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editor’s letter
Welcome! will never forget visiting Kensington Palace in the week after Princess Diana’s death. In my early 20s and living away from home for the first time, I was more interested in the British music scene than the monarchy. However, it was impossible not to be swept up in the country’s grief, and I wanted to observe firsthand this defining moment in history. What I wasn’t prepared for was how the scene would impact me. The sheer volume of people and flowers. The open weeping, the heart-breaking notes. Complete strangers hugged in shared sorrow. The sense of loss was palpable. I’m not ashamed to say I shed a tear that day. If that was the effect this outpouring of public pain had on me, a cynical young Aussie abroad, one can barely imagine how William and Harry, just 15 and 12 years old at the time, must have felt witnessing this tribute to their adored mother. As one veteran royal watcher told Editor-at-large Juliet Rieden, young Harry appeared visibly “tortured” as he stood with his father reading the notes and surveying that scene from the Kensington Palace gates. In many ways, Harry’s recent bombshell decision to step back from royal duties is rooted in that moment in time and the legacy of his beloved mother. While it may be convenient to blame his new American wife for his drift away from the monarchy, the evidence of his struggle with life behind palace gates has been apparent for much of his life. For an in-depth look at what led to this dramatic turn of events, and what it means for Harry’s relationship with his brother, father and beloved grandmother, see Juliet’s report on page 30.
NICOLE BYERS: PHOTOGRAPHY BY ANDREW FINLAYSON. ALANA LANDSBERRY.
I
We stand with you
Another story that resonated with me this month, for totally different reasons, is Health Editor Vicki Bramley’s feature on misophonia, or selective sound sensitivity syndrome (page 100). I have long had an extreme aversion to the sound of crunching, particularly potato chips and apples. My poor husband gets shushed, hushed, even banished to the kitchen, should he wish to enjoy such a snack in my presence. Understandably, he finds my reaction a little unreasonable, so I was pleased to be able to tell him I’m not just being difficult, I am actually suffering from a known disorder. As for foods that are worth enduring some munching noises for, check out our seasonal food special on page 146. Enjoy the issue.
Nicole Byers EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Rebuild Our Towns is a campaign launched by Bauer Media, publisher of The Weekly, to support Australian towns affected by the bushfires. We know many of you have donated generously to support those doing it tough in the wake of the devastating fires, but we also know the road ahead will be long, as those affected begin to slowly rebuild their lives and communities. That is why this campaign centres on the fact that practical help doesn’t have to cost a fortune. Our thoughts go out to every person caught up in this crisis, but actions speak louder than words, so we invite you to join us to make a difference and help our heartland heal. As the campaign grows, it will focus on more and more towns across the country, and the unique and meaningful ways each of us can assist in their individual regeneration. From shopping online at local stores, to visiting for special events or contributing to community projects. My extended family and I have just booked a mini-break on the south coast, and rather than packing our car full of food before we leave, we plan to spend every cent of our holiday fund in the local communities. Out of the devastation, the spirit of Australia has truly shone; let’s make sure we continue to keep the light on for those who have endured so much darkness. To find out how you can help, and to read more stories of hope and healing, head to rebuildourtowns.com.au.
Email me at awweditor@bauer-media.com.au Follow me on Instagram @nicolebbyers
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BABY No.3FOR MICHAEL BUBLE
February 2020
38
Contents 54 106 78 50
On the cover
Up front
14
5
THE SPIRIT OF AUSTRALIA: stories of hope and healing
EDITOR’S LETTER: from the desk of The Weekly’s Nicole Byers
30
11 OPEN LINE: your letters 12 IN THE NEWS 28 FIREPROOFING OUR
‘I’M HONOURING MY MOTHER’S LEGACY’: how Diana inspired her son to follow his heart
38
ESSIE DAVIS: taking Miss Fisher to the big screen
44
TRUE CRIME: the Black Widow murderess
66
KRISTIN SCOTT THOMAS: ‘Turning 60 is rather fabulous’
FUTURE: experts weigh in on how we can prepare for the future 50 SURF SUPERHEROES: the special needs Nippers group changing lives
SUMMER FOOD: tasty salads, the best barbecue dishes and sweet treats
78
WE ARE FAMILY: Mat Rogers and Chloe Maxwell thrive and survive 84 ME AND JACKIE O: Carly Simon reflects on her friendship with Jackie Onassis
90
Fashion & Beauty 106
BOLD AND BEAUTIFUL: make a statement with bright colours and shapes
114 WORKSHOP: fashion takes on sustainability 118
BEAUTY: the new generation of sun protection
121
PRETTY LIST: fabulous foundations
HUMOUR: Amanda Blair forgoes hearts and flowers for true romance
124
92
Health
BEAUTY NEWS
54
NOISE WORKS: the effect of sound on your health
60
98
126
BRAVE CRUSADER: Jill Emberson fought for ovarian cancer sufferers until the illness finally took her
THE
THRONE OF CHAOS: the mayhem in the court of Thailand’s King Maha
BREAKING DOWN BARRIERS: the Sydney retirement village trying inter-generational living
JENNIFER BYRNE: a candid interview with the Mastermind host
135
72
MY STORY: Teresa Leggett helped her husband come out
104
PAT McDERMOTT
100
BREATHE EASY: keep your lungs in top condition
129 130
VOICE OF AUSTRALIAN WOMEN SINCE 1933
ASK THE DOCTOR HEALTH NEWS
Your ultimate
2020
140
Cruise & travel guide
Adventurer PRESENTS
Bonus
cruise & travel guide
Top tips on the hottest destinations, must-do experiences and the best travel deals around the globe — on land and on the high seas.
Test Kitchen 136
PICK YOUR PROTEIN: delicious salad recipes that pack a punch
Home & Regulars
140
164
COOK, FREEZE, EAT: meals you can prep and freeze on the weekend to make midweek dinners a breeze
146
PICK OF THE SEASON: make the most of sun-ripened tomatoes with tasty, simple recipes
HOMES: renovating a Federation beauty 169 HOME HINTS
146
136
WHAT’S ON: a chat with My Kitchen Rules judge Manu Feildel, plus The Diary
173
READING ROOM: our summer reading guide
178
MONEY: making ethical super decisions
150
FIRE UP THE BARBECUE: mouth-watering recipes for outdoor entertaining
181 PUZZLES: test your skills 186 BAUER MEDIA’S PRIVACY NOTICE
156
FOUR WAYS WITH FRITTATA
188
HOROSCOPES: astrology with Lilith Rocha
158
SWEET SENSATION: dessert queen Charlotte Rees shares recipes from her new cookbook 162 QUICK BITES
170
204 TRAVEL SPECIAL:
150
158
15-page flipbook on the best cruises and places to visit in 2020
AC K N OWL E D G E M E N T of C O U N T RY The Australian Women’s Weekly acknowledges the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation as the traditional custodians of the place we now call Sydney, where this magazine is published. The Weekly also pays respects to Elders past and present.
SO GLAMOROUS IT’S CRIMINAL
Mature themes and violence
IN CINEMAS FEBRUARY 27 © 2019 Every Cloud Productions Pty Ltd and Screen Australia
EVERY
CLOUD
team
Editor-in-Chief Nicole Byers Editor-at-Large Juliet Rieden Deputy Editor Tiffany Dunk Editorial Co-ordinator Zachary Bryant (ZBryant@bauer-media.com.au)
JOURNALISTS
News and Features Editor Samantha Trenoweth Senior Writers Sue Smethurst; Susan Chenery Writer Genevieve Gannon This month’s contributors Jenny Brown, Susan Chenery, Louise Gannon, Susan Horsburgh, William Langley, John McDonald, Gary Nunn, Lizzie Wilson
DESIGN
Creative Director Joshua Beggs Deputy Art Director Sarah Farago Senior Designer Jennifer Mullins Photo and Shoot Editor Samantha Nunney This month’s photographers Harvie Allison, Luisa Brimble, Phillip Castleton, Maree Homer, Will Horner, Alana Landsberry, James Moffatt, Kristina Soljo, John Paul Urizar
C O PY E D I T O R S
Senior Copy and Travel Editor Bernard O’Shea Deputy Copy Editors Nicole Hickson, Bronwyn Phillips
LIFESTYLE
Acting Style Editor Jamela Duncan Acting Style Director Maya Wyszynski Beauty & Health Director Vicki Bramley Fashion & Beauty Assistant Editor Stefani Zupanoska Medical Practitioner Professor Kerryn Phelps Columnists Amanda Blair, Pat McDermott
FOOD
Food Director Frances Abdallaoui Food Contributors Maggie Beer, Michele Cranston
MARKETING
Marketing Director Louise Cankett General Manager Subscriptions & E-Commerce, Marketing Sean McLintock Senior Subscriptions Campaign Manager Ellie Xuereb
A DV E RT I S I N G
Head of Brand Anna Mistilis Brand Implementation Executive Rachael Potter NSW Sales Director Karen Holmes Victoria Sales Director Jaclyn Clements Queensland Head of Sales Judy Taylor
PRODUCTION
Production Planner Sally Jefferys Production Advertising Co-ordinator Dominic Roy
B AU E R M E D I A G R O U P
Chief Executive Officer Brendon Hill Chief Financial Officer Andrew Stedwell Commercial Director Paul Gardiner Executive General Manager Digital Operations & Publishing Sarah-Belle Murphy General Manager Media Solutions Jane Waterhouse Business Analyst Georgina Bromfield EDITORIAL AND ADVERTISING ENQUIRIES The Australian Women’s Weekly, GPO Box 4178, Sydney, NSW 2001, phone (02) 9282 8120, visit aww.com.au. The Australian Women’s Weekly is published by Bauer Media Group. SYNDICATION ENQUIRIES syndication@bauer-media.com.au Published by Bauer Media Limited (ACN 053 273 546), 54-58 Park Street, Sydney, NSW 2000. © 2019. All rights reserved. Printed by PMP Print, 31-35 Heathcote Road, Moorebank, NSW 2170. ISSN 0005-0458
Your letters
Open line A
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LETTER of the MONTH
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Lake Tyers residents Charmaine Sellings (front) and Rhonda Thorpe inspired readers around the country.
Thank you for your wonderful coverage of these catastrophic fires (Courage Under Fire, AWW, January). This disaster has possibly done more to bring Australians together than anything previously, underlining the kindness, care and compassion we all knew was there. Those who are caring for the animals that have survived are true gems. I am sure all of us send out our love to all those affected, and to those who are heroically still fighting these monstrous fires.
C. Jolliffe, Buderim, Qld.
ADMIRABLE HUMANS PEARL
What an inspirational story about the Indigenous women from the Lake Tyers Fire Service (“They’ll Bury Me In My Yellows”, AWW, January). Wise, intelligent and community-minded – everything I admire in a fellow human. Well done, girls. You are all amazing!
OF
WISDOM
“Rock bottom will teach you lessons that mountain tops never will.”
A. Hannah, Rankin Park, NSW.
–AUTHOR UNKNOWN
JESSICA SHAPIRO/BAUERSYNDICATION.COM.AU. JAE FREW/BAUERSYNDICATION.COM.AU.
LEADING WITH COMPASSION It was a privilege to read about Jacinda Ardern (“You Don’t Have To Be Perfect To Be Prime Minister”, AWW, January). I am very impressed by her confidence, but most of all I’m moved by her genuine feeling. Her statement about having the opportunity to see the good in people was an inspiring reminder. I am committed to looking for the good in the world in 2020. Here’s to a decade in which we will see more women on the world stage, leading with compassion and integrity.
P. Muller, Macleay Island, Qld.
NOT SOME ODD-BODS The January edition of The Weekly is outstanding. The article about the female bushfire volunteers was exceptional. When a friend in the UK was shocked to hear they were volunteers, I had to
Jade Blee, via email. tell her they are amazing people who are highly trained, not some odd-bods picking up a garden hose! Congratulations on such an intelligent magazine.
Bushfire crisis
COURAGE E RE UNDER FIR
M. Stevens, Halls Head, WA.
In the midst of an unprecedented bushfire season, Susan Chenery pays tribute to the women firefighters who risk their lives to keep us safe. P H OTO G RA P H Y by ALANA LANDSBERRY
he noise. That’s what you don’t get in the footage and photos The terrible, terrible noise of a big bushfire. The malignant sound of the wind as the fire sucks in the oxygen it needs to grow. The hissing and popp ng of eucalyptus trees, the explosions as they release their gasses. Fires make the r own weather, creating their own wind, lightening, black hail “The no se,” says Liane Henderson, volunteer firefighter of 20 years standing, “is like jet planes.” If we’re lucky we’ll never know what it’s like inside an uncontained fire. Liane does, and so do her firefighting colleagues. It’s dark, like an eclipse. “It can get very scary because you can get disoriented. It’s another world when you are out there, it really is.” An unpredictable fast-moving force of destruction, engulfing everything in its path. “I look at it as this beast I’ve got to stop,” says Liane, Acting Inspector for ➝
A NEW FAN
T
I purchased the January issue to read about the bushfires and was taken by so much interesting information, from the feature articles to the recipes and regular sections. I had also forgotten about the excellent Reading Room book reviews. As an avid reader in a remote area, I find these recommendations a wonderful help for ordering books.
JANUARY 2020 | The Au tralian Women’s Weekly
W R I T E to us Letter of the Month wins $100. The winner of our Pearl of Wisdom this month wins a 12-month subscription to The Australian Women’s Weekly, valued at $90. Your postal address must be included in all correspondence. Please state clearly if your letter is not for publication. See Contents for the location of Bauer Media Ltd’s Privacy Notice.
17
P. Weir, Alice Springs, NT.
S E N D YO U R L E TT E RS to O P E N L I N E , T H E AU ST R A L I A N WO M E N ’S W E E K LY, G P O B OX 4 1 78 , SY D N E Y, N SW 2 0 01, or E M A I L O P E N L I N E @ BAU E R - M E D I A . CO M . AU.
