Max

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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Mackenzie’s Mission

With special guest:

• Jonny Casella
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

Before we hear from Jonny about the ground breaking medical mission inspired by little Mackenzie Casella we need to find out about Jonny and Rachael’s journey.

Fortunately not many of us face the tragedy and trauma that Jonny did after deciding to become a father. And having been through this valley of having a beautiful baby then losing her not many parents are prepared to speak candidly about what it all means.

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Deadly Connections

With special guest:

• Keenan Mundine
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

Dreamer, nothing but a dreamer. That might be where it started for our guest today Keenan Mundine after a beginning in life that really didn’t give him a chance.

But after Keenan had spent the first half of his life in the criminal justice system he came to a realisation. Keenan either had to change his ways or face up to spending his life behind bars. Fortunately for us and for Keenan he decided to make a worthwhile contribution to society. And so was born Deadly Connections where he is the co-founder along with his wife Carly.

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The Kindness Revolution

With special guest:

• Hugh Mackay AO
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

When we looked forward to 2021 we also looked back on the disaster of the national bushfires season of 2019/20. That changed us but we did not expect the floods and then the ongoing impact of Covid 19.

Our guest today is Hugh Mackay who has been listening to what the community thinks and says for over 60 years as the country’s pre-eminent social researcher. Hugh draws on this immense experience to see where the community is now and what comes next.

It may turn out that The Kindness Revolution is Hugh’s last non-fiction book to grace our book shelves so we should all listen up. In his usual articulate way Hugh sees that the horrors of 2020 and 2021 have in fact set the scene for a kindness revolution.

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Far from Home

With special guest:

• Rosie Ayliffe
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

All Hell broke loose on that night in 2016.

When we speak with Rosie Ayliffe about her new book Far from Home we hear firsthand how her loving 20 year old daughter Mia was put in harm’s way in a backpacker hostel. We hear how Mia and another backpacker who tried to protect her were both killed by another resident in the middle of a psychotic episode. What made it even worse is that Rosie was far away on the other side of the world in England when this nightmare unfolded. Rosie’s dreams of a future life involving her daughter Mia were gone.

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Secret & Special

With special guest:

• Dr Will Davies
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

Will Davies has been on the program before, bringing us inside stories from The Great War.

Today we get to discuss Will’s new book Secret and Special. We hear about a boys’ own adventure story that started at a beautiful part of Sydney and which took our adventurers on a dangerous trip to Singapore harbour. They were on a night mission to put limpet mines on some ships in port. The unsuspecting Japanese occupiers of Singapore never knew what hit them.

The difference from most adventure stories is that this is all true and draws on the meticulous research of Dr Davies that we have come to expect.

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A Long Path to Freedom

With special guest:

• Jeff McMullen
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

Our guest today is Jeff McMullen, a household name in Australia after his many years on television for both the ABC and Channel 9. For more than 20 years Jeff has campaigned for the Indigenous people in Australia and other countries.

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On Our Doorstep

With special guest:

• Craig Collie
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

The threat of invasion was very real to the Australian people in World War II. Within families decisions were made to kill wives and daughters rather than leave them to be raped and murdered by a ruthless invader.

Our guest today is Craig Collie who has explored what was really going on in 1942. What were the leaders of Australia, Great Britain and the USA doing about the threat? How real was the threat from Japan anyway?

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The Prettiest Horse in the Glue Factory

With special guest:

• Corey White
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

Luckily for our guest today he always believed he was special. That belief was severely tested before too long.

Corey White grew up knowing that his father was in jail and his mother was a heroin addict. Both parents disappeared from his early life and his life journey was about to become a roller-coaster with no guarantees.

Corey is never one to sugar coat his experiences. He had to sell himself to totally unsuitable foster parent candidates in the hope they would take him in. Once in a family he was subjected to cruelty, dysfunction and in once case sexual abuse. At school he was bullied, it was all grim and he wasn’t even 10 years old.

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Too Soon, Too Late

With special guests:

• Ralph & Kathy Kelly
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

There is widespread knowledge of the July 2012 attack on 18 year old Thomas Kelly in 2017. The sorrow felt by the community was compounded by the loss through suicide of Thomas’s brother Stuart four years later.

Ralph and Kathy Kelly have experienced the unimaginable but as a measure of the innate qualities of them and their family they have, in the time since, made great strides in reducing the dangers on the streets of Sydney.

