And now to another episode of my special Streets of Your Town series - The Outback Project - bringing the great characters and sounds of Australia’s bush to you.

In all my years of reporting from outback Australia, one organisation has stood out to me from all others in all my travels, for having the respect and appreciation of everyone in the bush.

And that’s the Royal Flying Doctor Service.

The Royal Flying Doctor Service in Queensland operates 24 hours a day, every day of the year, doing aeromedical retrievals across the vast expanse of the state, and caring for more than 330,000 Australians each year.

As well as the dramatic plane rescues, the RFDS also delivers primary and preventative health care to some of the most remote regions in Australia, and indeed the world.

Today on Streets of Your Town we hear from Dr Aidan Fenoglio - who is one of the on call doctors on the roster for the RFDS, based from Brisbane, and Charleville.

He gives us a glimpse into the life of an emergency doctor in one of the most pressured environments that you can practice in, from the back of an aeroplane.

For more shownotes and links go to my Streets of Your Town digital magazine for this episode at soyt.substack.com

And now to another episode of my special Streets of Your Town series - The Outback Project - bringing the great characters and sounds of Australia’s bush to you.

Today we meet a true living legend of the Australian shearing industry.

Well known Morven local Les Heaydon picked up his first shearers’ handpiece at the age of 14, and just recently shore 100 sheep in one day - to celebrate his 80th birthday.

As he tells us on Streets of Your Town - Les has aimed to do this impressive physical feat since he was a young man, and loves shearing so much, that retirement is long way away yet. He’s joined by his beautiful wife Gail - who joined him as the cook at many of the stations he worked at as a shearer in the day.

For more shownotes and links go to my Streets of Your Town digital magazine for this episode at soyt.substack.com

And now to another episode of my special Streets of Your Town series - The Outback Project - bringing the great characters and sounds of Australia’s bush to you.

Today we meet renowned Barcaldine artist, cultural champion and Indigenous advocate Suzanne Thompson.

Suzanne was awarded a fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering last year, in recognition of her cultural and scientific knowledge, and is a member of the Emissions Reduction Assurance Committee - which is responsible for Australia’s carbon credit scheme. She’s also a Director of the Indigenous Carbon Industry Network.

I recommend making a pot of tea, and sitting back to listen to Suzanne’s incredible story, of growing up on country, moving away, and returning decades later when her ancestors called to her to come back to Turraburra just outside Barcaldine.

As Suzanne tells us on Streets of Your Town - her passion from a young age, is to “walk in both worlds” building connections between Indigenous and non-indigenous Australians.

For more shownotes and links go to my Streets of Your Town digital magazine for this episode at soyt.substack.com

And now to the second episode of the special Streets of Your Town series - The Outback Project.

The vast distances of the outback are daunting and hard to comprehend for many city people. Jennie Feldmeier’s patch dubbed the Cunnamulla-Burke and Wills Remote area, is a ten hour drive from top to bottom, and about eight hours from east to west.

But that’s part of the joy and challenge of the job for Chappie Jen as she’s known to locals in Queensland’s remote south-west, in her role as Frontier Services bush chaplain.

She’s only been there two years, but with massive flooding hitting her region soon after starting, Jennie hit the ground running, and has made a huge impression on the people of her region.

For more shownotes and links go to my Streets of Your Town digital magazine for this episode at soyt.substack.com

And now to the first episode of the special Streets of Your Town series - The Outback Project.

Fittingly I recorded this intro at the beautiful outback town of Barcaldine - hopefully you can hear those sounds of birds, outback winds, and road train trucks in the background as I gather everything into Mildred the cantankerous kombi for today’s travels.

But firstly for this launch episode - we head back to where the journey began - for an outback interview from Brisbane.

Remote outback Queensland is providing the perfect backdrop to a hilarious character-driven mockumentary following four female cabaret performers, as they risk everything for their big break.

Mother Funkers Go Outback evolved out of the real life adventures of comedian Jenny Wynter and her Funny Mummies tours through regional towns.

Director Katrina Channels brought the story arc when she envisioned the storyline of a desperate performer being scammed by her charismatic manager. From there, as they learnt on the road, anything can happen.

Let’s get straight into Jenny and Katrina’s fantastic chat with us on Streets of Your Town - talking about how sometimes the best ideas can evolve organically from friendship, and even the tiniest of tiny budgets can’t stop them.

And as you’ll hear in this interview - they’re taking the trailer for their dream mockumentary to Winton for the Vision Splendid Outback Film Festival - just a casual 15 hour drive from Brisbane - to raise support for the next stage of production.

For more shownotes and links go to my Streets of Your Town digital magazine for this episode at soyt.substack.com

It’s a dilemma faced by many people - where to go for justice when all your legal avenues are exhausted - mainly because of your financial situation.

In Australia, there is a broad grassroots social movement that responds to this enduring problem - out of the belief that the legal system is inaccessible to many people, and that too often it operates without challenge or scrutiny.