WE CA ATCH UP on the LAST 30 DAYS D
NEWS BITES
Awards season
h AWARDS SEASON was less abo out
Dame Helen Mirren (left) and Olivia Colman (right) will both voice sea turtles in an animation to raise awareness of the crisis facing the world’s oceans.
celebrating past achievements aand more about looking to future acction. Russell Crowe’s Golden Globee acceptance speech highlighted the Australian bushfires, and Sarah h Snook backed his comments. BAFTA double-nominee Marggot Robbie urged viewers to donatte anything they could to fire services. Nicole Kidman, who donated $500,000 to the causee, also spoke of the fires on the red carpet, while Cate Blanchett seent a thank you to responders whiile presenting a Golden Globe aw ward.
Around the world
GETTY IMAGES. HRH THE CROWN PRINCESS OF DENMARK. PAUL SUESSE/BAUERSYNDICATION.COM.AU.
OLYMPIAN DEFECTS Iran’s only female Olympic medallist, Kimia Alizadeh, has defected from the country, saying she no longer wants to be a part of “hypocrisy, lies, injustice and flattery.”
IM-PRESS-IVE Human rights lawyer Amal Clooney has been honoured with a Freedom of the Press award for her work, including defending two journalists being held in Myanmar.
Now we are nine The Danish royal family has released these beautiful candid photos of Prince Vincent and Princess Josephine to mark the twins’ ninth birthday. In a statement, the royal family said it was a pleasure to release the images. Their mother, Crown Princess Mary, took the photos herself.
The latest batch of Girl Scout biscuits does more tha raise money. They are stamped with feminist messages to inspire young girls to take risks, lead, and be strong. ICE ART DELIGHTS The 10,000 workers who cut 220,000 cubic metres of ice into towering sculptures for the world’s biggest winter festival have outdone themselves. China’s Harbin Festival grows bigger every year.
STILL WINNING Women’s Weekly Women of the Future winner Sarah Moran continues to achieve great things, launching her Girl Geek Academy in Samoa to teach girls life-changing coding skills.
FEBRUARY 2020 | The Australian Women’s Weekly
13
From heart
Home isn’t home anymore ... Dave and Laena Stephenson survey the remnants of their house in Nymboida.
BLACK SUMMER The AUSTRALIAN BUSHFIRE CRISIS
break to hope Four months after fire tore through the Clarence Valley in northern NSW, Susan Chenery finds a community offering each other hope and slowly healing and rebuilding together. P H OTO G R A P H Y by ALANA LANDSBERRY
T
hey could hear the fire coming an hour before it arrived, “roaring like an aeroplane taking off,” says Bob Gorringe. “You can hear things exploding at other properties – gas bottles, trees – these loud bangs as it is coming up the valley on the other side of the hill. It is loud, it is hot, it is dark.” With an 80kph wind behind it, 12km across the front and 120 metres high, the fire roared through the Clarence Valley in northern NSW, leapt across the Nymboida River and came straight for Bob’s house. “Hell, it was hot. The wind is rushing in at about knee height to feed the fire. It tips you over – your legs are going one way and your body is going the other. It’s almost impossible to stand up.” Realising they wouldn’t be able to defend the house Bob, 60, who is ex-Air Force, and his wife, Narelle, had to get out fast. But the cars were stalling. “There was no air to run on. The fire followed us all the way.” The next day, when he came back, Bob’s house had “vaporised”. All that was left of his contented life in this densely forested wilderness were brick stumps and a pile of tin. Months later, Narelle still wakes in the night unable to breathe, thinking there is smoke. She couldn’t return to look at the wreckage of her home. “She didn’t feel safe.” There are still crashes in the night as dead, hollow trees fall. Nymboida in the Clarence Valley, 44km south-west of Grafton, was a beautiful place – lush, fertile and green; the clear ➝
FEBRUARY 2020 | The Australian Women’s Weekly
15
river, trees tangled in vines, gullies of rainforest teeming with birds and wildlife. It attracted people like Laena Stephenson, a marriage celebrant, who came to bring up her children in nature. “When we came here, we were all young,” she says of the group of families who settled in the district 33 years ago. “We started our families together, had babies together. We helped each other build our houses.” All that is left of Laena’s house are the remnants of walls, the twist of metal that was the television, broken crockery and a melted Rayburn wood stove in what was once the kitchen. It was a pretty mudbrick house, covered in climbing vines. She and her former husband had built it. “I massaged every brick in that house, I hammered in every bit of that earth floor,” she remembers solemnly. “I dug rocks out of the ground with a crowbar. I couldn’t walk into that house without loving it.” She keeps remembering things that are gone: “Oh, my grandfather’s banjo mandolin, oh this, oh that.” One of her four daughters, Kaya Jongen, owned the house next door. That’s gone too, and Kaya is now living in a tent. “There were many beautiful owner-built homes in Nymboida,” Laena says sadly, “homes made of mudbrick, rock and timber – really beautiful bespoke houses.” Now, for miles and miles, there are just burned, black, skeletal trees, sticks and scorched earth – an empty, desolate landscape. Twisted metal where 101 houses used to be. The fires roared through 51 per cent of the Clarence Valley, taking three million hectares. It’s deathly quiet now. There is no birdsong, no animals anywhere. Laena can be philosophical about her house. “It’s only a house. It was a beautiful house but in the end, it is material things.” But she weeps openly for the defenceless animals that were lost. “When I really break and feel it intensely, it is always to do with looking at nature, the wildlife, the flora and fauna who had no part in creating this situation and couldn’t get away from it, everything just screaming. One of the beautiful things about Nymboida
NYMBOIDA, NSW
POPULATION 298 HOMES DESTORYED 85
was that we had incredible variety – a number of threatened species, wallabies, wallaroos, brush-tailed rock-wallabies. Now people talk about seeing one animal – a possum or a pair of Eastern Greys. Just seeing a firefly can make a us happy. A team of wildlife people went around to the dams and watering holes taking food. And if it was eaten, they were so happy. But most of the time it wasn’t. I had leaf-tailed geckos in my house before the fire. Now I don’t know if I will ever see one again.” Laena was lucky. Her current husband, Dave, had insured their house. He also built the shed that they now live in with donated furniture. And he helped defend the community-owned Camping and Canoeing Centre, which became the hub for recovery operations when the district’s shell-shocked people were left largely with just what they were standing up in. After the fire, they had no phone or internet for five weeks and no power for 10 days. A month before the Nymboida fire, further north along the valley, the
16 The Australian Women’s Weekly | FEBRUARY 2020
community of Ewingar had sheltered in the local hall from a “monster” of a fire that had surrounded the building leaving them unable to escape. The fires came three times to Ewingar. Each time they had to evacuate. “There were times when we thought the fire was contained but then a month later, something would flare up. Without rain, it just doesn’t go out,” says Nadine Myers, 42. “Everyone has been touched by the fires,” she says. “An elderly couple died [Gwenda Hyde, 68 and Robert Lindsey, 77]. A lot of people around here knew Gwenda. That was horrible. We were surprised more people weren’t killed with the intensity of the fire.” Yet, in the midst of it all, Ewingar rallied. “We had periods where the fires were going crazy and we were feeding people, at the hall, who had lost their homes or had been evacuated,” says Nadine. “We fed the RFS volunteers too. All these people came forward with big pots of food and bread and everything we needed. The Red Cross donated food and
BLACK SUMMER The AUSTRALIAN BUSHFIRE CRISIS
water. Our Two Hands, a local charity that works with people who are homeless, helped out. So did the Casino Golf Club. Shed of Hope has been building little sheds for people who have lost everything. People were amazing.” Then, one evening, after a long day volunteering with the RFS, Nadine and her partner, Boris Sweeney, hatched a plan to hold a benefit
concert. They made some inquiries and before they knew it, 20 bands had volunteered. Rock singer Tex Perkins was the linchpin, says Nadine. Six weeks later, a weekend-long music festival was held at one of the few buildings still standing, the hall. “It was just beautiful,” says Nadine, and it not only raised funds, it was healing. “A lot of our good friends and neighbours had been depressed for a long time. They’d been depressed about the drought already, and then the fire came and they lost a lot. But everyone’s cares were wiped away for that weekend. There were smiles just everywhere.” Likewise, the Nymboida community has galvanised. “Officials started coming out, donations started coming in, my husband got a generator going for power,” Laena says. “We fed people at the canoe centre twice a day for a month and had emergency accommodation there. Mary, a registered nurse, came in every day.
Savanah and Heath Walker (above) are among the volunteers (far left) helping out. Laena (left) and Bob Gorringe (below) now have to look forward and rebuild.
Other people who have experience with trauma came in to help.” Chef Scott Gonzales cooked 700 meals in four weeks. People who didn’t have insurance were taken in by people who still had houses. “But what people need more than anything is to tell their stories,” says Laena. When John Lillico from BlazeAid arrived, the valley was “just black everywhere. There was nothing here, absolutely nothing. It was like a moonscape, and the people were pretty downcast.” BlazeAid’s mission is to rebuild farms and fences, but volunteers often spend almost as much time listening to locals’ stories. “There is so much emotion in these people,” says volunteer Danny Handcock. “We would sit down for a smoko up in Tenterfield and get up three hours later. All we did was listen.” “You can tell when they’re stressed because they have no idea what to do,” says John. “That’s when we say, ‘Let’s have a cup of tea and by the way, why don’t we lock up that boundary over there?’ Once they see something happening, they’re into it.” ➝
FEBRUARY 2020 | The Australian Women’s Weekly
17
BLACK SUMMER The AUSTRALIAN BUSHFIRE CRISIS
Rebuild our towns Laena says Australia must learn from this and help nature heal.
• The people of Nymboida welcome volunteer architects, builders and engineers, and donations of building supplies. Please email: rebuildnymboida @outlook.com. • Nymboida Camping & Canoeing, with its riverside camp ground and cabins, sustained damage and has not yet reopened, but when it does, the community would welcome visitors: nymboidacanoecentre.com. • To donate to the Nymboida Community Bushfire Fund, visit: ie.gofundme.com/f/nymboidacommunity-bush-fire-fund. • Ewingar’s music festival raised just a fraction of the funds that will be needed to rebuild the community. To make a donation, visit: chuffed. org/project/ewingar-rising • BlazeAid has camps of volunteers at work in Victoria. NSW and South Australia. For more, visit: blazeaid.com.au
Khalsa Aid, a Sikh charity, also arrived in the district with a truckload of fodder for farm animals, and that lifted spirits. For Bob, like so many, helping others has been healing. “Initially you go into shock. Then you realise the entire community is completely screwed. And what you can do is try to help the people around you. Even those who have survived the fire and have still got houses have no communications, electricity or running water. We put out a call to anybody with a chainsaw, generator or a water pump. We took them out to people so they could get on with their lives.” When The Weekly arrives, Bob is fixing old tools for the new tool library. “When you start building a house, the first thing you have to do is drop $10,000 at Bunnings. This will save people thousands of dollars that they haven’t got.” After a car accident and a heart attack, Bob had been unable to work, so couldn’t insure his home, but he is
Laena’s grandson Ochre Thomas sits on blackened tree stumps. Left: Tommy Welham, with daughter Maisy, is helping to drive the rebuilding process.
determined to rebuild. “I’m an old man, but I’m going to give it a go.” For now, he is living at the canoeing centre in a donated caravan. Narelle is staying with friends. Tommy Welham has been working on the recovery efforts and says the focus has shifted now “from first aid, food, water and emergency shelter to looking at how we can help people rebuild. We are working on a support program where architects, builders, engineers can come in and help design houses, and get them through council. It’s a low socio-economic area where a lot of people don’t have savings. So we are looking into low-cost, fire-rated designs using green materials.” The fires, says Laena, have strengthened in her a “deep-seated knowledge of what is important, and it isn’t a house. As we accounted for everybody, it took days. ‘Has anyone
18 The Australian Women’s Weekly | FEBRUARY 2020
seen the hermit who lived up here? Oh yes, I have.’ Every time we accounted for another person, I thought, nobody has died and we won’t have to go to that next level of grief. I love this community.” Laena believes that recovery comes “by working together, trying to be nice to each other … and communicating about what we can do, as a community, to remain living in this beautiful place. “We need to make sure we’re ready next time and don’t lose lives – building into hills and cliffs, conserving water, stopping run-off, dealing with drought. I will plant trees, I will plant food. I will try to look after the environment with good land management techniques and more sustainable, environmentally friendly dams, so we can protect our houses. “I see the recovery as being hypervigilant about how we deal with this very fragile landscape and how we help nature to heal. I don’t think Australia will ever be the same again. But we have to try to help it recover.” And hope lies in the fuzz of green on the ground, and frills of leaves on the trunks of burned trees. The valley is slowly greening but it will be years before it flourishes. AWW
A message to Westpac customers affected by the bushfires. Our Bushfire Recovery Support Package is here to help our customers and communities recover and rebuild from the bushfire crisis. These measures supplement our existing Disaster Relief Package. Personal Banking customers • Mortgage repayments paid for one year for customers who have lost their principal place of residence due to the bushfires (up to $1,200 per month). • Interest-free home loans for customers to cover the gap between insurance payouts and rebuilding costs, subject to our credit criteria ($250 million allocation). • Up to $2,000 in emergency cash grants for customers whose properties have been destroyed or damaged by the bushfires.
Business customers • A grant of up to $15,000 to assist small businesses with the cost of refurbishing premises that have been destroyed during the bushfires. • 2.83% p.a. three-year variable rate, low-interest rebuilding loans for business customers, up to $1 million individual loans ($1 billion allocation). • Up to $2,000 in emergency cash grants for customers whose business premises have been destroyed or damaged by the bushfires. • No foreclosures for three years on any farming businesses in the affected areas. • Fast track credit approvals to provide short-term assistance.
Community • $3 million to provide emergency cash grants to customers in affected towns and regions. • $500,000 donation to Financial Counselling Australia to provide financial counselling services to people in affected towns and regions to help them through the recovery and rebuild. • Volunteer fire fighters nationally can access the Disaster Relief Package. • Appointing new role CEO, Bushfire Recovery to lead response. This includes mobile customer support teams deployed to affected towns and regions for localised decision-making. • This is in addition to more than $1 million already contributed to community groups such as The Salvation Army Emergency & Disaster Appeal, state-based volunteer services, and state bushfire appeals.
To find out if you are eligible for the Bushfire Recovery Support Package call 1800 067 497 or visit any Westpac Branch.
