With special guest:

Chris Hammer
… in conversation with Bill Kable

Sometimes the world of fiction overlaps our day to day life. In speaking with our guest today Chris Hammer we find out that Chris is interested himself in how the characters in his new book Trust will deal with the real life problem of the Covid 19 crisis. As well as Covid there is reference in the book to the 2019/2020 bushfires that swept the nation in unprecedented fury.

One of the greatest charms in reading Chris Hammer’s best-selling books is that there is authenticity. For Australians that means familiarity with the settings on the coast and in rural areas for previous books. In Trust the setting is Sydney but not the postcard Sydney in the shadow of the Opera House and the Sydney Harbour Bridge. This is the real Sydney populated by real people. Overseas readers are also drawn to this picture of the real Australia and Chris is delighted that his work has been translated into other languages so people in other countries can learn about us.

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With special guest:

Rob Sturrock
… in conversation with Bill Kable

What? The title of Rob Sturrock’s book can still surprise even in the twenty-first century. Somehow the idea of fathers taking on the primary role of raising children sits a little uncomfortably.

Rob is calling for no less than a revolutionary approach if we are going to transition to a world where boys are free to be whatever they want to be, including being a stay-at-home Dad if they want. Many young women in our society have for some time enjoyed the freedom of choice when it comes to being a mother in the home or a career woman. Yet when women set out to be high flyers in the business world there are some things we do not hear. Women are usually praised for saying they want a good well-paying job and that they are prepared to work hard. But do they ever say this is so that they can support a family? The community still sees men as the main bread winner and so the sentiment is common if not universal among young men.

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With special guest:

Peter FitzSimons
… in conversation with Bill Kable

“Shoot straight you bastards! Don’t make a mess of it.” These are the last words of Breaker Morant as he sat on a chair looking at the firing squad about to kill him.

These words are well known in Australia as one of the few relics from the first time troops from the Australian continent went into the battlefield in the Boer War. But after reading Peter FitzSimons’ book titled Breaker Morant the inescapable conclusion is that there are a lot of unknowns in the story of the Breaker. Many of the things we thought we knew are actually fictions usually started by the Breaker himself.

When we talk to the very well-known Peter Fitzsimons today we discover first of all who the Breaker really was, starting with his real name. He was English, not Australian. He left a trail of debtors and forsaken lovers around Australia but had nothing to return to in England. He was charming, a great story teller and entertainer. He was a man’s man in many ways, a hard drinker, great horse rider yet also a respected poet with many of his poems published. He was a friend of Banjo Patterson.

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With special guest:

Molly Murn
… in conversation with Bill Kable

Today we travel back to the time before 1836 and to Australia’s second biggest island, Kangaroo Island, off the coast of South Australia.

This is a big story over different generations of islanders. The modern day story deals with the effect on a family of a grandmother’s death. When Nell died her family returned to Kangaroo Island to mourn and farewell her. Nell’s granddaughter Pearl pulled together the scraps Nell left behind, her stories, poems and paintings and unearthed the early history of the European sealers and their first contact with the Ngarrindjeri people.

Interwoven with the modern day story is the life on the island before 1836 with some brutal characters set against the next generation. The main character asks himself what it is to be a man after being confronted with some terrible exploits of the early sealers.

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With special guest:

Samuel Johnson
… in conversation with Bill Kable

Samuel Johnson is well known to Australian television audiences. He has won the Gold Logie for his performance in the miniseries Molly.

But to others in the Australian community he is the hero who has raised $20 million for cancer research. In that connection Samuel rode his unicycle around Australia in a fund raising effort and in the process of cycling 15,000 kilometres broke a world record. Clearly this man knows a hero when he sees one.

And yet when Samuel’s sister Hilde Hinton told him about the everyday heroes she met in her own fundraising activities it all came as a surprise. Many of these unsung heroes in our Australian community hide their light under a bushel. These Australian heroes were initially horrified to think that their stories would be included in a book titled Heroes Next Door. However Samuel can be very persuasive and we are fortunate to be able finally to hear these uplifting stories at a time when we need them most.

