The filmmaker on her series which documents a period some historians call the most important war Australia has ever fought in.

Rachel Perkins is one of this country's great storytellers, translating distinctively Australian stories for the screen, including a television series first released in 2022 called The Australian Wars.

It tracks the bloody conflicts that broke out across the continent after the arrival of the British colonists.

Rachel says these are the most important wars in our history: they were fought on Australian soil, between Australians, to determine the ownership and control of the entire country.

The stories from this era are stories of violence, of peace, of epic adventures, which make up the foundational narrative of this nation.

This episode of Conversations was first broadcast in 2022 

Further Information

The Australian Wars is available to watch on SBS on Demand.

This episode of Conversations was produced by Meggie Morris, the Executive Producer was Carmel Rooney.

It explores Aboriginal history, British colonial history, frontier wars, the Native Police, death, conflict, grief, Australian history, guns, violence, land ownership, control, documentary

Tagalaka man, Victor Steffensen on the ‘walking encyclopedias’ — dear old men he met who entrusted him with their decades of cultural knowledge and taught him to apply the right traditional burn for the right environment, so Country can thrive. 

Victor advocates for small, cool fires that emit white smoke. This is something Indigenous people have done for tens of thousands of years to help Country survive and thrive.

Victor was a young man who wasn’t sure which direction to take when two elders in Far North Queensland took him under their wing.

He was hungry for knowledge and a beautiful, trusting relationship grew between the three men. 

The old men poured their expertise into Victor, who captured it all on videotape.

Today Victor teaches all around the country, using traditional methods on how to safely burn the landscape so plants, animals and people can flourish.

Further information

The Knowledge: Learning from ancestral wisdom to save our challenging global environment is published by Allen & Unwin.

This episode was produced by Alice Moldovan. The Executive Producer is Nicola Harrison. 

This episode covers Indigenous elders, cultural knowledge, doubt, backburning, bushfires, fuel load, drip torch, cool burn, mosaic burn, everything is connected, sacred knowledge, climate change, native grasses, crocodile country, knowledge sharing, Indigenous knowledge systems, NAIDOC week, lost language, mentors, Indigenous rangers, Kuranda, camping, fishing.

To binge even more great episodes of the 'Conversations 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 interviews with authors, writers, artists, politicians, singers, psychologists, musicians, and celebrities.

For 40 years, crime was the only constant in Lincoln Lynch’s life, until a prison stint forced him to look inward and change the trajectory of his life for good.

His young mum went to prison for dealing drugs when Lincoln was little, and eventually he followed in her footsteps.

Lincoln endured periods of homelessness and institutionalised abuse as a teenager, and he became a teen father, before winding up in prison himself.

There, in his cell, Lincoln discovered God’s teachings about compassion and forgiveness, and he resolved to leave prison a different man.

On the outside, he was given practical, real-life support to re-establish his life at a halfway house in Sydney called Rainbow Lodge.

With new-found confidence and purpose, Lincoln started studying psychology, fell in love and is now working at the lodge, helping other men find their way outside of prison.

Content Warning: this episode of Conversations contains discussion about childhood abuse and sexual assault.

More information about Rainbow Lodge can be found online.

This episode of Conversations was produced by Rebecca McLaren and Meggie Morris. Executive Producer was Eliza Kirsch.

It explores judicial system, justice system, recidivism, substance abuse, heroin, meth, speed, homelessness, sleeping rough, childhood abuse, sexual assault, sexuality, institutional abuse, mother son relationships, grief, drug dealing, crime, guilty verdict, prison system, prison sentence, serving time, changing your life, turning your life around, love, relationships, fatherhood, psychology, Vince Hurley, policing, criminology, intergenerational trauma, God, spirituality, reform.

To binge even more great episodes of the Conversations 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 interviews with authors, writers, artists, politicians, psychologists, musicians, and celebrities.

The inaugural 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. Warning: 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 reality show on SBS called Alone Australia, but her approach to the competition was very different from the other contestants.