Caxton Community Legal Centre is celebrating its 50th year of practice, evolving from somewhat tenuous beginnings to now becoming Queensland’s oldest and largest community legal centre.

But what fascinated me about the way that Caxton operates, is its reliance on a highly skilled volunteer base. Some of the biggest legal names in the state have given their time at Caxton over the years - often on top of their own casework - to ensure that the law is accessible to everyone - particularly those excluded from power.

When it first started, Caxton operated for just two hours every Monday night. Today there’s more than 80 employed staff supported by more than 200 volunteers, assisting about 30 thousand people each year with free legal help and social support.

Two veterans of the service are joining us on Streets of Your Town today, Ros Williams who worked for 30 years as a solicitor and part of Caxton’s General Law Team, and Phil Hall, who has recently risen from being a regular volunteer to becoming Legal Practice Director.

They both have some fascinating insights into the important role of community legal centres in Queensland and around the country, where Human Rights guide decision making on everyday realities.

For more shownotes and links go to my Streets of Your Town digital magazine for this episode at soyt.substack.com

It’s not often we celebrate a world first feat of engineering that underpins the society surrounding it.

But today on Streets of Your Town, we pay tribute to a technological triumph built four decades ago at the Gold Coast, and still going strong today, which is now being recognised as one of the most important developments in the region’s history.

Before the Gold Coast Seaway was built, the notorious Southport Bar was a shallow, dangerous and ever-changing sandbar that made navigation hazardous and caused numerous boating accidents.

But a permanent sand bypass system which took two years to build, became a key part of stabilising the Nerang River mouth, enabling this nightmarish stretch of sand to become the main navigation entrance from the Pacific Ocean to the Gold Coast Broadwater.

On this episode of Streets of Your Town we hear a bit of this history, from one of the original engineers on the project who was there to celebrate its 40th anniversary at a special ceremony at the Sand Pumping Jetty that forms a central part of the project. Dean Patterson tells us how he transformed his surfer experience growing up on this golden stretch of sand in the 1950s into an intricate understanding of interface of tide and sand, and how to ensure humans are safe in that environment.

We also hear from Gold Coast Waterways Authority Chair Deanna Nott, who started celebrations by recalling what the waterway was like before the Gold Coast Seaway was built, and how the Gold Coast would not be the same place today without it.

For more shownotes and links go to my Streets of Your Town magazine for this episode at https://soyt.substack.com/p/gold-coast-seaway

Acclaimed Quandamooka artist Delvene Cockatoo-Collins has brought a beautiful insight into an ancient story from her people to the Museum of Brisbane.

The artist-in-residence from Minjerribah/Stradbroke Island continues to evolve her arts practice, and this time has reimagined the Museum of Brisbane’s creative space into an interactive and immersive realm exploring the ancestral story of Warrajamba the Mermaid.

In doing so she has created a hub of tranquility in the bustling CBD of Brisbane, bringing audiences to slow down and connect with Country and culture.

She’s inviting all of us to join her on her quest to find Warrajamba - a central figure in her art, as she continues the ongoing search to find the ending of the mermaid's story.

And as Delvene explains to us on this episode of Streets of Your Town, this significant story of her people was passed down to her from her mother, grandmother, and generations before them.

For more shownotes and links go to my Streets of Your Town magazine for this episode at https://soyt.substack.com/p/weaving-traditional-stories-delvene-cockatoo-collins

The story of proudly Aboriginal owned and led sustainable fashion label Magpie Goose can be summed up in its motto - `stories you wear’.

The vibrant and colourful collections of this Brisbane based fashion label are featured in an exclusive exhibition until October 5 at the Museum of Brisbane, tucked inside Brisbane’s glittering City Hall.

Co-owner and Kamilaroi man Troy Casey tells us on Streets of Your Town how having their creations on display is a pivotal moment in the evolution of Magpie Goose - giving visitors a glimpse of how they use fashion as a canvas for storytelling.

“The stories are not about time,” Troy says. “They’re about country and connection and culture and community, and these stories are both ancient and contemporary in nature. That's what makes the brand so special."

For more shownotes and links go to my Streets of Your Town magazine for this episode at soyt.substack.com

Kris Mizzi is a troubadour and quintessentially Australian singer songwriter, who knew his calling for musical storytelling from an early age.

I was lucky enough to hear him play a couple of sets of his Australian folklore at the Woodford Folk Festival, and wanted to share his talents with Streets of Your Town.

It was his first Woodford Folk Festival, and while the heat of this Queensland summer was a shock to the Victorian Moe born and bred raconteur, he loved having the blank canvas of a rural woodland as the backdrop for his songs of struggle and the country characters he grew up with .

The bush space offered the perfect palette for creatives such as Kris to become just one part of a chain that keeps the magical land of Woodfordia alive forever.

Kris tells us on Streets of Your Town how his songwriting is rooted in finding the beauty in the hardships we all go through, and defying the temptation to jump on board with the negative. He says to find beauty in everyday events is the challenge that brings him so much joy.

For more shownotes and links go to my Streets of Your Town substack magazine for this episode at soyt.substack.com