Things you should know: Eligibility conditions apply. Westpac customers who wish to utilise these special relief measures or need assistance should contact Westpac Assist on 1800 067 497 or speak with their Relationship Manager. Mobile Westpac Support teams will also be available in bushfire affected towns and regions. © Westpac Banking Corporation ABN 33 007 457 141 AFSL and Australian credit licence 233714.
Thank you, fireys This summer brought fires like Australia has never seen before, and also revealed the formidable spirit of strong and selfless people.
“Come home safe”
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For months we have watched the selfless dedication and bravery of our firefighters. To them, the children of Australia say thanks. HICKLING PHOTOGRAPHY. AAP. GETTY IMAGES. FAIRFAX. ERIN LEHMAN.
Tiny Spencer Haines was born nine days overdue on Christmas Eve. Perhaps he’d been waiting for his brave dad, Beau Haines, to get home from battling the catastrophic fires in NSW. “He must have known that Dad wasn’t home,” says his mother, Cassie Randal. The first-time mother was nearing her due date when Beau was asked to leave their home in Kiewa, Victoria, to fight fires on the NSW coast. “I had two hours’ notice. They only had two people who could go,” Beau says. He told Cassie he’d stay if she wanted him to, but Cassie understood this was his duty. “It was a hard decision but the brigade’s like a whole other family to us,” Cassie says. “I admit I had a little crying fit when he told me he had to leave, but being with a firefighter, these things pop up. We were both scared he was going to miss the birth but Spencer decided to hold on for nine more days before he made his entrance.” And while he was on the frontline of the blaze, Beau’s young family was never far from his mind. After Beau returned safely, local photographers Kurt and Charlyne Hickling, who have both been volunteer firefighters for 17 years, did a photo shoot at the CFA shed and images of the firey father went viral (above). “I’m very proud of what Beau does,” says Cassie. “Come home safe is all I ask.”
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Messages of hope The children of Australia have said thank you to the volunteers protecting their homes and communities. RFS Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons says the cards, notes, drawings and poems filled with “such heartfelt, innocent and beautiful messages truly lift spirits and keep the team going in these difficult times.”
Fallen heroes
As he addressed the daughter of one of the volunteer firefighters who lost their lives, RFS Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons’ voice cracked: “Baby Charlotte, you need to know that your dad was a selfless man, he was a special man and he only left us because he is a hero.” Fitzsimmons was speaking at the funeral of Andrew O’Dwyer, 36 (third from top). He and fellow firefighter, Geoffrey Keaton, 32, (bottom) lost their lives before Christmas when a falling tree hit their RFS truck on the Green Wattle Creek fireground near Buxton, south-west of Sydney. Both men were posthumously presented with the highest accolade, the Commissioner’s Commendation for Extraordinary Service and Bravery. Volunteer firefighter Samuel McPaul died on duty on December 30 at the Green Valley fireground near Albury, leaving behind a pregnant partner. And as we go to press, Victoria mourns veteran firefighter Bill Slade, who died on January 11 while working to contain a blaze near Omeo in the Victorian alps. FEBRUARY 2020 | The Australian Women’s Weekly
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The long road to recovery As the fires subside, the real work begins. Genevieve Gannon looks at the efforts to help our land recover.
Flora lost in fires Some of Australia’s richest wilderness has been ravaged by bushfires so fierce conservationists now fear it may never fully recover. Western Australia’s Stirling Range is home to more than 1500 species of plants, at least 87 of which are not found anywhere else in the world, but out-ofcontrol bushfires that burned more than 40,000 hectares in December could alter the delicate ecosystem. Nearly half the park was burned before 200 fire crews brought the flames under control, but now conservationists fear the blaze may have caused irreparable damage. The Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions is conducting an aerial survey of the area to assess the damage, but they say they’ll have to wait until the regrowth begins in spring to know how well the bushland will recover. The haven is one of only 34 sites in the world that is exceptionally rich in species.
STIRLING RANGE, WA
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PORT MACQUARIE, NSW
BEN STAMATOVICH/THE DRONT WAY. FORESTRY CORPORATION NSW. NEWSPIX. RYAN POLLOCK/@RYNO_THECAPTAIN. NSW GOVERNMENT.
Wildlife wipe-out
Our canine conservationist As fire closed in on his home and his wife Jen rushed between their son and their premature twins in Port Macquarie hospital, Ryan Tate and his faithful detection dog Taylor went to work rescuing wildlife. Fire had devastated the local koala habitat and Ryan (with Jen’s full support) felt compelled to help. “We both genuinely felt a moral responsibility to get out there,” he says. Ryan and his specially trained Springer Spaniel Taylor (above, left) worked for up to 12 hours a day in heavy gear and harsh conditions, spotting koalas that had been injured,
displaced or left without adequate food as a result of the bushfires. “A dog can cover in an hour what would take 10 people half a day,” Ryan says. Taylor is trained to sniff out koalas or, in bushfire conditions where it’s smoky and windy, their scats. “She’s probably one of the most broadly trained conservation detection dogs in the country.” The Tates’ twins, Evie and Wren (above, right), had been born seven weeks premature, and at times fire cut both Ryan and Jen off from their newborn girls. “There are three ways to the hospital but many times all three of them were on fire,” Ryan says. The area where Ryan and Jen live came under threat from an ember attack but fortunately the flames never reached their house. Ryan says the kindness of people has made what would otherwise have been a tortuous time more tolerable.
Dr Chris Brown has urged us not to forget “the other quiet Australians” devastated in the fires, who are “too small, too hidden or simply not pretty enough to have a PR presence”. Posting photos of the Brush-tailed rock-wallaby, Long-footed potoroo, and Kangaroo Island dunnart, he sought to “shine a light on them before we lose them forever”. With over a billion animals estimated to be lost nationwide, he said it was the right time to put faces to these horrific numbers and truly understand what we are about to lose forever.
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MALLACOOTA, VIC
Angela Rintoul’s stomach was “jumping” as she held her 17-month-old son (above) and waited for the deadly firefront to approach Mallacoota. The sky was blood red. The air was filled with the noise of exploding gas bottles and high-pressure water hitting the outside of the building as firefighters prepared for the advancing inferno. Volunteers moved through the evacuation centre, removing hazards and covering windows. “It’s a feeling of terror in your stomach,” Angela recalls, safe now in Melbourne after being evacuated by the Navy. Authorities warned people in East Gippsland to evacuate on the afternoon of December 29, when an area half the size of Belgium came under threat from out of control bushfires. Angela was in her parents’ shack with her partner and baby, deciding whether to take a gamble on the road to Canberra. A decision to flee would have meant driving through thick forest, which “felt a bit risky because there were also fires in Bega”. But before they had a chance to make a decision, a blaze flared up at nearby Wingham River. Within minutes it
became too dangerous to leave. It was frightening, Angela says. The family had been coming to Mallacoota for 18 years and had never seen it this dry. “You could hear dry leaves being blown along the street, making this eerie sound, before the fire was anywhere near us.” The next day the air became smokier, and at 4.45pm a text message instructed them to seek shelter. They grabbed their bags and headed for the lake, which was already crowded with people. A towering pyrocumulonimbus cloud loomed over the scene. The fire was behaving erratically, creating its own weather and “it was throwing out fire in all directions,” Angela says. As families huddled by the water’s edge, police encouraged those with children to go to the community centre. Throughout the night the building filled up, while outside the air was alight with embers.
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The fire hit early on Tuesday morning. Sirens wailed as Mallacoota began to burn. The community centre was spared but much of the town was razed. What wasn’t destroyed was the residents’ spirit. The local baker stayed up cooking for travellers and locals who had been trapped in the centre or at the water’s edge, while a cafe owner delivered coffee to shell-shocked and sleepdeprived survivors. Angela’s family’s house was spared, but they lost their shed. Finally, on Friday they were evacuated on the HMAS Choules. “It was a horrific experience,” says Angela. As the ship steamed away, she felt “an immense sadness for the people who are still there trying to start the process of recovery and rebuilding.”
FAIRFAX. AAP. HUMAN APPEAL INTERNATIONAL. ANN GORDON. NEWSPIX. KIM MCSWEENEY. SUNNATARAM FOREST MONASTERY. EMILIA TERZON © 2020 ABC.
Escape from Mallacoota
JOHNSONVILLE, VIC Women from the Australian Islamic Centre brought five truckloads of supplies to country Victoria and cooked breakfast for 150 firefighters.
LAKE CONJOLA, NSW There were daring rescues and boat convoys. Two locals in a tinny rescued a family of 14 and two dogs from 50-foot high flames.
QUEENS PARK, NSW Crafters young and old have helped injured wildlife. Here, Monty Armstrong runs up a bat wrap for the Rescue Craft Collective.
Helping hand It’s an aphorism often repeated: when disaster strikes, look to the helpers. Watching in shock as swathes of our farmland, towns and forests were incinerated, we’ve taken comfort from all that ordinary Australians do to help.
OMEO, VIC An ‘army of angels’ convoy of 150 trucks delivered donated supplies in Victoria. Damien Britt (left) delivers hay to farmer Russell Foster.
Shelter from the firestorm When Erin Riley took to Twitter to offer a paddock to people whose properties had been ravaged by fire, she had no idea she would spark a major rehousing project. Soon she was inundated with people offering and seeking emergency accommodation and findabed.info was born. In just one
BUNDANOON, NSW As thanks for defending the Sunnataram Forest Monastery, the faithful offered massages, blessings and Thai food to firefighters.
week more than 6500 people registered to provide shelter to people evacuating from the path of the fires. The first person placed was a 76-year-old man who had been sleeping in his car. “A couple not far from there put him up. They made him dinner; he even borrowed the guy’s clothes,” Erin says. Since then, people have offered everything from spare bedrooms to whole houses to families and individuals in need. FEBRUARY 2020 | The Australian Women’s Weekly
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PENROSE, NSW
BUSHFIRE CRISIS
Love conquers
When Stephanie and Chris Forde (below, right) became engaged, there was no question where they would hold the wedding – at Stephanie’s parents’ property in Tambo Upper, in East Gippsland, Victoria. And as the couple live in the UK and Chris’ family had never been to Australia, what better time than summer? The date was set for January 4, 2020. Then everything changed. Travelling to Tambo Upper to celebrate New Year’s Eve, Stephanie and Chris were stopped by blockades. Stephanie’s parents had already evacuated their animals and were preparing to leave themselves. “Then on New Year’s Day we saw the dire weather warning for our wedding day,” recalls Stephanie. “It was 40 degrees and high winds. There was no way it would be safe for our guests, and if we all got stuck, it would be catastrophic.” That’s when the kindness of the community took over. First, Jonathan and Judy Wood offered up their waterfront property in nearby Paynesville. When the flower farm they were using
Pat’s pregnant alpacas When the RFS built a firebreak behind Patricia Bova’s Penrose alpaca farm she knew she had to evacuate, and there was no way she was going without her “girls”. But it wasn’t as simple as that, what with her girls being a flock of alpacas, 12 of which were pregnant. “It’s very hard to find a spot for 60-odd animals,” Patricia (left) says. Luckily, plenty of people were keen to help. The Moss Vale Showgrounds opened and friends helped her move the flock in a horse float. As smoke blanketed the road, police provided an escort. And once the girls were ensconced at the showground, locals arrived with supplies. The alpacas settled in happily, with one giving birth a week later. The baby doesn’t have a name yet but Patricia says she’ll likely choose “something fiery”.
burnt down, House of Blooms at Dahlsens in Bairnsdale offered a free bouquet and buttonhole. The day before the nuptials their wedding planner, Adele Charlwood, and partner Lucas built a bar from scratch after the one they’d ordered couldn’t get through roadblocks. And that was despite Adele’s own property being on an ember warning. Their caterer called in a panic. “She said, ‘I have to stay and defend my property. I’ve made all your food but you’re going to have to get it and warm it up yourselves,’” says Stephanie. Locals and friends stepped in to help. Finally, the local Rotary Club set up a marquee and tables. “And the wedding was the best day of our lives,” Stephanie says. “It wasn’t just our 20 guests at that wedding; it felt like the whole community was involved. And Chris’ family have been blown away by the Australian spirit – how people who may not know each other just band together to overcome a terrible situation.”
TAMBO UPPER, VIC
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ADAM MCLEAN/AUSTRALIAN COMMUNITY MEDIA. REBECCA FARLEY PHOTOGRAPHY.
BLACK SUMMER The AUSTRALIAN
GET ON BOARD
rebuild ourtowns • AU S S I E S L E ND I N G A H A N D•
The practical things you can do to help rebuild Australia, one town at a time There’s not a single Australian who hasn’t had their hearts broken by the horrific bushfires that have swept through our country. The road to rebuild will be long but as a nation we will: brick by brick, fence by fence. Bauer Media launched this campaign to help our neighbours in their time of need. Each week we will shine a spotlight on a town telling our generous readers how they can help, from the best fundraisers to donate to that specifically benefit the locals, to products they can buy from that town or region that support small businesses there. We’ll highlight the farmers who need fencing supplies, the schools which are short of books and pencils, the yoga school that needs mats or how to plan a getaway to the region when the time is right to bolster their local tourism industry. The Rebuild Our Towns campaign is centred on the fact that practical help doesn’t have to cost a fortune. Our love and thoughts go out to every person, but actions speak louder than words, so join us to make a difference and help our heartland heal.
Go to rebuildourtowns.com.au and watch as we move from one town to another over the coming months
Fireproofing If this year’s fire season is a harbinger of things to come, there needs to be some urgent planning. Samantha Trenoweth meets fire experts devising smart solutions to our catastrophic problem.
