Streets of Your Town

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.

At first blush, one may think that being a palliative care nurse and a comedian may be a strangely odd combination of professions.

But for Carolyn Mandersloot, it’s absolutely natural, and in many ways essential, providing a yin and yang balance to her challenging work. She helps many people in the outback with mental health challenges and all from her outback Charleville base.

And as Carolyn explains on this episode of Streets of Your Town, her unusual perspective has led to the development of her own podcast - Living and Dying with Cancer, to encourage people to have frank conversations while they’re still alive, about what a good life, and a good death looks like for them.

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

Australian rock and roll legend Mark Lizotte - aka Diesel - has written and performed the anthemic soundtrack for many Australians’ lives over four decades.

His first love has always been performing. So he decided to mix up the back catalogue - by throwing the song choice back to his loyal audience.

Diesel’s By Request tour has just been extended after overwhelming demand and a string of sold-out performances around the country.

And the key - placing the setlist firmly in the hands of his fans who are invited to submit the songs they want to hear before each performance - cover songs included.

As Diesel tells us on this interview for Streets of Your Town, that’s led to some surprises he would never have expected, that have become the hallmark of the tour.

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 Streets of Your Town series - The Outback Project - bringing the great characters and sounds of Australia’s bush to you.

This episode coincides with and helps commemorate Vietnam Veterans’ Day in Australia, this year marking the 60th anniversary of the Battle of Long Tan - one of the major military engagements in Australia’s wartime history.

In the tiny town of Morven in Queensland’s remote south-west, is a small but incredibly moving memorial to the nurses who served in the Vietnam War, Australia’s longest military engagement of the 20th century.

The walls are covered with documentary photos from the time, of nurses deployed to Vietnam treating Australian casualties in incredibly challenging conditions, after they were retrieved from the battle zone by choppers and taken to hospitals for treatment. A visitors book bears signatures from all around Australia, with messages of appreciation for what this memorial has recognised.

After writing the book “Our Vietnam Nurses”, author Annabelle Brayley was determined that the service of these brave women would be properly acknowledged, and never forgotten. The Vietnam Nurses Memorial in Morven is a tribute to their service.

Annabelle is now raising funds for a bronze statue of the nurses to honour their devotion to duty, and is indefatigable in her advocacy for us to remember their courage, sacrifice and dedication under the most trying circumstances.

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.

The Charleville base for the Royal Flying Doctors Service serves a vast and isolated population in one of the most remote areas of Australia, covering an area more than 622,000 square kilometres, which is almost the size of the United Kingdom.

It is steeped in history, with an RFDS Visitors Centre for people to wander through one of the original bases for the medical service established by Dr John Flynn more than 80 years ago.

And while emergency specialists such as Dr Aidan Fenoglio from our last Street of Your Town episode are crucial to RFDS operations and saving people’s lives, there are many more people in the support crew that keep the planes in the air and the service going 24 hours a day, every day of the year, becoming an embedded part of the community.

On this episode of Streets of Your Town, we speak to some of the crew from Charleville - Courtney Bylett, Liane Spencer and Nick Tully, who give us a glimpse of their daily emergency filled life.

Courtney Bylett is one of the on call flight nurses for RFDS Charleville. As well as her emergency work, the budding entrepreneur has now started a boutique coffee shop and high end restaurant in Charleville to take up her downtime when she’s not on shift.

Liane Spencer is the base coordinator, continuing a tradition of service handed down by her father who was an RFDS engineer when she was a child. She knows the layout of the Charleville base intimately, having grown up with the RFDS.

And of course, where would the RFDS be without the people flying the planes themselves. Nick Tully grew up in Quilpie, a town two hours drive down the road from Charleville but which locals talk about as if it was a next door neighbour. Nick became a pilot and takes great pride in coming back to the outback where he grew up.

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.

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