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You Shouldn’t Have Joined ...

With special guest:

• General Sir Peter Cosgrove
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

It is a real privilege when we get to speak with Australia’s 26^th Governor General.

Sir Peter Cosgrove has had several lifetimes it appears as we look at his extensive action packed biography. And it is a measure of the man that not only does he retain an intimate knowledge of all his achievements but that he is so open and candid in looking back on them.

Sir Peter’s career included fighting roles in Vietnam. It also included being the primary assistant to some of the most senior positions in the land. He was Aide de Camp for the Chief of Army and also to the Governor General Sir Paul Hasluck. He rose to attain those same positions himself as Chief of Army and later Governor General.

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Breaker Morant

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’ new 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.

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Foreskin Revolution

With special guest:

• Michael Winnel
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

Most people are surprised when this topic is raised. Is circumcision still being practised in Australia outside strict religious groups?

The answer is unfortunately yes. And Medicare will still pay benefits for the procedure unlike for example Great Britain where the National Health stopped subsidising male circumcision in the 1940’s.

The percentage of young boys who suffer this mutilation in Australia is down to about 10% but that still adds up to a lot of boys going under a knife with no anaesthetic for dubious reasons.

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Heroes Next Door

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 over $10 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.

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Remembrance Day 2020

With special guest:

• Dr Will Davies
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

In a very unusual year for commemorations of any sort we have the opportunity to speak with historian Dr Will Davies on the 102^nd anniversary of peace being declared at the end of the First World War.

Will is always great to speak to because he knows the human side of that conflict and tells the real stories behind the history to bring it alive.

We start by going back to March 1918 when the outcome of the war was far from certain. The Germans had launched a spring offensive which they hoped would lead to victory. However the Allied forces prevailed and a big part of that was the heroic action taken by the Australian diggers. Any Australian visitor to the battlefields of France even today will still feel the gratitude of the French people for having the Australians on their side.

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Purple House

With special guest:

• Sarah Brown
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

Twenty years ago in Central Australia the Aboriginal people called kidney disease “never return home.” When kidney transplant is not available survival from end stage renal failure means dialysis where the patient is hooked up to a machine for five hours every second day for the rest of the patient’s life. And if Central Australians can only access the machines in Alice Springs and Darwin then that is where they will spend the rest of their lives.

Twenty years ago the Aboriginal people with this condition were forced into a place where no one spoke their language and they were lonely and homesick. Family, culture and community relationships were suffering.

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Max

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.

Podcast (mp3)

Click to read more ...

Mackenzie’s Mission

With special guest:

• Jonny Casella
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

Before we hear from Jonny about the ground breaking medical mission inspired by little Mackenzie Casella we need to find out about Jonny and Rachael’s journey.

Fortunately not many of us face the tragedy and trauma that Jonny did after deciding to become a father. And having been through this valley of having a beautiful baby then losing her not many parents are prepared to speak candidly about what it all means.

In this program Jonny opens his heart to take us through the seven short months that he spent with his daughter Mackenzie while she battled with a genetic disease known as SMA (spinal muscular atrophy).

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From Little Things Big Things Grow

With special guest:

• John Stapleton
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

John Stapleton is a legend at Dads on the Air. In the year 2000 while working as a journalist he became involved with a number of fathers who struggled to see their own children because of the machinations of the Family Court. Worse still, because of the legislation no-one in the broader community knew what was going on. So John resolved to shed some light on the problem through a community radio program run on a shoestring from 2GLF in Liverpool New South Wales after giving the program its name. Here we are 18 years later still going strong.

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Best We Forget

With special guest:

• Dr Peter Cochrane
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

Best We Forget is the title of Peter Cochrane’s new book. This is not the way we are used to thinking about the beginnings of nationhood in Australia. There is a quote from the Australian Prime Minister in 1916, Billy Hughes “I bid you go and fight for White Australia in France.” What was the country thinking at the time?

In our school history classes a familiar topic is the causes of World War 1 but the war was never described as the war for White Australia.

Our guest today has a fascinating insight into some of the less recognised reasons for Australia sending its finest young men to the other side of the world to join the fight among the European powers. It can be argued that Australia lost a generation; no less than 60,000 men died in the conflict and many of the survivors carried physical and mental wounds for the rest of their lives. And this was from a population of about 5 million people.

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