Conversations: Health & Resilience

Kim Huynh on his family's remarkable journey from Vietnam to Australia. And taking on the role of carer for his fiercely strong-willed father, Thiet. Kim grew up in Canberra, arriving in Australia with his family as refugees from Vietnam. Like many migrant children, Kim is a very driven person and has taken on a lot of responsibilities in life. He is an academic, an ABC broadcaster, an author and...

Millie Robinson’s family had been through enough as it was before her devoted dad Jim Rogers received his diagnosis in 2021. Today they navigate the unknown together and stay in the moment to enjoy their tight-knit community. Millie is a celebrant, mum and author living in Brisbane. She also supports her dad, Jim, who has younger-onset Alzheimer’s.  Millie started life in the UK, in a very tight-k...

After a catastrophic car crash in the parking lot of her hospital, Dr Olivia Ong became a paraplegic. But her obsession with learning how to walk again was stronger than her incomplete spinal cord injury. When Olivia Ong was 28 years old, she had the world at her feet. She had recently qualified as a doctor, something she had dreamed of since she was a child growing up in Malaysia. She had married...

Nikki Goldstein was in a coma in the ICU at St Vincent's Hospital when she first 'met' Rabbi Eli Schlanger. When she woke, the pair embarked together on a project to share the wisdom, compassion and universality of several Jewish teachings. Although they were from very different worlds, when Nikki gained consciousness and met Rabbi Eli properly the two became fast friends. Then, they started writi...

Growing up, para powerlifter, Hani Watson’s passion for lifting had been ignited by her dad and the pack of Arnold Schwarzenegger-types in their string singlets who would accompany him to lift weights. The gym has seen Hani through agonising moments in life, and all the way to the Paralympic Games. Warning: discussion of sexual assault. Throughout her childhood she was having operation after painf...

During her two terms as PM, Jacinda gained global attention for her response to the terror attack in Christchurch and for giving birth at the same time as running the country. Jacinda grew up as a good Mormon girl who planned on making a difference behind the scenes. But when she unexpectedly became head of the Labor Party, only weeks away from a federal election, Jacinda discovered she had a tale...

James O'Loghlin had only just reconnected with one of his best and oldest friends, Jum Wallner, when Jum received some terrible news. What began next was a high stakes race with a fatal deadline. The two men had grown up in Canberra, where thousands of homes had been filled with asbestos, which was often carelessly installed and removed. Jum himself had grown up in one of these so-called "Mr Fluff...

At 18 years old, Mick Doleman miraculously survived when his ship capsized in the freezing Southern Ocean off Tasmania. But as he floated in a life raft with his nine crewmates, his ordeal at sea had only just begun.

Professor Lorimer Moseley is neuroscientist, who specialises in the complexities and mind-boggling nature of pain - what it is, why it exists, how it works and when it can go wrong. For most of us, pain is a fundamental part of being alive, and staying alive and yet none of us will ever experience the exact same pain as someone else, which makes it incredibly difficult to understand. Every day, we...

In 2008 Nathan Dunne was night swimming in Hampstead Heath in the middle of winter when a psychological catastrophe struck him. He felt his sense of self split in two, and an unbearable pain overtook him. He couldn’t work out what had happened to him, and neither could the doctors. CW: This discussion contains sensitive mental health details and mentions suicide. Nathan was driven to attempt suici...

The Irish novelist has always been open to where life can unexpectedly take him, and the excitement that comes with that kind of freedom. Colm Toibin's first big move was from rural Ireland to Dublin after his father died when he was young.  Then, it was off to experience the wild hedonism and sexual liberation of post-Franco Spain, a pleasant shock after needing a prescription to buy condoms in I...

When Hilde Hinton was on the cusp of adolescence, her mother died. For years she protected her younger siblings from the truth about their mum. Despite the great grief of her mother's shocking death when Hilde was just 12 years old, there was also a sense of relief for Hilde.  She shielded her younger siblings, Samuel and Connie Johnson, from the truth of how and why their mother died. But when Co...