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With special guest:

Alex Miller
… in conversation with Bill Kable

Those who fought against the Nazis in World War II were necessarily shadowy figures. It was a matter of survival.

For Max Blatt who lived the latter half of his life in Australia those shadows stayed with him until the day he died. Even 20 years after his death those shadows and mysteries still shrouded his life story. But our guest today the award winning writer Alex Miller was not content to leave the story in the black hole of Nazi atrocities. For Alex and all of us these stories need to be explored and revealed if the community as a whole is to get over being so damaged by events in the not so distant past. Despite the sadness and tragedy in Max’s family this story becomes one of survival, friendship, mentoring and most of all love.

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With special guest:

Monica McInerney
… in conversation with Bill Kable

When we speak with Monica McInerney she still sounds like she has lived all her life in South Australia. In fact she has become a local in Ireland over the last twenty plus years and knows very well the country around Dublin which is a big part of her new book The Godmothers.

The book could be used to promote the Irish countryside with its beautiful scenery and warm welcoming pubs. We also visit England and Scotland which is a welcome adventure when travel has become so restricted for all of us. But the main appeal of this story is that we learn about families, relationships and the often unforeseen consequences of our actions. In particular we are let in on some family secrets and different ways they are treated. Some secrets are bound to go to the grave while others can hardly be called secret since everyone in the family knows them.

Monica delves into the personalities of her characters and finds that everyone has a story, everyone has flaws and some are not very nice people. Along the way we get to question our own ethics. And there are surprises in store right to the last page.

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With special guest:

Caro Llewellyn
… in conversation with Bill Kable

When Caro Llewellyn started writing her new book she had intended it to be mainly about her extraordinary father, Richard. However her life then took a sudden and unexpected turn, one which turned her world upside down. That change meant adding to the story with her own experience and her feelings became the title of her new book Diving Into Glass.

Caro was on top of the world with a son she adored, a glittering career organising book festivals around the world where she got to meet and become friendly with leading writers and an active lifestyle that often included daily runs of 10km or more. What is more Caro felt confident in agreeing with her father that fate would favour her because surely her dad had taken on himself all the bad luck that a family should expect.

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With special guest:

John O’Halloran
… in conversation with Bill Kable

John O’Halloran was an unlikely war hero. With the assistance of Ric Teague John tells his story for the first time in The Platoon Commander: The extraordinary story of the man who led Australia’s most decorated platoon of the Vietnam War.

Coming from Tamworth in country NSW John was called up in the first conscription ballot. But before doing his compulsory medical he was involved in a street accident which badly damaged his foot which should have ruled him out as medically unfit. However with a bit of help from a local medico he got over that first hurdle and soon distinguished himself in training.

John was made Platoon Commander and at the age of 21 he was sent to Vietnam. In that war-torn country he now had enemy soldiers shooting at him, trying their best to kill him. And the men under his command were dependent for their lives on his decisions under fire.

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With special guest:

Dr Gabriel Weston
… in conversation with Bill Kable

In her absorbing new book called ALIVE Doctor Gabriel Weston looks in admiration at the incredible work 11 organs of our body do to keep us alive. Gabriel tells us that if the space permitted she would have liked to examine at least another 14 organs but we do get to investigate the most interesting.

Somehow Gabriel manages to talk about body parts without making even the most squeamish feel uncomfortable. This is clear when the book begins with a post mortem description that is very detailed. Gabriel is also able to deal with the genitals in a very matter of fact way that generates more light than heat.

What comes out most strongly in ALIVE is the sense of wonder that Gabriel feels when describing what the organs of the body do. Gabriel first felt this as a child when she was likely to go towards an accident or medical emergency. The feeling grew when she was invited to attend a surgical procedure but seemed thwarted when her maths and science abilities were not up to the standard required for entry into medical studies.

So Gabriel studied the subject she was good at namely English literature. Luckily for all of us she found a way into medicine and found her true calling.

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