaratta and also lived in Warrnambool when he was you...

We are delighted to bring you a very special episode of Radical Australia this week, sharing it with you today on International Day of People with a Disability #IDOPWD, Sunday December 3. This week's guest is intellectual disability self-advocate, Colin Hiscoe. Colin has been an active member of self-advocacy group Reinforce for decades and his story is sure to both move and inspire you. Colin spe...

"Encouragement is a great thing in practise". We welcome back Percy Rogers to Radical Australia this week for the third and final instalment of our conversation with this amazing medical doctor who has done so much for so many across his years of medical practise in Australia. Percy worked until he was 86 years old. We take up this conversation at a time in his life when Percy was a single father....

Imagine being able to boast that one of your claims to fame was getting yellow-carded in a soccer match against a young Maradona. Such has been the life of our lovely guest this week, Tommy Latupeirissa. Tommy's family comes from Maluku (Spice Islands) in Indonesia and they were a military family. Tommy was a young gun soccer player and represented Indonesia in the Junior World Cup in Japan. For t...

"Advocacy never stops. It keeps going". We were treated to conversing with the lovely Ricki Spencer this week. Ricki is a trans woman, mental health and disability advocate from Footscray who has endured some really rough treatment in her life and she continues to hold her head up high. Ricki tells us that she was stigmatised and bullied throughout primary and high school for being different and s...

"Things are not going to change unless we do something about it. Don't sit on the sidelines. Become involved". Bevan did get involved in activism and quit his job to work on the Vietnam moratorium movement in the 1970s. It was when Bevan first went to Africa as an Australian Volunteer Abroad in 1965 that his eyes were opened to African independence movements and other political struggles going on...