Radical Australia

This week's guest, Rob Wellington, was a total ring-in, but he ended up being a bit of Australian music royalty, so that was nice. Rob directed videos of some of Australian music's biggest hits of the 80s, from bands like The Models, to Pseudo Echo and John Farnham. He also had his own bands on the go in the punk style, from The Fiction to the International Exiles. A busy, productive person. Rob g...

We heard about Sean Bedlam through his clever and humorous Instagram account, but we didn't realise he is a fully-fledged comedian, so that explains a lot. Sean reckons he has been masking his autism his whole life, but he only got diagnosed a couple of years ago. It's helped explain himself to himself a lot. Sean has done everything from photo lab work, to darkrooms, metal work to cancer. He also...

Alexander Brown joins us on the blower from Wollongong this week. He got his radical history education and began his political activities in the 90's, around the time of Howard's election. Who hasn't heard that before! Alexander has had a strong connection with Japan and its radical activists in his life, ever since he went to high school there for a year. He taught English in Tokyo a little while...

Tahlia and Felix join us this week from CUDL: the Community Union Defence League. Since 2019 they have been handing out home-cooked meals to anyone who needs one on the steps of the State Library, every single Sunday from 3pm to 6pm. Call them on 0480 039 002 if you would like to help out or find out more. CUDL began life in Adelaide as support to a CFMEU worker, with the community raising thousan...

Em Collard is a super talented person who has already won two scholarships in their life to prestigious learning institutions. They have excelled in both sports and music, landing presently at Fitzroy Legal Service doing the important Night Service coordination while studying for their Juris Doctor. That's a law degree when you already have a degree - Em already has a Bachelor of Music degree from...

What a treat to have pioneering mathematics and statistics whizz, Alison Harcourt, join us on the show this week with her son, Pierre. Alison is 95 years old this year and only recently retired from lecturing and tutoring, a day before her 90th birthday. She really is an Australian treasure. Alison's life started in Colac where her father was a doctor. She remembers the declaration of World War II...

David Boarder Giles was born in Melbourne in the year of Reagan's election (1980), but his mother soon whisked him away to Disneyland and conservative California when he was 10. Boo. It took him a while to finally make his way back home. David witnessed many interesting cultural curios during his teenage years in the States, which probably informed his desire to eventually study anthropology and w...

Jack Brady has done nearly everything there is to do in life, or so we think. From joining the Air Force at 17, to becoming a trainee dive master, an anthropologist and an English teacher in China. Let's throw in a comedian for good measure. Jack was born in Upper Ferntree Gully in 1970, but soon after their parents upped sticks and moved all the way north to Tewantin in Queensland, on the doorste...

What a thrill to have the very talented Tia Kasambalis join us on the show this week. If you haven't heard of Tia, you have probably seen his artwork around the streets of Melbourne, in a newspaper, or maybe even on the telly sometime over the last few years. Tia is one of those talented artist-activists that make up the Workers Art Collective. Check it out. In the beginning, Tia was born in '91 S...

What a gun - Rosie Heselev. At 30, she is the founder of Australia's first national prison newspaper, About Time. The paper is intended to be a narrative shift about prison and prisoners, with the hope of it eventually being completely produced by peers. It is off to a great start, having just released its second edition. Rosie got to learn quite a bit about prison and the conditions therein durin...

What a delight to have the lovely Sonia Randhawa on the show this week. Sonia is the current producer-presenter of 3CR's Wednesday Breakfast, but she has been around community radio a lot longer, starting up a pirate station in Malaysia some years back when she lived there with her Punjabi father and English mother who met in Liverpool in the 60s. Sonia spent her childhood between Malaysia and Eng...

Chris Phillips is a serious person who is big on personal pledges. He grew up a strong Catholic in Box Hill, but didn't take 'the pledge'. He did it tough at tech school in Abbotsford before moving into a carpentry apprecticeship at 16. At some stage, Chris became a committed union organiser for the Building Workers Industrial Union, tackling poor working conditions, keeping the bosses honest and...