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rofessor David Bowman is a pyrogeographer, one of the world’s leading fire experts. He has studied wildfire for more than 40 years but this fire season in Australia has made the hair on the back of his neck bristle. It has frightened him. “This is a nation-defining, historical event,” he says, with some urgency, from his post at The University of Tasmania. “I said that in November. I knew it, even then, because the sorts of things that were happening in northern NSW were so extraordinary, so extreme. Extrapolating that, it was easy to see it moving down as a wave – it was inevitable. “There has been terrible loss of wildlife, biodiversity, farmland and homes, but we have also been lucky. Both good fortune and the skill of the firefighters have ensured the loss of [human] life hasn’t been greater.” However, David stresses that we can’t count on our luck holding unless we, as a nation, do some serious fire prevention and preparation. “Something bigger than Black Saturday is in the cards,” he believes. “Maybe we will
avoid it this year but I know the risk is sitting there.” Dr Joelle Gergis, an award-winning climate scientist and author, believes this fire season has been not only nation-defining, but a signpost to our global future. “As the planet continues to warm,” she says, “people all over the world are looking at Australia and looking at the summer that is unfolding, and we are now the poster child for climate change. We’re illustrating what it looks like when the planet warms.” Australia is the most vulnerable nation in the developed world to climate change. Average Australian temperatures had risen by roughly 1.4°C above pre-industrial levels in the lead-up to this fire season (with the continent warming more rapidly than the global average of 1.1°C). The best scientific modelling suggests that, beyond a rise of 2°C, the impacts on our climate and ecosystems could be irreversible. Yet Joelle believes it may still be possible to put the brakes on climate change. “When we have more greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, there is an
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increase in global temperatures,” she explains. “That’s why climate scientists, not just here but all over the world, are calling for a reduction in emissions. The first thing we need to do is emissions reduction, and the second thing is adaptation.” Naomi Brown is the former CEO of the Australasian Fire & Emergency Service Authorities Council, a board member of the National Aerial Firefighting Centre and one of the emergency leaders who last year requested a meeting with the Prime Minister to warn of the risk of a catastrophic fire season. She too believes we must be better prepared. “All the fire chiefs could see this was ready to happen,” she tells The Weekly from her home in Perth. “Even so, we were shocked. The word unprecedented gets bandied about a lot but these fires really were unprecedented. Their size and ferocity and intensity were staggering. Now there needs to be some very hard thinking done about the future. “In the short to medium term, we need to invest in more research into how we can best deal with these fires. We need to look at the sustainability of volunteerism – can we expect volunteers to risk their lives day after day all spring and summer long? We need to invest in more aerial equipment. We need to investigate the way hazard reduction burns are done and look into other methods of fire mitigation.”
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our future David believes we need a greater diversity of weapons in our arsenal to prepare for future fire seasons. “What frustrates me is just framing this as a debate about prescribed burning,” he says. “It’s a little bit simplistic and we’re dealing with a really complicated problem. Fuelreduction burning doesn’t stop fires, it changes their behaviour. It can reduce their intensity, which gives firefighters increased options.” But prescribed or hazard-reduction burning is only possible in certain landscapes and in very particular weather conditions. It is labour and equipment-intensive, so it’s expensive. And, David says, it has “a sliding scale of benefit”. So it’s been found to be a huge help in cooler weather and less intense fires but “when the weather’s crazy and catastrophic, there’s no benefit at all.” David’s fire prevention arsenal would include prescribed burning but it would also include better town planning and building design, “and retrofitting existing houses to withstand ember storms. We could also look at using water more wisely,” he says. “Towns have so much wastewater. We could recycle that to create green fire breaks and buffer zones with less flammable plants on the edges of cities and towns. We could plough out some areas before the fire season. In parks and bushland, it is important to thin the understorey. We could use brush cutters or animals like goats to eat down weeds and brambles. There are so many very practical things we could do.”
David is also a proponent of Indigenous cultural burning. Two houses in the Hunter Valley were reported saved from the fierce Gospers Mountain fire this season by areas that had been culturally burned around them. In the devastating Tathra fire nearly two years earlier, the flames sidestepped the local Indigenous community, where cultural burning was as regular practice. Lauren Tynan is a Trawlwulwuy woman from Tebrakunna country in northeast Tasmania but she has lived most of her life in NSW. She has a PhD in the works that investigates cultural burning and she is a founding member of Koori Country Firesticks, the organisation responsible for the burning around those Hunter Valley homes. Cultural burning, she says, is cooler and slower than hazard-reduction burning. “The flames are lower and seem to trickle through the landscape like water. It starts from a single ignition point and moves out in a circle, giving animals and insects plenty of time to escape. We start small and we always burn at the right time, in the winter, when the conditions are right. “This has been done for many thousands of years and the Australian continent has adapted through a relationship with cultural burning. When we stop doing that burning, places are left with leaf litter, branches, dead trees. These have built up over hundreds of years and become like ticking time bombs. Any amount of fire near them and they just go up. “I think of it like, today, we’re all used to sweeping our floors and
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cleaning our house and it’s not a big deal. That’s exactly the same way our ancestors used fire. I hope cultural burning can be used more widely now as a regular practice, to keep county clean and healthy and growing.” David concedes that this fire season has been terrifying but he maintains that he is an optimist, and he has some big-picture ideas that he would like to propose to government. He would like to see Australia’s peak holiday season moved away from the height of summer to protect lives and the tourism economy. And he would like to see the creation of a Landcare-like community group with responsibility for grassroots action on fire protection. “It should be front and centre and really well resourced. It should be a network of local community groups. It should be fun, family-friendly and have Indigenous involvement. It should be concerned with protecting communities from fire but also with sustainability and the environment and biodiversity. “We need to work through this, not in haste, but we should be preparing to make our communities safe. I’m optimistic that we can solve our problems. This is what humans are good at. But it’s just like dealing with a group of children. First, stop quarrelling. Then focus on the task in hand. Then make some really practical decisions. There’s a really big challenge here to provide optimism and a pathway out of this mess, and I believe we can do that.” AWW
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leap of faith Cover story
After months of talks, neither Prince Harry nor Her Majesty got what they wanted. Inspired by his mother, Harry followed his heart, but where does this leave the monarchy? Juliet Rieden unpicks cks an unprecedented royal split. split
hen Harry met Meghan everything changed. He was floating on cloud nine, falling hard and fast for this passionate, nurturing, exciting Californian with her brilliant TV career and thriving lifestyle blog. Prince Harry was a young man aching to find love, to start his own family, to stand by his brother with his own wife by his side and find a partner for his very unique line of work. In those halcyon months before the world knew about their secret romance, Harry and Meghan forged a powerful union and a tender love. Together they planned to take on the world, to inspire and empower, and have a go at fixing many of the problems that troubled their generation. Those closest to Prince Harry saw the change immediately. At a recent dinner for his most personal passion project, Sentebale, the Lesotho charity he set up with his friend and fellow royal Prince Seeiso to help children affected by AIDS and HIV, Harry said: “I have grown up feeling support from so many of you, and watched as you welcomed Meghan with open arms as you saw me find the love and happiness I had hoped for all my life. Finally, the second son of Diana got hitched, hurray!” No sooner had they wed (in front of an estimated 1.9 billion global audience), than they got straight to work. “We were excited, we were
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hopeful, and we were here to serve,” he said. Harry and Meghan brought their special brand d of can-do positivity to the royal arena and for the House of Windsor this wass gold dust. The couple became catnip for a new international audience hungry for young leaders they could look up to. For a honeymoon period the couple became the people’s royals. There was a Diana frisson to their warmth, charisma and their ability to connect with everyone they met. Then a tall poppy resentment kicked in with a jaw-dropping ferocity. Not everyone bought into their progressive ideas. Theey were branded hypocrites for or jumping on private jets while espousing environmentalism and portrayed as “pushy” and “demanding” by a media that seemed determined to pull them down. In response the Sussex family opted to connect with their followers directly through their own social media channels, garnering millions of followers. But ironically it was in the social media space that Meghan especially faced the most alarming commentary, fuelled by an ugly racist agenda. Controlling the media is still a work in progress for the couple. “The
media is a powerful force force, and my hope is one day our collective support for each other can be more powerful because this is so much bigger than just us,” Harry said. Having watched paparazzi hound his mother, this new attack on his wife was a chilling reminder of desperately sad times. Diana had counselled her sons: “If you find someone you love in life, you must hang onto it and look after it …protect it.” And here her youngest, who a few years earlier had admitted “all I’ve ever wanted to do is make my mother proud”, opted to follow his mother’s advice. ➝
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Cover story
From above: The couple has faced a barrage of criticism from Britain’s tabloids; the Queen and the Sussexes at the centenary for the Royal Air Force; Harry at his mother’s funeral; Prince Harry, with Prince Charles and Prince William, will lose his military positions.
time the monarchy modernised. “It’s true the House of Windsor has been slow to recognise the need to find an exit-route for those family members who are not royal-central, and the problem can only get worse until the system changes,” comments Wilson. The role of the ‘spare to the heir’ has always been problematic. Prince Andrew and Princess Margaret both felt overlooked. Harry is now sixth in line to the throne with his son, Archie, seventh and he has struggled with his royal role since he was a boy. From his wild party days to the moment his army career was cut short when New Idea magazine revealed the royal was on active service in Afghanistan, Harry has always loathed the spotlight. He was just 12 when his mother died and blames the paparazzi for taking her from him. In the recent documentary filmed on their tour of
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southern Africa – Harry & Meghan: An African Journey – Harry unpacked his trauma saying he still had work to do on his mental health. “Everything that she went through and what happened to her is incredibly raw every single day … Every single time I see a camera, every single time I hear a click, every single time I see a flash, it takes me straight back.” Veteran royal photographer Arthur Edwards watched the devastated Harry crumble. “People talk about ➝
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For Meghan, the endless barrage of criticism she and Harry faced was neither “fair” nor accurate. “My wife upholds the same values as I do,” Harry has pleaded. Meghan was at a loss to understand the backlash she was facing. And then Harry dropped a bombshell. Just two years into the job, with baby Archie not yet a year old, the Sussex family announced they would quit their roles as “senior royals”. They hoped to broker a deal to work part-time for Her Majesty The Queen, dividing their time between North America and Britain. They would become “financially independent”, earning their own crust while also supporting the monarchy. In the wake of this momentous announcement, hurt, confusion and anger reigned. “I don’t believe Meghan came into the marriage with a pre-formed idea of changing everything, turning over the apple-cart, but the cultureshock of joining an ancient and venerable institution and having to follow its rules turned out not to be to her taste, and she started to plan an escape-route,” royal biographer Christopher Wilson tells me. For traditionalists, Harry and Meghan’s demands seemed outlandish and presumptive: from their privileged ivory tower the Duke and Duchess of Sussex were refusing to fulfil their duties to the Crown, it seemed. “The situation’s unprecedented because Harry has decided to leave the country and will only return occasionally. There is a great deal of anger, especially among the military who were his greatest supporters (and he theirs), that he has just dumped them. The idea that he will be going out making money off a red carpet when he should be turning up on parade hasn’t gone down well,” Wilson explains. But many others, including those new young fans, felt Harry and Meghan deserved to be free, to choose how they live and work, that it was
Cover story
“What I want to make clear is we’re not walking away.” Harry walking behind his mother’s coffin and that was an ordeal. But when he was brought down with his father from Balmoral and they went to look at the flowers and messages on the gates of Kensington Palace I saw his face crease up – he was so tortured and I just couldn’t take the picture.” You’d have to be made of stone not to appreciate Harry and Meghan’s situation, trapped in a gilded cage with strict rules that they feel prevent them from doing their best work. As a powerful woman used to running her own life, Meghan has found the transition to royal at best challenging and behind the scenes appears to have been trying to change what is a very well-oiled, if archaic, institution. “I would say that Diana showed many of the same qualities – and in some ways I think both women were admirable,” notes royal biographer Penny Junor. “On the other hand, you could say that what Meghan is doing is the equivalent of being a new recruit in a company you’ve agreed to work for and immediately trying to restructure it! But if it needs to be done, maybe that’s a good thing.” But would Diana support her son’s move to quit his royal role? “It is tempting to say his mother might have applauded his move – but actually I think she may have been conflicted. She spent her time preparing William for his future role, and Harry’s decision could cause havoc and ultimately be very damaging to his brother,” says Junor. Christopher Wilson agrees. “I think Diana would be heartbroken to see him in conflict with the royal family like this. She had her difficulties with them, but those largely stemmed from the failed relationship with her husband – if that had been okay, she could have hacked the rest. She believed in the royal family. Without Meghan, Harry would have continued
doing the job he was born to do. But it’s clear that he loves her more than he loves the job and therefore must follow her wherever she leads. What’s happened is sad, but it would become a tragedy if, like Diana, Harry’s marriage failed.” For Prince Harry at this crossroads, the most important three women in his life came into sharp focus. There’s Meghan, who he’s determined to protect from the media snarl that crucified his childhood; Diana, whose motherly life lessons and legacy are echoing around his head, and his beloved grandmother The Queen, who always stands by him – but in her statement on January 13 said that while supportive of Harry and Meghan “we would have preferred them to remain full-time working members of the royal family”. For months there have been reports of a rift between Harry and brother William. Unsubstantiated gossip painted a rather unlikely brotherly spat, but now Harry’s plans are out in the open, the crux of the divide seems more transparent. Prince William would be rightly concerned not to have his brother and family to call on to support the ‘royal firm’ he will one day be leading. And in the meantime there is likely to be more work for the Cambridges to shoulder. In the UK’s Sunday Times newspaper royal correspondent Roya Nikkhah reported that William had told a friend, “I’ve put my arm around my brother all our lives and I can’t do that anymore; we’re separate entities. I’m sad about that. All we can do, and all I can do, is try and support them and hope that the time comes when
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we’re all singing from the same page. I want everyone to play on the team.” Photographer Arthur Edwards has known Harry from the day he was born and like many who love him had been crossing his fingers for a resolution. “I thought the Queen might talk him out of it,” he sighs. But in their statement the Sussex duo was firm and resolute. They had a plan. Their future was in the balance and they needed to take charge. Harry and Meghan’s public statement had blindsided Palace advisors, Her Majesty, Prince Charles and Prince William. Talks about the couple’s future had been going on behind doors for months but there was still a lot to thrash out. For reasons that haven’t been confirmed, the Sussex duo took the initiative to force the issue. Could Harry and Meghan be granted their wish? Could they have their cake and eat it too? For 10 heartin-mouth days it almost looked as if they might prevail.
Forging a new path
AUSTRALSCOPE. GETTY IMAGES. INSTAGRAM.