For Gina, the wild was not an enemy to be overcome but a place with no hierarchy, where she feels completely herself.

It’s always been that way, since she was a 'weird' little girl with a rare affinity with birds and nature.

As an adult, Gina spent years inside Sydney’s queer club scene and working for an all-girl security firm, but life changed completely for Gina when she became a mother herself.

Further information

If you need support after listening to this story, please contact Lifeline on 13 11 14.

Gina's book We are the Stars was published by Simon & Schuster in 2024.

The Executive Producer of Conversations is Nicola Harrison.

This episode explores motherhood, parenting, reality television, Alone Australia, winner of Alone, hunting, survival, did Gina catch the wallaby? adoption, adoptees, Kiama, South Coast NSW, ADHD, birds, neurodiversity, bad boyfriends, debt, sexually transmitted debt, scent, pheromones, younger men, Oxford Street, survival, nightclubs, podium dancing, synaesthesia, breast cancer.

To binge even more great episodes of the 'Conversations 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 interviews with authors, writers, artists, politicians, singers, psychologists, musicians, and celebrities.

Nuking the moon, putting mirrors in space and blowing up the Polar ice caps are just some of history's hairbrained schemes to control the weather, an obsession man has had since the dawn of time.

As a major heatwave tears through Europe, millions of people are frantically trying to stay cool, or praying for some relief. Their desperation is not new.

For thousands of years, human civilisations have been obsessed with trying to control the weather, to stave off drought and famine, in order to survive.

There are ancient tales of great kings who could part the oceans, and deities who would bring down the rain if they were presented with the right kind of sacrifice.

But it wasn’t until the last century that we suddenly had the technology to actually do these kinds of things, or at least attempt to do them.

Some of these wild ideas - to bring water to the desert, drain the Mediterranean Sea to make farmlands, simply make Russia a warmer place to live - have involved blowing up the Polar ice caps, putting mirrors in space, and nuking the moon.

They sound dangerous and unlikely, but some of them have come true.

And now, many people are at work on brand new gigantic geo-engineering solutions to counteract the effects of the warming planet.

Palaeontologist and explorer, Tim Flannery, has been tracking the progress of some of these schemes.

A Brief History of Climate Folly, written with Emma Flannery, is published by Text Publishing.

This episode of Conversations was produced by Meggie Morris. Executive Producer is Nicola Harrison.

It explores weird science, crazy science, Elon Musk, China, Trump, feats of engineering, space exploration, the human ego, wild weather events, magic, supernatural, religion, God, divinity, human sacrifice, famine, starvation, migration, global warming, climate change, European heatwave, Paris heatwave, fossil fuel, deforestation, COP, climate change policy, sea levels, floods, Summer, water, gas, electricity, solar power, politics, renewables.

To binge even more great episodes of the Conversations 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 interviews with authors, writers, artists, politicians, psychologists, musicians, and celebrities.

John Hockney's memoir gives a rare insight into the unusual life of one of the world's most famous artists.

He grew up in the industrial town of Bradford in Northern England and was one of five children in a creative household, led by his iconoclastic father Kenneth, a conscientious objector who always told his children to 'never worry what the neighbours think'.

During the war, there were many shortages. As child, John's brother David would creep downstairs in the morning and draw on whatever paper was available.

He drew figures, streets, houses, landscapes and cartoons on the white edge of the newspaper, his mother's magazines, or whatever comics arrived that day.

When David got his first sketchbook at the age of 10, his parents realised his drawing was much more than compulsive doodling.

This episode of Conversations was first broadcast in 2020

Further Information

John Hockney's memoir is called The Hockneys: Never Worry About What the Neighbours Think

For more than a century, Melbourne's Abbotsford Convent was occupied by the Sisters of the Good Shepherd, and the "wayward" girls and orphans they took care of. Patricia Sykes was one of those girls.

She was dropped off at the orphanage with her three sisters in the early 1950s after their mother died.

Their father couldn't afford to take care of four girls at home, but wanted them to stay together, so an orphanage felt like his only option.