Daryl McDonald is a man who will live to 100, at least, but he grew up dodging magpies in Geelong. Now he is the co-presenter of Breadline, a program of the Australian Unemployed Workers Union, broadcasting on Mondays at 6pm, here on 3CR. Daryl works on the advice line at the AUWU, letting people know about their rights as Social Security beneficiaries and generally working against the government....

Folks may know this week's guest, Justin DeLeeuw, via his gold toilets which have been spotted around Preston and most consistently on Google Maps at 'Modern Art - Not a Fan', a rather interesting parcel of grass on a median strip on St Georges Road. Justin and other assorted activists, including members of the Renters and Housing Union (RAHU), have all this week slept out in gold tents at the sit...

Why is it so difficult to conduct research on the West Papuan Noken? How does an item of Intangible Cultural Heritage (UNESCO) relate to nationalism? Who exactly owns cultural heritage? These are the questions our guest this week is grappling with in his thesis at the University of Melbourne and his name is Louis Liedel. Louis is interested in cultural heritage when he is not playing futsal with h...

This week we are celebrating the 10th anniversary of the West Papua Office in Docklands - the only office in the world housing members of the West Papuan transitional government. There you will find its Foreign Affairs minister, Jacob Rumbiak, who has been in the struggle for his land's liberation since he was a young boy and who spent 10 years in prison for his threat to colonial Indonesia as an...

Mars on Earth. That's where this week's guest has been and she joins us to talk all about it. Sally ventured to Antartica this year, prompted by her deep concern for sea-level rise, having lived her whole life by the water. She got to see a lot of cold, blue water, icebergs, penguins and seals on her epic voyage across the Roaring Forties with 350 other intrepid travellers and scientists down to a...

We sure wish Duff would write a book about his stay in an abandoned resort behind Cape Tribulation and his cosying-up with a cassowary. We might have to settle for his sci-fi, end of the earth epic about 4 blokes who return from the forest to find they are the last humans alive. In Warrnambool. Those old enough may know Duff as the fella who pie-faced himself then kissed Premier Stephen Bracks at...

Serial pest, Leon Zembekis, joins us on the show this week. He is our newly-appointed elder guest wrangler and we are so happy to welcome him to the Radical Australia team. Leon has always respected his elders and the wisdom they impart. He has worked for the Greens for a long time and grew up with a staunch Greek mum who knew how to keep the council officers at bay when they came knocking on thei...

What a treat to have Gus Nossal on the show this week. He joined us on the phone from his home at the last minute. What a trooper. For the uninitiated, Gus is an Australian legend who has been bestowed with many titles and was on the telly all the time back in the day as scientific public intellectual. Gus says that public communication is vital. He was born and raised in Vienna during the 1930s b...

Don Sun is a proud Sunshine boy from the 50s and has been around the community radio scene for decades. He penned the Admin Watch column in Farrago, University of Melbourne's student magazine, back in the day when he studied political philosophy and saw student unionism up close. He roadied for Lou Richards at Channel 7 and turned the quarter lights on at Waverley when the TV broadcasts resumed af...

What are they like - these two muggins. These oafs. These silly sausages. Diggaling deep, shovelling the cash, doing what they can for their beloved 3CR. A hold-tight-to-your-seats thrill ride as these two oompalompas freestyle for your heartfelt pledge to keep the door open to anyone and everyone who has ever done anything good for the wider world. For those that take a political stand for justic...

Sue Bolton is almost peerless when it comes to having clear working memory and deep knowledge of Australian politics the last 40 years. She can tell you the details of so many leftist campaigns, what the issues were that were being caused by government and business, and key decisions that were made. Her knowledge is really quite astounding. We return to Sue this week for our second chat. We take u...

Rowland G Schultz entertains us muchly this week with his poetry and one of his flamenco guitar tracks. He called in on the phone from Sydney and entertained us with many poems. Rowland acquired a brain inury through a transport accident some years ago and this precipitated a very difficult period of his life. We talk about what it is like to lose everything, to be affected by a traumatic injury,...

These days, this week's guest, Ron Guy, is an artist activist for the cause of Western Sahara, the last colony of Africa. Earlier, he supported the cause of East Timor before it gained independence. Ron has been a union delegate for the AWU and was the OH&S officer at Dow Chemicals. He has had a long interest in the trade union movement, starting when he had to endure living with plenty of mice in...