From left: In Morocco in 2019; Diana and the press; the Vancouver Island mansion; happy in Canada; the Queen hoped for a resolution. resolution
The Queen’s first media statement sounded promising. “We understand their desire to take a different approach, but these are complicated issues that will take time to work through,” said Her Majesty. Meghan returned to the luxurious mansion on Canada’s Vancouver Island where the couple had been holed up since late November to rejoin baby Archie while Harry was called to a family summit at Sandringham. News following the meeting was positive. The Queen said “we respect and understand their wish to live a more independent life as a family while remaining a valued part of my family” and a “period of transition was discussed”. But on Saturday January 18, Harry and Meghan’s half-in half-out solution was quashed. They were out, and
back “required i d tto step t b k ffrom Royal duties, including official military appointments. The Sussexes will not use their HRH titles as they are no longer working members of the Royal Family … they will continue to maintain their private patronages.” Harry greeted Her Majesty’s edict “with great sadness that it has come to this”. He said that his and Meghan’s choice to challenge the status quo was “not one I made lightly … I know I haven’t always got it right, but as far as this goes, there really was no other option”. He added, “What I want to make clear is we’re not walking away … Our hope was to continue serving the Queen, the Commonwealth, and my military associations, but without public funding. Unfortunately, that wasn’t possible.” This is a watershed moment for the House of Windsor. The “stiff upper lip” Meghan had admitted she struggled with showed its mettle. While the couple retains the Duke and
Duchess of Sussex D titles, the royal in their trademarked ‘SussexRoyal’ branding, the b ccornerstone of their new empire, m may now need to be amended. b In a poignant personal p statement The nd Archie will always be much loved members of my family … I want to thank them for their dedicated work across this country, the Commonwealth and beyond, and am particularly proud of how Meghan has so quickly become one of the family”. And in support and acknowledgement of their battles with the limelight added: “I recognise the challenges they have experienced as a result of intense scrutiny over the last two years and support their wish for a more independent life.” “It’s a very sad day for me because I thought Harry was the greatest kid of all to work with,” says Arthur Edwards. “He was always fun, unpredictable; you couldn’t take your eyes off him. He seemed to enjoy the role of Duke of Sussex. But then the last couple of years he’s just become completely withdrawn, moody and sad. He’s lost the spark that made him the popular member of the royal family, certainly as far as our readers are concerned.” ➝
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Cover story
Money matters m s
• According to the website, SussexRoyal, 5 per cent of the e Sussex family funding cam me from The Sovereign Grant, money from the UK public purse to fund royal duties.
Personall weallth P l Before she joined th he royal family, the Duchess of Sussex reportedly earned US$50,000 an a episode as an actresss in TV drama Suits pluss income from film roles and her lifestyle blog. According to The Independent, Meghan’ss net worth before she marrried was around £3.8 million.
There are many questions about b Harry and Meghan’s future life which it is now thought will be mostly in Canada and the US. Will the couple still have a security retinue and if so who will pay for it? Buckingham Palace won’t comment on the details of security arrangements and while Canadians are happy to host the couple they don’t want to pay for them from public money. “When past royal tours have taken place here in Canada, there are always complaints after we get the bill,” says Jamie Samhan, royal commentator and online editor for Entertainment Tonight Canada. “Since they say that they want to be financially independent, most Canadians expect them to stick to that.” I am advised that Harry will still head up the Invictus Games, but losing his military positions will cut deep. And then there is concern over the sort of commercial deals that the duo will be brokering. “I think that the earning potential of the Sussexes is huge – especially in the US
• The £2.4 million renovation of the Susssex family’s Windsor home, Frrogmore Cottage, was paid from m Sovereign Grant funds. • The rem maining 95 per cent of Sussex fu unding, which finances their office and staffing, was paid by Th he Prince of Wales from income accrued a from his estate, the D Duchy of Cornwall.
– but I think that marketing using their titles is problematic, to say the least. “The Queen’s ‘brand’ is that of a tireless, self-sacrificing public servant who embodies the state. And this is in direct conflict with any commercial enterprise, in my view,” says Lynne Bell, Canadian Royal correspondent for Majesty magazine While they are now free to work where they choose, the Sussexes have pledged “to uphold the values of Her Majesty” and with a TV show with Oprah in the works and a trademark that has listed everything from socks to magazines, it remains to be seen what Harry and Meghan have in mind. As for the Queen, there is no question the monarch is protecting the reputation and future of the Crown in refusing the couple a part-time royal role, but it would no doubt have been a tough call to make, and the future of a slimmed down monarchy concentrating on Prince Charles, the Duchess of Cornwall, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and
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Funding di now • The couple will no longer receive money from The Sovereign Grant. • They are refunding the renovation costs of Frogmore Cottage and keeping the property as their UK home. • They are free to pursue their own business interests. • They may still receive additional private financial support from Prince Charles.
their children seems inevitable – although there is to be a review in a year’s time. I ask Penny Junor whether this split has damaged Harry’s very special relationship with his grandmother. “I would think not,” she says. “He has caused a rumpus of one sort or another so many times during his life and she has always taken it in her stride. She is a wise old owl and I imagine she is sad to be losing him but sympathetic to his situation and possibly worried about his wellbeing.” Harry said: “I will always have the utmost respect for my grandmother, my commander-in-chief, and I am incredibly grateful to her and the rest of my family, for the support they have shown Meghan and I. “I will continue to be the same man who holds his country dear and dedicates his life to supporting the causes, charities and military communities that are so important to me.” In his new life he explained: “We are taking a leap of faith”. AWW
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Essie
Shooting for the stars As she takes super sleuth Phryne Fisher to the big screen, Essie Davis talks to Susan Horsburgh about childhood bullying, the magic of Tasmania, and the fraught choice between career and family.
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HAIR AND MAKE-UP BY JULIA GREEN. ESSIE WEARS DRESS AND OPERA COAT BY CARLA ZAMPATTI. BARED FOOTWEAR SHOES. OPPOSITE PAGE: ESSIE WEARS CAMILLA AND MARC DRESS FROM DAVID JONES.
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PHOTOGRAPHY BY ALANA LANDSBERRY. GETTY IMAGES. ESSIE WEARS CARLA ZAMPATTI TRENCH.
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he is James Bond in T-bar heels, a saucy feminist superhero a century ahead of her time. Sporting her glamorous drop-waist getups, she can dance a tango, fly a Tiger Moth, or surf a speeding train carriage – all without upsetting a strand of her signature black bob. Not only that, the whip-smart lady detective leaves a trail of smitten lovers in her wake. Who wouldn’t want to be Phryne Fisher? Essie Davis has won fans all over the world playing the 1920s Melbourne super-sleuth in the ABC TV series Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries. Based on Kerry Greenwood’s bestselling books, the show premiered in 2012 and had more than 1 million Australians tuning in each week, before it spread to 180 countries and garnered a cult following in the US and UK. Now, four years after the final TV episode, Essie has donned the cloche hats again for the big-screen follow-up, Miss Fisher and the Crypt of Tears, filmed partly in Morocco. “The last time we saw her she was getting in an airplane to fly her dad home [to England] and I think it needed an international story,” says Essie. “You can’t have a really good murder mystery without it taking longer to solve and having a few more potential culprits.” The pistol-packing Phryne (pronounced fry-knee) is still scaling buildings and uncovering injustices, but this time it’s in jazz-age London and British Palestine. Fans were so keen to see Miss Fisher’s derring-do go global, in fact, that they raised nearly $1 million of the film’s budget in Australia’s most successful crowdfunding campaign ever. As far-flung as Brazil and Scandinavia, Miss Fisher fanatics routinely write to Essie to credit the unflappable detective with hauling them out of depression. “I’ve had so many fans say that Phryne saved their life,” says Essie. “She made them think, I don’t have to be a victim – life is worth living. Women are inspired by her naughtiness and outrageousness to just be themselves – not necessarily to break into buildings, but to speak out.” At today’s photo shoot, the Tasmanian actor seems to be
Essie as Phryne in the movie, which was partly shot in Morocco. Below: With husband Justin.
channelling some of Miss Fisher’s insouciance. Essie pulls on a metallic trench coat and suddenly oozes espionage cool. “Outfits are like characters, really, aren’t they?” she says. On location at an art-deco cinema in Melbourne, the stylist shows her outfit options and Essie culls them in record speed: one jumpsuit is too ABBA, a black-and-white ensemble too David Jones, and it’s a flat-out no to a salmon pantsuit: “It’ll look terrible on me.” Once the camera starts clicking and a leaf blower-cum-wind machine is aimed at her face, Essie seems caught in a tug-of-war between her natural theatricality and the self-consciousness that comes with posing in front of a crowd. Wearing a black strapless tulle confection, she spontaneously showers herself with popcorn and tiptoes across the cinema seats, before letting rip one of her trademark machine-gun laughs: “I don’t know what I’m doing!” she cries. “This is so stupid!” By outfit number two, she’s calling for a calming glass of champagne – “I’m trying to get out of my own head.” Swathed in gold satin, she looks rather prophetically like an Oscar statuette. In her 40s – a time when decent female roles supposedly dry up – Essie has nailed a string of disparate screen parts: as thespian Lady Crane in pop-culture phenomenon Game of Thrones, Catholic nun Iphigenia in the Foxtel drama Lambs of God (for which she recently received an AACTA nod) and crime matriarch Ellen Kelly in the film True History of the Kelly Gang (directed by her husband, Justin Kurzel). Her big-screen breakthrough, though, came in 2014, when she played the
unhinged mother in cult horror hit The Babadook. Amid the Oscar buzz, The New York Times called Essie’s performance “a tour de force of maternal anguish” and Time magazine put her in its top-10 list of movie actors that year, while Babadook fans dressed up as her character, Amelia, for Halloween. “She’ll have a go at anything and do it brilliantly,” says Essie’s friend and Miss Fisher co-creator Deb Cox. “She’s coming into her own at a time when the world’s changing its attitude and realising that mature women have a lot more to offer.” Miss Fisher may be 28 in the book series, but Essie inspired producers to up the character’s age for the TV show. “When we auditioned 28-year-olds, they were girls,” explains Deb. “They just couldn’t pull off a worldly woman, and Essie could. She had the sophistication, the life experience, the polish the others couldn’t come close to.” Still, Essie is loath to talk about her age. She says publication of it has lost her roles in the past so it’s not something she likes to focus on. With 13-year-old twin daughters at home, and her husband in India shooting the ➝
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“So many fans say that Phryne saved their life.”
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ESSIE WEARS VELANI GOWN.
Exclusive Apple TV+ drama series Shantaram, Essie is holding the fort in Hobart and having to knock back acting offers, which obviously rankles. “I’m saying no to heaps of work because I’m a mother,” she says, “[but] I also want to still have work in spite of saying no to it.” In recent years, the family has followed the work, living in London, Melbourne and New Zealand. For the past few months, though, Hobart has been home, and the girls, Ruby and Stella, want to make it permanent. “They’re not huge fans of moving – they would like to stay still and have as many animals as possible,” says Essie, who goes bushwalking with the girls. “What’s not to love about Tassie? Freedom, childhood, space, nature.” Her daughters, she says, are similar to her – “incredibly creative and outrageous and outspoken” – but have not expressed any desire to follow her into acting. “They want to be horseriding designers who rock climb and do flamenco dancing while they are marine biologists and diving with great white sharks,” she says. “They’re very much loving their childhood and I’m loving their childhood with them. We do everything together – we’re scarily best friends … They’re the two most important sculptors of my life.” And her biggest fans. The girls have been known to shout at top volume, “It’s Phryne Fisher over here!” while shopping at the supermarket with their mortified mum. “They’re so hilariously super-proud,” says Essie. Like many a mother, Essie often finds herself feeling wistful, wishing her girls weren’t growing up so quickly. “I think I was crying about that from the day they were born, but I am terribly sentimental and was always like that with my parents as well – crying about losing them my entire life,” she says. “Luckily I’ve still got my dad [her mum died in 2016] but I’m a deeply loyal, loving, family person.” The youngest of seven, Essie (born Esther) grew up in the Hobart suburbs on a two-acre block with fruit trees and a vegetable garden, keeping ducks, chooks and rabbits and fostering a menagerie of injured animals, including a penguin at one
point. With her mum at home fulltime and her dad an artist, money was tight, but they managed by growing most of what they ate. “They were just really hardworking poor people,” says Essie. “I was on my own a lot because my siblings were so much older than me. I was always up a tree or in the garden or the bush making up stories.” With a loving, close-knit family, life at home was idyllic, but school was torture. “I was very bullied, very bottom-of-the-food-chain,” she recalls, “because I had red hair, plaits down to my knees that had never been cut, and my parents were older than everyone else’s – and we were greenies.” It was the 1980s and Premier Robin Gray had won office on a policy of “state development”, pushing for a hydroelectric dam on the Franklin River. Essie’s parents and sister were all arrested for protesting against it. It was a volatile political climate, with environmentalists and “rednecks” living shoulder-to-shoulder: “Going to school in that environment was pretty brutal – I was definitely some weird kid who didn’t fit in and I wanted to fit in so badly,” she says. “Being picked on and threatened I was going to be murdered on school camp was really traumatising.” Her teachers, however, nurtured her acting dreams, which she’s had for as long as she can remember. Essie went on to win a place at NIDA, living with classmate Cate Blanchett, and nabbed the role of Juliet in Bell Shakespeare’s 1993 production of Romeo and Juliet straight out of drama school. So began a dazzling stage career. In 2003 she played Stella in A Streetcar Named Desire at London’s National Theatre, and took out an Olivier Award. “The opening night I had my next three years’ work,” she recalls. “Because everyone came to see Glenn [Close] and she was extraordinary – but so was I.” The following year her turn in Tom Stoppard’s Jumpers on Broadway was nominated for a Tony. These days, screen is the main game for Essie, although she pines to tread the boards again. “I’d love to do theatre,” she says, “but it’s tricky with school-age children because it’s every night and all weekend. There’ve been some tempting
offers, but that would just be a purely selfish delight. I love hanging out with my kids, so while they want to do that with me, I want to be available.” With both Essie and her husband juggling international careers, True History of the Kelly Gang gave them a rare chance to work together – an experience Essie calls her career highlight. “He constantly throws you in the deep end and goes, ‘Swim!’” she says, with that raucous, rapid-fire laugh. “I broke a rib early on and proceeded to be dropped and punched and thrown against walls. The making of it was brutal but incredibly special.” Essie and Justin met in 1996 when Justin was the production designer on Belvoir Street Theatre’s A View from the Bridge. They married six years later and, in 2011, he wowed audiences with his directorial debut, Snowtown. Essie puts the success of their relationship down to mutual respect.“His brain just blows my mind and I think I do that for him too,” she says. “In spite of both of us wishing the other would be a stay-at-home parent, we love each other’s pursuit of excellence. Neither of us wants the other to not achieve, but we also want to be the only people parenting our children, so it’s complicated.” Essie recently finished filming in New Zealand, where she mastered the local accent to play the title role in The Justice of Bunny King, due out this year. “Bunny King is a squidgy bandit – she washes windows at intersections,” says Essie, “and she’s living on her sister’s couch trying to get her kids back out of foster care.” It was the latest in a series of meaty roles over the past 18 months, but you get the sense she’s a long way from sated. “There’s a lifetime of work to do,” says Essie, who wants to work with director Lars von Trier and actors Meryl Streep and Judi Dench. And an Academy Award? “Yeah!” she says,“I’ve always wanted an Oscar.”Asked where to next, Essie says it’s “always the same goal” – and shoots her finger skyward like a rocket headed for the stars. Miss Fisher would expect nothing less. AWW Miss Fisher and the Crypt of Tears is in cinemas from 27 February.
