Matt on his Brisbane childhood, losing his mum at the age of 12, and how a chance conversation with his university drama teacher altered the course of his life

Jackie has lived in the Araluen Valley of NSW for 46 years, where powerful owls boom through the nights and lyrebirds scratch up the garden. In recent months hundreds of native animals have arrived, seeking shelter from Australia's worst-ever fires

For a time, surf-loving athlete Nick Marshall was a professional Ironman. Then he created a new way for kids with special needs to be included at the beach

Ronni Kahn saved 45,000 tonnes of food from landfill and changed how we think about food waste

Eric on life before and after Monty Python's Flying Circus (R)

Mike was 15 when he left school to chip weeds in a Queensland vineyard. Forty years later he found himself in Portugal holding one of the world's oldest grapevines trying to discover if grapes can survive global warming.

When Thea was hired as a nurse on one of the largest cattle runs in the world, the job expanded to include hostessing and saving cows with clover bloat. In 1975 she was at Wave Hill Station when Gough Whitlam handed the Indigenous owners back their land

Margie Bale's car is loaded with ultrasounds, milk crates and angle grinders. All the things needed when you're tending to 7-foot tall camels in the middle of nowhere without a clinic in sight

How WWI helped a homeless vagabond named Adolf Hitler become the dictator of the German Reich (R)

Michelle Garnaut on how she began one of the world's most famous restaurants in communist-era Shanghai (R)