As a girl, Patricia, a gifted student who loved music and words, desperately wanted to escape the convent.

But later in life, after finally finishing school and then university as a mother and mature student, Patricia returned to Abbotsford Convent.

As a poet in residence, Patricia went back on her own terms to hear and to tell the stories of dozens of women who passed through its doors, and to interrogate her own understanding of her time with the nuns.

Patricia's collection of poetry is called The Abbotsford Mysteries. You can find information about all of Patricia's books online.

This episode of Conversations was produced by Meggie Morris. Executive Producer was Eliza Kirsch.

It explores religion, Christianity, Catholicism, Australia of yesteryear, modern history, Melbourne, Victoria, nunnery, orphanages, grief, sisterhood, education, women's rights, motherhood, losing a mother, the Queen, writing, books, late life career change.

To binge even more great episodes of the Conversations 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 interviews with authors, writers, artists, politicians, psychologists, musicians, and celebrities.

Science writer David Epstein on why freedom can be the enemy of success and how we can all benefit from less choice, not more.

We live today with vastly more freedom of choice than our ancestors.But there’s also plenty of research telling us all this choice is making us more anxious, overwhelmed and less creative.In his book, Inside the Box, David makes the case for how constraints can unlock creativity and satisfaction.

And why after writing this book he now believes that narrowing your options can truly set you free.

Further Information

Inside the Box: How Constraints Make Us Better is published by Macmillan

You can learn more about David Epstein here

This episode was produced by Jen Leake and the Executive Producer is Nicola Harrison.

It explores creativity, innovation, creative burnout, relationships, technology, art, music, rules, deadlines, science, General Magic, Apple, Iphone, sport, choice, anxiety, creative thinking, rules.

Veteran performer Paul Capsis on his strict upbringing and the strong female role models who helped him stay in school despite the brutality.

A powerful and expressive voice, flamboyant physical presence, and mane of dark hair have become his trademarks as a performer.

But when Paul was growing up in inner-city Sydney as the child of Greek and Maltese parents, these same qualities brought him a world of trouble. At school he was relentlessly ridiculed and beaten.

The love of his Maltese grandmother, Angela, and other family members, helped Paul stay in school despite the brutality; as did immersing himself in the music of his favourite singers, Janis Joplin and Billie Holiday.

This episode of Conversations was first broadcast in 2018

The producer was Michelle Ransom Hughes and the Executive Producer was Pam O'Brien.

It explores performing, singing, homophobia, bullying, Maltese heritage, Greek heritage, strong female role models, Janis Joplin, cabaret, grandmas, women, inner-city Sydney.

Anna Dombkins was 25 years old, when she and her husband happened on a television program about adoption which would completely change their lives. CW: this episode of Conversations discusses adoption.

It was a documentary investigating the unimaginable conditions of some orphanages in China.

The newly married couple felt compelled to adopt, but because they already had biological children, it was near impossible to adopt in Australia.

The newly married couple felt compelled to adopt children who had no other family support, but because they already had biological children, it was near impossible to adopt in Australia.

While living in the foothills of Mount Kilimanjaro for a number of years, Anna saw how many children were coming into local orphanages not because they were unwanted or because their biological parents had died, but because their families simply couldn't afford to take care of them.

So, since returning to Australia and becoming a mother to her sixth child, Anna became the founding director of Forever Projects, a charity supporting Tanzanian women in poverty, so they can live independently, care for and keep their babies without having to resort to adoption.

Forever Projects has since helped more than 3,000 babies remain with their families.

Home Forever: Adoption, hope and the mountains we’re all climbing is published by Pepper Press, Fair Play Publishing.

This episode of Conversations was produced by Meggie Morris. Executive Producer is Nicola Harrison.

It explores families, motherhood, fostering, overseas adoption, fatherhood, siblings, blended families, cultural awareness, Australian adoption policy, faith, religion, Christianity, serving the community, marriage, love, intergenerational, grandparents, grief, cancer, Moshi, Forever Angels Baby Home, five under five, lawyers, legal system.