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True crime
Six months after being jailed for murdering her ex-boyfriend, Robyn Lindholm was charged with murder again. Genevieve Gannon asks: is this killer the deadliest woman in Australia? he Supreme Court of Victoria is not a place for romance, but as she sat in handcuffs before a judge, Robyn Lindholm sent meaningful looks towards her lover. Hunched and rough-faced, Torsten Trabert, also in chains, sat just a few feet away, on the other side of an armed guard. The love-struck brute flirted back, seemingly oblivious to the sombre proceedings going on around him. It was the closest the couple had been since they were arrested two years earlier, after homicide police chased them through Brunswick West. The dog squad finally tracked them to a drain where they were hiding in water up to their necks. Lindholm, a blonde former stripper, eventually admitted to ordering the murder of her ex, and Trabert, a slow-witted truck driver, was found guilty of inflicting the fatal blow, as The Weekly first reported in 2017. But much has happened since then. As they awaited their jail sentences, they knew it was the last time they would see each other for years, possibly forever. Trabert, or “Toots” as he called himself in the soppy letters he wrote from jail, seemed happy just to be near Lindholm. Given what we now know about Lindholm’s record of slaying her lovers, he was perhaps safer locked away. The trial heard how Lindholm had asked a succession of boyfriends to kill her ex, Wayne Amey. She made the request of Kyle Elliot, then Aaron Ardley and finally Trabert. Aaron had agreed to do it, telling the trial that Lindholm had him under a “spell”. But he was injured and it was Trabert who finally carried out the deed in
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Robyn Lindholm (above) and Torsten Trabert (right) are arrested after being found hiding in a drain. Lindholm would later admit to murdering her ex, Wayne Amey, implicating current partner Trabert.
December 2013. Lindholm’s lawyer, John Kelly, asked for leniency because she was remorseful. But Justice Lex Lasry didn’t buy it. “I am sure that you are ashamed and embarrassed,” the judge said. “But the real question is whether you genuinely regret what you have done. I frankly do not see any sign of that.” Lindholm was “angry and vengeful”, Justice Lasry said. Killing Wayne was futile and unnecessary, and dumping his body on a lonely mountain top was “callous”, he said. He jailed Lindholm for 25 years and Trabert for 28. A third accomplice, John Anthony Ryan, was sentenced to 31 years. Lindholm got a discount for pleading guilty. Trabert did too because he led police to the body, wedged between boulders at Victoria’s Mt Korong. The trial heard the trio went out drinking after hiding the corpse. After the sentences were handed down the lovers were parted, Lindholm to her cell, Trabert to his. But nearly six months later, on May 31, 2016, detectives visited Lindholm in prison. She was charged with murder, again the victim a man she’d once loved. Police believed
they had cracked the mystery of her missing former fiancé, George Teazis, who vanished in 2005. When he sentenced her for George’s murder, Justice Christopher Beale noted Lindholm had had an idyllic upbringing. She had been close to her father, and her mother visited her twice a week in jail. In fact, her mother moved to Melton so she could be closer to the maximum security prison where her daughter was being held. “You did not want for affection from your parents and they would go without to ensure your material needs were met,” Justice Beale said, raising the question: what had turned Lindholm from a loved and happy, high-achieving girl to a cruel, vengeful killer now serving back-to-back sentences for murdering two men she once adored? The newspapers called her a Black Widow and Femme Fatale. The headlines are cliched, but accurate. In each case, Lindholm seduced a new lover and enlisted him to murder the old. Now that suppression orders have been lifted in her second secret trial, we know the person who helped kill George Teazis was Lindholm’s second victim, Wayne Amey. →
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Torsten Trabert received a discount in sentencing for leading police to Wayne Amey’s body, wedged between boulders at Victoria’s Mt Korong.
Her first victim Born in 1973 in the affluent Melbourne suburb of Glen Waverley, Robyn Jane Lindholm was an animal lover with honey-coloured hair who wanted for nothing. Her father, Raymond, was a welder, her mother, Dorothy, a nurse. “She received considerable affection from both parents,” her lawyer John Kelly told her plea hearing. “Despite the fact that financial constraints were significant, she describes her parents on occasions going without in order to provide for her.” Her early school years were spent at Kilvington Grammar School. Later she attended Malvern Girls High, in an affluent part of town. At the age of 13 she won the Victorian Ice Skating Championships. An injury cut her sporting career short but she applied herself in school and was accepted to study science at prestigious Monash University. She hoped to transfer into veterinary science. Lindholm studied hard for about 18 months but when she didn’t get the marks she needed to be a vet she shifted into a TAFE course in animal husbandry. At 19, however, she dropped out and got a job at a car dealership, and later started working at Crown Casino. The leggy blonde was popular in the high-roller Mahogany Room and attracted the attention of underworld figure Alphonse Gangitano, a key figure in Melbourne’s gangland wars, known as The Black Prince of Lygon Street. “She became enamoured of the lifestyle in terms of its luxuries,” her lawyer John Kelly said. Seduced by a world of wealth, Lindholm began working as a stripper, which helped pay for the large mortgage she took out at the age of 20 to buy a 30-hectare rural property at Glenhope, north of Melbourne. Her life changed in 1998, when Alphonse was executed in his home. Lindholm moved on with George Teazis (also known as George Templeton), who had done a brief stint in prison in 2003 but, other than that, was a hardworking businessman who ran a carpet laying company with his brother, Nick.
Above: Alphonse Gangitano – known as The Black Prince of Lygon Street – was a key figure in Melbourne’s gangland wars. Right: Lindholm with George Teazis. The pair were engaged to be married before Lindholm ordered the hit.
“George and Nick worked together as an exceptionally close team – brothers working hard to create a better life,” George’s sister-in-law, Deborah Teazis, said in court. They were a close-knit family and they accepted Lindholm into their lives. George loved seafood and steak, often “with a hearty Greek salad and a cold beer on a hot day.” Deborah remembers Christmases spent watching George take control of opening the oysters, “but eating more before they actually made it to the table”. On May 2, 2005, George performed his ritual of drinking Metaxa brandy to commemorate the anniversary of his father’s death. This was something he did every year, and he asked Lindholm to buy the brandy for him.
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Lindholm and George had been together for seven years and she was familiar with the tradition. At work that day, George was in a good mood, and clearly looking forward to his night of brandy and reflection, telling his brother Nick he was, “planning on putting a big chunk in it”. That night, Lindholm made George dinner. Her friend Kate* was also at the house, and George’s son Ross was playing Xbox in the bungalow out the back, where he lived. By the time he finished his meal, George was well and truly drunk, according to Ross. After they ate, Lindholm and Kate smoked some weed with George, and then the women went to Kate’s house. “George was drunk, possibly stoned and certainly vulnerable,” Justice Beale said.
True crime
Craig Henderson, said that Wayne was being threatened, and that Lindholm and Wayne’s relationship had ended because Lindholm had A ruthless seductress, an affair. Her new lover, former stripper Robyn a man named Kyle Elliot, Lindholm would use sex admitted to threatening to lure her lovers to Wayne. He confessed perform her dirty work, Lindholm had asked him and they would become to kill Wayne quite a putty in her hands. Soon a few times, and they’d often wicked web of betray argued about it. and murder was spu “It became clear with Lindholm leavin Mr Amey was anxious victims in her wake. GUILTY OF about his own safety,” said GUILTY OF ORDERING THE The earliest she is due MURDERING WAYNE Justice Lasry. MURDERS OF EX-LOVERS for release from AMEY AND SENTENCED WAYNE AMEY AND In March 2012, prison is 2049. TO 28 YEARS. GEORGE TEAZIS. Kyle was jailed for other crimes and by August that year, Lindholm had started dating a man named Aaron Michael Ardley. He was obsessed with her, and when she asked him to kill for her, he readily agreed. “After what me and Robyn talked about, I was under a spell,” Aaron said. Aaron began following Wayne and conducting his own surveillance work. He lurked around Wayne’s favourite restaurant and began lifting weights. When Crown Prosecutor Gavin . Silbert asked him what TO 31 YEARS. KILL HER FIRST. HIS BODY HAS NEVER he was in training for, BEEN RECOVERED. Aaron replied: “To be a killer.” Lindholm gave Aaron a When Lindholm returned later his penthouse in Hathorn and enjoyed security pass that would let him into that night, George had vanished. the “high life”. the basement car park of the building There was no sign of a break-in. she had once lived in with Wayne. A torrid tale His ute was missing too. At 2.43am, Aaron went there three times armed As far as anyone could tell, Lindholm she received a text from George that with knives. But in January 2013, was in love with Wayne. Her nickname Aaron suffered a brain injury, so read: “Got problems, need a lift, will for him was Batman and she planned call soon.” He was never seen again. couldn’t carry out the murder. to settle down with him and start a Investigators found blood on the Lindholm had to find someone else. family. She began working at his gym, couch of George and Lindholm’s By this point, she was heavily using ice. and together they bought a farm at lounge room, but George’s body She moved to a flat in Preston, in Bittern. But several years on, cracks was never recovered. Melbourne’s north, and it was then began to show in their relationship, Soon after George disappeared, that she met Torsten Trabert. He and in 2010 they split. Lindholm severed ties with his family moved in with her and – although he Things turned nasty when they tried was married – the pair began a torrid, and started living with her new love sexually charged relationship. → to divide their assets. Wayne’s lawyer, interest, Wayne Amey. She moved into
NEWSPIX. FAIRFAX. AAP.
Under her spell
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True crime
Left: Robyn Lindholm and Wayne Amey in an undated photo. Below: Torsten Trabert blows a kiss to photographers outside court.
Second strike When police interviewed Lindholm’s friends and acquaintances, they discovered she had bragged to severa al people that she’d had a hand in George’s disappearance. Lindholm was tried for murder. The modus operandi, the police claimed, was similar to the killing of Wayne Amey y – Lindholm had been the one to order the hit, but she’d asked someone else to do her dirty work. This time, however, Lindholm refused to admit guilt. She had an alibi, she insisted. Her friend Kate was with her when George vanished. Kate was put on the witness stand and swore she was with Lindholm the whole time. Under relentless questioning from the prosecutor, she stood her ground. But that night, she cracked. She called the police and told them she wanted to change her statement. Kate revealed that Lindholm and Wayne Amey had begun their affair while Lindholm was still living with George. She claimed Lindholm had confided to her that Wayne had “paid somebody to help him get rid of George”. She also told Kate to “stick to the story”, court documents show. George’s blood was found in his lounge room. Witnesses claimed Lindholm had talked about dumping his body in Port Phillip Bay, but this was never proved. Despite pleas from George’s family, Lindholm has never revealed what happened to him. Even after 14 years was added to her jail term, she insisted she had nothing to do with his death.
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George’s sister-in-law voiced the grief the family has endured and the anger they feel towards Lindholm: “We accepted you into our family, as George’s partner,” Deborah told the unrepentant killer. “We respected you as a human being.” She begged Lindholm to “do something right” and tell the family where George’s body is. “If you ever loved or cared about George, even in the smallest way, then give him peace in death and give us some closure.” Deborah and husband John took in George’s children, who suffered greatly after their father’s disappearance. Deborah made a final plea to Lindholm: “It is never too late to tell the truth. It is never too late to show you have compassion.” The killer has, however, remained unmoved. She said nothing before being taken back to prison. When she is freed she will be an old woman. Her earliest possible release date is 2043. If she is granted parole, she will leave prison when she is 71. Until then, Robyn Lindholm maintains her silence. AWW *Name has been changed to protect the witness’s identity.
NEWSPIX.
Born in Germany, Trabert had moved to Australia with his parents in 1970. He’d always had a low IQ but years of drug abuse had caused mild brain damage. The handwriting in the love letters he sent to Lindholm is that of a child. In 2013 he was out of work, addicted to ice and madly in love. When Lindholm asked him to kill for her, Trabert agreed. On December 10, 2013, Trabert and John Anthony Ryan drove to Wayne’s apartment building in Hawthorn. Using a swipe card Lindholm had given them, they entered the underground car park and waited for Wayne to return. When he did, they beat him and forced him into the boot of their car. Trabert drove the car to the Preston flat he shared with Lindholm. A neighbour heard movement and mumbling from inside the boot. It was Wayne, begging for his life. “You don’t have to go this far, I’ll do anything,” Wayne pleaded. Trabert asked the neighbour to help “finish it” but he refused. Two days later, Trabert, Lindholm and Ryan drove to Mt Korong and hid Wayne’s body. Then they spent several hours drinking at a hotel in Inglewood. When the police eventually tracked them down, they denied having anything to do with Wayne’s death. But once the court process began, Lindholm turned on her accomplices, and her lover. She pleaded guilty and implicated all three in Wayne’s murder. Trabert and Ryan refused to admit they killed Wayne, but a jury found them guilty. One of the widely circulated photos of Trabert, taken outside the bluestone court, captures him blowing a kiss at the photographer. He’s remorseless and smug as he prepares to be sentenced for murder. After Justice Lasry handed down his judgment, the criminals were led away, and Wayne’s family and friends were left to process their grief. That would have been the end of it. But Lindholm’s guilty plea had not gone unnoticed by police. Homicide detectives, who had been unable to crack the case of her former fiancé’s disappearance, started re-examining the evidence.
