Academic Danielle Celemajer on how the Black Summer bushfires brought she and her rescue pig Jimmy into a terrible proximity with the inferno, changing both of their lives forever

Valerie Browning moved to the northern deserts of Ethiopia as a naive young nurse in 1973. A chance meeting on the streets of neighbouring Djibouti changed her life, and women's health in the region

Debra Gavranich with the story of her mother Marija, who left her tiny Croatian island to make a life with a man she’d never met, in Far North Queensland's Cassowary Valley (R)

Dr Irving Finkel on the ghosts who joined the ancient Assyrians and Babylonians in their day to day lives (R)

Tim Ferguson was in the midst of a high-flying comedy career when he started experiencing 'whacky symptoms'. In his early 30s, doctors told him he had Multiple Sclerosis

When Dr Genevieve Campbell heard the intoxicating music of Tiwi song women, it made her hair stand on end. Immediately she knew she needed to meet the women, and these relationships have changed her ideas of what music is

Dave Gleeson is known for his blistering performances in The Screaming Jets and The Angels, but he grew up singing at Mass in Cardiff, with a mum who opened their home to hundreds of foster children

One of America's oldest lighthouses was built in 1716 and survived the Revolutionary War. Its first two keepers met dismal ends, but Sally Snowman was always enamoured by it. She is the first woman to care for the lighthouse, and now she will be the last (R)

When Cynthia Banham survived the unthinkable, she had to reinvent herself, with the support of her family, and the kindness of the Sydney Swans AFL team

Edita Mujkic fled the Bosnian War in Sarajevo with her two children, 50 American dollars in her pocket and no real plan. It took her almost two years to get her husband Goran out of the deadly siege situation, all the way from the Lake District in England