The bestselling Irish author grew up on a farm set on “50 acres on the side of a hill”. Growing up, she witnessed a harsh, misogynistic country that convinced her she would never marry. Claire shares what she has learned about writing from a litter of newborn piglets. Her works Small Things Like These and Foster have both been made into movies. Claire's stories often take place in the landscape wh...

Jamila’s craniopharyngioma had been growing for years, unbeknownst to her. In hindsight, it was her son who gave the first clue, when he stopped breastfeeding overnight at 11 months old. Today Jamila is an author, a broadcaster and the deputy managing director of Future Women, dedicated to achieving gender equity in Australian workplaces. A few years back, her life was on a powerful trajectory — s...

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...

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...

When Dannielle Miller became a teacher, she was given the classes no one else could handle. She was given a whistle on her first day, to call for help. She didn’t need it — in fact, she had something in common with some of her students. Dannielle Miller is the CEO of Enlighten Education and Director of Education for Women's Community Shelter. As a young teacher, fresh from university, Dannielle wa...

Dave Pearson runs Bite Club, a support service for anyone who has survived a shark attack. Dave’s own brush with death came in 2011, when a three-metre-long bull shark almost tore his arm off. Dave lived that day, but it’s what happened during his recovery that he didn’t see coming. Dave Pearson was with his mates on the NSW mid-north coast back in 2011, and couldn’t get in the water fast enough t...

Lech Blaine with the strange true story of his childhood, shaped by love, religious zealotry, and four wildly different parents. CW: descriptions of foster care and child removal.  Lech Blaine grew up in a big family in country Queensland, where his Dad Tom ran pubs for a living. He had six older siblings, who had come to the family as foster kids before he was born. It was a happy, knockabout, sp...

For years Claude Robinson was doing crime to fund his heroin addiction. He was eventually locked up with murderers in Goulburn Prison, where he shared a dentist with Ivan Milat. But in 2006 he made a big change, to turn his life around. (CW: descriptions of drug use, addiction, and crime) Claude Robinson is the manager of Rainbow Lodge, a home in inner Sydney for men just out of prison. Claude kno...

Louise Philip had just scored her breakout role on Australian television, in Bellbird, when a horrific car crash threatened to derail the life she was forging for herself. Louise Philip was 15 years old when she convinced her parents to let her drop out of high school to become an actress. She had just scored her breakout role on Australian television, but within a few months a terrible car crash...

Gina Chick, the winner of Alone Australia on her life as a creative, outrageous, nature-loving misfit who grew up to live through great depths of love, and grief (CW: discusses the death of a child). In 2023, Gina Chick spent 67 days by herself, in the wilderness of Tasmania’s West Coast, surviving on worms, fish, and one unlucky wallaby. After those 67 days, Gina became the first-ever winner of a...

Psychiatrist Duncan McKellar wrote the report that triggered the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety. He has seen how care changes when we take someone's life story into account. Duncan McKellar is a psychiatrist specialising in the care of older people with dementia and serious mental health conditions. When Duncan first started working with these patients, he was shocked to find e...

In 2014, Ailsa Piper's husband's unexpected death cast her adrift in a sea of grief. Then bit by bit, life called her back.  Ailsa Piper is a writer and a walker. She has used walking throughout her life as a meditative salve and a way to reflect on her life. In 2014 Ailsa's beloved husband Peter died suddenly, while she was interstate for work. His death cast her adrift in a sea of grief, but bit...

Winnie Dunn is the General Manager of Sweatshop Literacy Movement. Here she tells the story of how family and writing brought her home to Tonga, and gave Winnie the power to launch herself into the world on her own terms. Winnie grew up between her father and stepmother's house and the home of her grandmother — a brick home in Mount Druitt called the house of fe'ofa'aki, meaning “to love one anoth...