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Community
50 The Australian Women’s Weekly | FEBRUARY 2020
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The Albatross Nippers are flying high. Lizzie Wilson meets a team of junior surf lifesavers with special needs who are as fearless and resilient as their namesake.
A Thanks to the Albatross Nippers program, the joy of the ocean is accessible to kids of all abilities.
t just past 8am on a Saturday morning at Nobbys Beach Surf Club on Queensland’s Gold Coast, something very special is about to happen. Dozens of mums and dads loaded up like packhorses trudge across blistering hot sand to get as close to the water’s edge as possible. They are the proud parents of the pint-sized heroes we know as nippers who, every weekend between September and March, eagerly take to our beaches to learn about surf safety. To the northern end of the flags, one gutsy group of youngsters has gathered. Smeared in sunscreen and decked out in brilliant orange rashies, the flock of 30 young warriors takes off in full formation. This is the magnificent Albatross Nippers, a select group of youngsters who participate in a unique program that gives children with special needs an opportunity to be included in mainstream surf lifesaving. In the pack there’s one young man who can’t help but stand out. He’s 13-year-old Marcus Hay and he has Down syndrome, but that’s not up for discussion. The pint-sized teen with a smile that would knock the socks off the most hardened of souls has his eyes firmly fixed on the ocean where he knows he can find his happy place. “See out there where there’s a break – that’s where I feel like Superman! I’m more confident than some of the other →
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Community kids so I like to help them get better every week so they keep coming back for more,” Marcus tells The Weekly crew spending the morning with this special group of youngsters. “I’ve been an Albatross for nearly five years and when I grow up I want to become one of the volunteers. “My dad [Warwick] and mum [Carla] and my little sister Liana tell me how proud they are of me. I love to win, but I also want my mates to do well – that way we can all be winners,” he says, before taking off down the beach to help a couple of buddies who’ve taken a fall. Watching on, it’s hard not to feel buoyed by the spirit of the Albatross Nippers and their boundless passion and sheer determination. They have a range of disabilities including cerebral palsy, autism, Asperger’s syndrome and muscular dystrophy, but ask any one of them if they feel ‘different’ from the mainstream kids down the beach, and the response would be a resounding no. Founder and creator of the Albatross movement is local Gold Coast physiotherapist and veteran surf coach Nick Marshall who has been involved in surf lifesaving since he was a nipper back in the 1980s. The father of two little girls, Ella, seven, and Imogen, four, could see a gaping hole in the system and decided to do something about it. “I’d been coaching dozens of kids over the years who often turned up with a sister or brother with a disability. I’d tell the parents to bring them along and I’ll make it work,” he says. “You could see how much they felt left out, and how quickly they responded when included – that’s when I knew I was onto something,” Nick, 42, explains. “I came home one day and said to my wife, Jessica, ‘I reckon I can make a difference to these kids’ lives.’ “We’ve worked tirelessly to get it 100 per cent right. From the get-go it’s always been about inclusion and equal opportunity for all – and most importantly, fun!” Kicking off in 2014 with just 22 enrolments, this year saw numbers climb to more than 100 Albatross Nippers, with three other Gold Coast clubs (Southport, Tallebudgera and
The program started by Nick (left) has given kids such as Marcus (below) a new sense of purpose. Right: Marcus with his parents Carla and Warwick, and sister Liana.
Coolangatta) now following the same model. Nick’s pioneering work has earned him a number of awards, and this year he’s been recognised as Queensland’s Local Hero in the Australian of the Year Awards. “I’m humbled, but I’m not the hero. Those little foot soldiers – they’re the real heroes. Week in and out, regardless of whether there’s wind, rain, stingers or even cyclones, they turn up and they turn it on. The country is in mighty good hands if they reflect today’s youth,” Nick says. Nick credits his local community for getting this off the ground, from small businesses to colleagues and complete strangers who rallied from the beginning to make Albatross Nippers happen. “It’s the volunteers who have made this work, and every year I pay tribute to these fine folk. Without them, this would never have taken flight,” he says proudly. “Each Albatross has their own trained water-safety officer – men and women who donate their weekends to the kids, teaching invaluable water and land skills with a heavy emphasis on surf awareness.” Last year, the Albatross Nippers took part in the 50th anniversary Youth Surf Lifesaving Championships on Burleigh Heads beach. “It was unprecedented. There’s never been a
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team of special needs children compete in Queensland, if not the country, in surf lifesaving,” Nick says. “The tide has shifted – the wave of hope has finally rolled in.” Proudly holding the flag that day was 14-year-old Lily-Anne Stephenson, who also lives with Down syndrome. Today, she’s made her way down the beach to meet with The Weekly following a recent double-knee reconstruction. “I’m not going to miss my chance to be in a magazine!” she says cheekily.
PHOTOGRAPHY: HARVIE ALLISON. RICHARD GOSLING.
Right: Lily-Anne leading the Albatross squad at the Youth Surf Lifesaving Championships in 2019, and (below) with mum Antonia.
“I love being on the board and riding the waves in, but I don’t like the beach flags. I have learned you can’t be good at everything, and you can only do your best. All week I look forward to seeing my nipper buddies. We have so much fun and by the time I get home, I’m exhausted,” she says, smiling. “Being an Albatross, it teaches you to be kind and to always think about your teammates – we’re a very tight group.” Lily’s mum Antonia and older sister Annabelle have driven Lily down from the family home in Brisbane, the 160km round trip well worth every second. “She’s a different child since she signed up three years ago. My parents, her grandma Erin and grandpa David, live here at the coast and they come along every weekend. It’s a terrific way for
families like us to exhale for a few hours. “Lily attends school at Seton College in Brisbane where there’s a wonderful program specifically tailored to her needs. She’s thriving and we were so proud last year when she received the Year 9 Personal Best award. Nippers has helped her in every aspect of her day to day – it’s been life changing.” Nick hopes the five years he’s spent fine-tuning the program will make it easier for surf lifesaving clubs across the globe to adopt the Albatross model. To raise awareness, Nick teamed up with acclaimed filmmaker, Shannon Johnston of Risen Film. The result, a 35-minute documentary called Included, is currently featured on all Virgin Australia flights as part of the airline’s partnership with Surf Lifesaving.
Back at the beach, Marcus has just caught the perfect wave, gliding into the shallow waters. He’s ducking and weaving with the help of his water safety officer, who happens to be his dad Warwick. “Meet my dad – he’s so cool! He couldn’t swim or run in the surf until I joined Nippers and now he’s almost as fast as me,” Marcus says, dragging his dad back out to catch another wave. Warwick’s story is much like many of the parents and helpers who’ve made their way to the beach on this Saturday morning. Never much of a surfer, after enrolling Marcus in the Albatross program, Warwick challenged himself to become more surf smart, and last year successfully completed his Bronze Medallion. “I was inspired by Marcus, who never gives up. I thought, ‘wow, if he can do this, so can I,’” says the 52-year-old. “I was hopeless in the ocean, and now I’m one of the regular volunteers on patrol at our local beach. One of the joys for our family is being able to give back to the community – it’s the least we can do. “Interacting with the other kids has helped Marcus enormously to know how to socialise and how to build friendships. He’s got more mates than us! He loves a challenge, and once he’s achieved it, he’s already looking for the next one. We completed the Brisbane to Gold Coast 100km charity bike ride last September, and when we got to the finish line, he asked if we could turn around and do it all again – that’s our boy!” With that, Marcus – who is one of the real success stories of the Albatross Nippers – is off again into the waves, but not before one last hug for The Weekly team. “I love the beach so much, I love my Albatross buddies, and I really love my family,” he says. “Actually, come to think of it, I just love life.” AWW To learn more, visit facebook.com/ albatrossnippers.
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I finally feel that ’ f In a candid interview, Master about the society scandal th ancestors and the sunshin
HAIR AND MAKE-UP BY NICOLA JOHNSON. JENNIFER WEARS MAX MARA PANTS.
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ennifer Byrne is full of beans. Just days ago she arrived back in Sydney from a mammoth adventure on which she and her husband, TV host Andrew Denton, travelled from Bergen to the very tip of Norway and back again. “It’s a bucket list thing of course, to see the Northern Lights, which means travelling into the cold and dark of the northern winter. Though the real lure for me was we’d be joined by the ‘world’s greatest explorer’ Sir Ranulph Fiennes,” says Jennifer. “His feats are too many to enumerate but include [being] the first man to circumnavigate the earth via the two poles. He cut off his own fingers to counter frostbite and scaled Mount Everest at 64. He’s my older-man crush,” she adds mischievously. “I saw him at the Opera House. This trip was my chance to get closer. We went from six hours of light a day to just 20 unearthly minutes, sailing past tiny ports illuminated only by twinkling Christmas lights. And the joy! Ran – as he introduces himself, offering his fingerless hand to shake – was every bit the charming gentleman I’d hoped for. A baronet who joined the SAS, now 75 and still adventuring.”
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As she talks, Jennifer’s eyes sparkle: adventure travel is her passion, combine it with maestro ‘Ran’ and you have the trip of a lifetime and one that also feels totally in keeping with the host of brainiac TV quiz show Mastermind. In a few days Jennifer will start filming Celebrity Mastermind, followed by a second season of the SBS quiz show. “I grew up watching it and I’ve played games since I was a kid, so it’s perfect for me,” she quips. “In fact, probably one of the noblest moments of my life was when I was crowned celebrity Sale of the Century (SOTC) champion on the Nine Network. For me, that was the acme. I was working at 60 Minutes and though Dad was always proud of me, it wasn’t until then that he paid any attention to my television work. He was a games nut too, and this was his golden moment; his child was going to compete! This is when it was still a class act, right, so I was playing against people like Gough Whitlam, who was miffed I beat him. “Some years before the SOTC show Dad and I were playing Scrabble as we always did, and I won for the first time. I would have been in my late 20s. He said, ‘Well done, darling’ and we never played again. We played other games,
but Scrabble was handed on. The baton passed – which I think is lovely.” This tale gives some idea of the brilliant and colourful family Jennifer was born into. And while she’s always been at pains to underplay her upper crust pedigree, after the shock discovery that she genuinely is descended from medieval British royalty in the SBS TV ancestry series Who Do You Think You Are – which we’ll get to – she is finally ready to lift the curtain on her extraordinary childhood, much of which was spent scampering around the hallowed corridors of Melbourne’s Government House.
Fairytale and scandal
“My parents met when my mother was the Governor’s daughter. The family came from England when she was about 20, and my father was the man in the white uniform with the braid who was the ADC, the aide-de-camp. Traditionally the Governor chooses his ADC, and because my grandfather had been the commander of the Royal Marines, he had one from the Royal Navy. He picked my father. It was never explained to me why. My father was playful and fun and bright and quick, but not the most obedient.” →
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Jennifer’s grandfather was Sir Reginald Alexander Dallas Brooks, Victoria’s longest-serving Governor (from 1949 to 1963), while her grandmother was Lady Violet Brooks and dressed almost regally emanating from wealthy British stock. Jennifer says “Lady Vi” always claimed, “I am the class in the family”. Jennifer’s father, Robin Byrne, came out from England with Grandpa Dallas and then fell in love with his boss’s daughter, Jeanette Brooks. They married in 1952 when Jean was 22 and Robin 25, and from that moment on every cough and sniff of their lives filled the society columns of the newspapers. After they married, Jennifer’s parents moved to a house 10 minutes’ walk from Government House but Jennifer and her two siblings – older brother Christopher and younger sister Belinda – still spent much of their time at the vice-regal dwelling. “It was a different world and a different time and a different land. The house is a giant wedding cake of a place with endless staff, whom my grandmother called ‘servants’ because that was the word of the time. It was incredibly antique, remote from an Australian world, with these endless lawns on which there would be garden parties.The Queen and other royals would come and stay because that was their house when they were in Victoria.” Jennifer has a distant recollection of meeting the Queen Mother as a cheeky three-year-old. She was made to spend weeks practising to curtsey before Her Majesty arrived. “There’s a picture of me doing an incredibly giraffe-like curtsey, where one of my back legs is sticking out,” she chuckles. “We had our own bedrooms and spent Christmas and the like there, but we didn’t stay overnight when the royals were there. I remember thinking the Queen Mother was a bit grumpy. “It was a fairytale. We wore fairytale clothes and we lived a fairytale, strange existence. When you look at The Crown, I think that GH, as it used to be called in the family, was absolutely designed on the great houses of England. Those scenes are completely familiar to me, that big central stairwell, the way it curls around, that is exactly what Government House is like.”
Mostly she remembers the fun she had there. “There was this huge ballroom with thrones on either side with crowns on the top. They were not for Granny and Grandpa, they didn’t sit there, they were for royalty. “My brother Chris and I would take our pillows in and slide the length of this magnificent, beautiful polished wooden floor from one end to the other. And yes, we played on the thrones even though we were always told not to. Then we’d go down to the kitchens and pinch meringues. It sounds like some hideous cross between Billy Bunter and Enid Blyton, and it was quite odd.” Away from the big house, as time went on, she says, “it became something that I really tried to conceal. I just wanted to fit in with everyone else.” Then one day everything came crashing down. Jennifer’s eyes fill with tears as she talks about probably the most damaging and formative period of her life, when her mother left her father for another woman, Zita West. “It was all very mysterious. I didn’t really understand and no one told me what was happening,” says Jennifer. “I know there were reports in the newspapers. The Truth [a scandal sheet of the day] was very strong. I remember my granny used to have a special drawer she kept all the papers in, and I’d sometimes go and look because I knew they were tucked away. I wanted to find out what was happening. I would read – this is reflecting the times – and they didn’t ever say ‘lesbian’ or ‘gay’. It was ‘an unmarried friend’.” While vitriolic, reports were deliberately oblique which made it even more confusing. For example, The Mirror reported that Jeanette “dresses sensibly for the farm in slacks and shirt”. Jennifer had just finished primary school, which looking back she thinks may have been a deliberate moment chosen by her parents to enact the transition. “My sister had finished pre-school, my brother was at secondary school, but nothing was explained. It’s really hard to imagine how people can not tell you, but this was a different era and in the world I came from it was a question I couldn’t bring myself to ask, because I knew there
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was disgrace. The things people said to me were pretty awful.” The only warning that something was awry came to 10-year-old Jennifer when she overheard her parents arguing. “They never argued and I remember saying to my brother, ‘our parents may not stay together’. I don’t remember what he said, but I know that about a week and a half later we were removed, taken up to the country to a place called Harkaway Farm. Not so long after I remember the phone ringing in the middle of the night because my grandfather had died. He’d had a bad heart.” By that time Dallas was retired and living in Frankston. “It was suggested publicly that it was Mum’s fault, she’d killed him by running off.” Jennifer was especially concerned about her father. “He had all the humiliation and he had been publicly – in the old days you’d have called it ‘cuckolded’. It was all over the papers. Even though I didn’t understand what it meant, I understood he was incredibly vulnerable. It’s a very great privilege as a child or young person to see your father vulnerable because most of us never do until they get old or sick, but he was a man in the prime of his life and I didn’t understand all the complexities. I just knew something Mummy had done was scandalous and terrible and my grandfather had died. But my father never said one bad word about my mother. Not once.” Jennifer’s mother stayed with Zita for 19 years and though Jennifer didn’t like her mother’s partner, looking back she has come to understand what her mum may have been feeling. “Slowly as time went on Mum would tell me things. She was bright. She’d been encouraged by one of her school teachers to sit the Oxford entry exams. But when she told her father he said, that’s not going to happen. No man is going to marry a bluestocking, and she was sent to a Swiss boarding school. She always joked when making the bed that she could do a perfect hospital corner! “Grandpa was the maximum male that you could have – it didn’t worry me; I loved it. He was my grandad. But if he was your father-in-law or your father it was different. Maybe Zita was the →
JENNIFER WEARS GINGER & SMART DRESS AND DINOSAUR DESIGNS BANGLE. CHAIR FROM MATT BLATT.
Exclusive
“We lived a fairytale, strange existence.�
escape. It was her chance to break away from an incredibly restrictive life.” It has taken decades for Jennifer to overcome her “intense dislike for this woman who blew up my life” and appreciate her mother’s situation, and I sense a lot of the pain is still very raw. After a couple of years Jennifer was sent away to boarding school for four years, which she loathed.“It was nothing like Malory Towers,” she jokes. Her golden days were the summer holidays with her father. “I think a girl who has the unreserved, unquestioned love of her father is blessed indeed. I did.” Robin later remarried and retired “at 59 and a quarter years of age,” Jennifer says. “He lived another 28 years. He couldn’t wait to be with his games, jigsaws, garden and tennis. He was the happiest retiree I’ve ever known. Andrew used to say he’s a bit like Winnie the Pooh. To be around him made you happy because he was undemanding, endlessly interested and didn’t try to turn you into something better. He was a really gentle soul in a pretty tough world.” Jennifer was a smart student and sat her HSC – or Matric as it was then – early. She ended up two years ahead of her peers and won a place in university. Her mother thought she was too young to go at 16, so as a fill-in she applied for a journalism cadetship at The Age newspaper. “I don’t know why [editor] Graham Perkin took on a 16-year-old cadet, but I think it was partly because it was the beginning of ’70s feminism, he wanted women in the newsroom.” She was paid $40 a week – as were men – and loved it. Jennifer’s print journalism career took her to Melbourne, San Francisco and London’s Fleet Street. She gave up her university place and embraced work. With the benefit of hindsight she sees she was “running away from the fractures and running towards the perceived solutions and the determination to grow up incredibly fast”, but admits The Age “saved” her at a time when she was lost. Ten years on when the Nine Network called to offer a position on the new Sunday show, Jennifer took the leap into TV and moved to Sydney. Then in
1986 she replaced George Negus on 60 Minutes and the rest is history. “It was fun to take over from George. I was conspicuously different in everything from hair quantity to experience. It was big. But by that time I’d had a really good stint at Sunday, so I was ready.” Jennifer has never been one to stay still and her impressive career has seen her move from TV to book publishing and back to TV. On the way she married and broke up with her first husband, journalist David Margan, and in 1990 just two weeks after that split, met her soulmate Andrew Denton. “It was not sought, not expected, but that is an almost unbelievable 30 years ago.” Their son, Connor, born in 1994, was the catalyst for the couple to tie the knot nine years later. “He really wanted it. He had this romantic idea, and a very particular vision, in which he would be the one who carried the ring on a red velvet cushion as his parents got married. He mentioned it several times over the years and he never nagged, and
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when we did decide to get married our neighbour, who has remained really good friends and is much handier than I am, made us the red velvet cushion. I’ve got fabulous photographs of the ring on the red velvet cushion being held by our son with a smile like sunshine. He knew he’d made the whole thing happen.” Time healed her parents’ rift and they ended up living a stone’s throw from each other in Melbourne with their new spouses – when Zita left, following years on her own, Jean married Jennifer’s godfather, who had also been the best man at Jean’s first wedding. The two couples became the best of friends, in and out of each other’s houses. Jennifer too realised “the amazingness” of her mum, who went to university to study anthropology in her later years. Then when Jean turned 79, she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. “It was beyond terrible. It didn’t happen quickly and my sister did absolutely the lion’s share because she was in Melbourne.”
COURTESY OF THE NINE NETWORK. GETTY IMAGES. JENNIFER WEARS WITCHERY TOP, MAX MARA PANTS AND DINOSAUR DESIGNS BANGLES. CHAIR FROM MATT BLATT.
Flying high
Exclusive After a long illness, Jennifer’s father died in January 2016 and Jean died in November the same year. She is philosophical about the circle of life, but it was undeniably hard to bear and is still something she’s struggling with. But one of the positive outcomes was that Jennifer agreed to go on the Who Do You Think You Are TV series to investigate her family history. She had no idea of where she came from beyond her parents move from England and her father’s childhood in China, and admits it was definitely a way to reconnect with her parents, but says it was also something she would never have felt free to do when they were alive.
Clockwise from above: Lady Violet Brooks; Jennifer with her dad Robin and son Connor; on assignment; Connor on Jennifer and Andrew’s wedding day; Jennifer and Andrew; Jennifer hugging mum Jean.
The result of her journey with the show was cataclysmic. In short, Jennifer discovered she’s the descendant of three royal dynasties and of Sir Edward Neville, one of King Henry VIII’s courtiers who was beheaded as a traitor; his head put on a spike. Amid the powerful men were equally impressive women, who seized control of their lives in difficult circumstances.
My formidable family
In 2017, niggling indigestion resulted in a diagnosis of advanced heart disease for Andrew. It came out of the blue and the subsequent operation was a big one – quadruple heart bypass surgery which ended up being quintuple. In the lead-up, Andrew and Connor were resolutely positive but Jennifer was terrified. After the operation she rushed in to check on her husband. “I made a mistake and went in too early. They say you should wait till they come out of the deep – they basically kill you; they turn off all your vital organs so everything
is done by machine. When I went in he was this horrible colour. He was in the Underworld ... So I sang. Songs we sing together. Songs we’d sung to Connor. And he came back. It was the miracle of medicine, but I sang him to life.” Since Andrew’s brush with death, I note the couple has embraced travelling and tried to scale back work. Is this Jennifer’s way of grabbing on to life while she can? “No, I truly don’t think that way,” she replies. “I feel incredibly grateful about having – though it was painful – this long track which began when I was in my single figures of what looked like a jewelled life and of course wasn’t. That’s the race and what happened when my parents went is that I don’t feel driven anymore. I just feel free. I think anyone who’s lost a parent would know the deep grief and the sense of the layer above you in the universe, gone; but would also recognise there’s freedom.” Jennifer is about to own that freedom with her next project, what she’s calling “a bit of a memoir”. It’s going to investigate her newly discovered relatives, Katherine Swynford and her daughter, Lady Joan Beaufort, with whom she now feels an affinity through their shared experiences of scandal, love of literature and a belief women can shape their own destiny. “It was the publisher’s idea; someone from outside saw it and said, ‘you’ve always had that singing family, you always were bookish people, you always were women who ran rather than sat.’ “It’s still sinking in. I’ve been alone a long time. There was something thrilling about finding I come from a coherent line, people you can respect and want to emulate. One gave birth to two royal dynasties and her mother, who survived scandal and sneering, prevailed. I’ve got to live up to them. It’s easy to be the one in the 21st century who has the voice and the pen. I’m so proud that I’ve got to be as formidable as they were.” AWW Celebrity Mastermind airs Saturdays on SBS from February 15 to March 21. Mastermind returns weeknights on SBS from February 24.
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Jill E M B E RS O N
k n i p n e h W
meets teal first met Jill Emerson late last year in a room behind an old heritage-listed art gallery in the NSW port town of Newcastle. Dozens of women were gathered around a long table, chattering brightly as they sewed silk and cotton flowers. Only two colours were used in their creations: the pink of the breast cancer awareness campaign and the teal of the ovarian cancer movement. Their conversations stopped, but their work didn’t, as the woman they were sewing for entered. At 60, Jill was dignified, warm, vibrant, and hiding the pain in her body, as she addressed the group about saving the lives of women with ovarian cancer. “It takes numbers – more women asking for change, demanding change,” Jill insisted. But there the problem lies, because ovarian cancer is so lethal that not enough women survive to raise the
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awareness and research funding that could significantly improve outcomes. Which is why Jill – a broadcaster, wife mother and committed activist – resolved to bring together the pink and the teal, the breast cancer and the ovarian cancer awareness movements. “By working together we can make a difference,” she said determinedly. She knew she had little time but she had resolved to use all she had left to improve the odds for other women confronting ovarian cancer. Jill had a passionate nature and an engaging manner. As we spoke in a sun-drenched courtyard that afternoon, there were few outward signs she had terminal cancer. But within months of our interview, Jill died, tragically fulfilling the prophecy she was fighting to change. ➝
PHOTOGRAPHY BY ALEX JACK.
Jill Emberson was a courageous campaigner for those, like her, whose lives are cut short by ovarian cancer. Shortly before her death she spoke with Genevieve Gannon of love and life, and the hope that her work will lead to better outcomes for women with cancer.
Legacy
Joyous moment ... Jill and Ken Lambert on their wedding day in Newcastle.
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An accidental advocate
Jill’s quest began in February 2016 when she went to the doctor about a persistent “dragging” sensation in her vagina that had escalated into a sort of “electric twinge”. She was busy at work and not particularly worried. Nevertheless, she made an appointment with her GP. She was experiencing a pleasant phase of calm in her life. She was a morning presenter at ABC local radio in Newcastle and, after being a single mother for many years, she had been dating a kind man named Ken Lambert who had changed her life. “I’d been on my own for a very long time,” she said. She was in love. After explaining her symptoms to her doctor, Jill was sent for a transvaginal ultrasound. Her blood test results suggested she may have ovarian cancer, but in order to be certain, she had to have surgery. A gynaecological oncologist opened her up, confirming the worst. Jill had advanced stage three ovarian cancer. “I was just devastated,” she said. One of the reasons ovarian cancer is so deadly is that it’s so hard to detect. It spreads like grains of sand, washing through the body. Its nickname is the disease that whispers. “It runs everywhere,” Jill explained. “It will get out of your ovaries and it will scatter. Then it will attach itself to another organ. Mine was already metastasised. That’s what seals your fate
Left to right: Jill with Lauren O'Brien; the rally in Newcastle; creating rosettes for the gala.
really. If it’s already on another organ the chances of being able to contain it are really small.” The surgery required to diagnose ovarian cancer is colloquially known as peek and shriek. “Because they’d open you up, have a look and then they’d scream because it was so far gone,” Jill said. Even her partner, Ken, a GP, was surprised by the diagnosis. “The early symptoms are so vague,” she added. Before Jill’s diagnosis had been confirmed, she had to sign a waiver that gave her surgeon permission to cut her up to her chest, in case the cancer had spread. When the surgeon investigated, he found Jill’s body was riddled with cancerous cells. A pathologist confirmed the diagnosis, and then the surgeon began the process known as “debulking”, which means excising the organs that have been infiltrated. Jill went into the operating theatre
Bella McGavin and the D Majors at the fundraiser. event.
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wondering if her fears of cancer would be confirmed. She came out without her uterus, ovaries and fallopian tubes. “It was horrific,” she says. Despite this drastic removal of so many body parts, her surgeon could still only give Jill a 50/50 change of survival. When she was well enough, Jill went in search of answers. She zigzagged all over the country, attending conferences and visiting clinicians, acting on her journalist’s instinct to gather as much information as she could. Her sister, Judy-Ann Emberson, said what Jill discovered were “terrible, ordinary facts”. “The more I learnt, the madder I got,” Jill explained on her podcast Still Jill. Ovarian cancer is classified as a “rare” cancer. Rare cancers cause about half of all cancer deaths but receive only 12 per cent of research funding. That can’t be right, Jill thought. Years of reading about progress in the fight against cancer has lulled us all into the belief that the ‘big C’ is no longer a death sentence. Cervical cancer will be wiped out by 2020. Breast cancer’s five-year survival rate is 91 per cent. But advancements are not unilateral. ‘What’s being done for women with ovarian cancer?’ she wanted to know. The answer: very little. Jill began chemotherapy. She lost her hair, but she wasn’t “too debilitated”. She felt determined and defiant. As she left the hospital after the final day of chemo, relief coursed through her veins. “I thought I was going to be in that group that sails through this,” she said. But ovarian cancer’s relapse rate is high. About three-quarters of women diagnosed with advanced stage ovarian
Legacy
“It takes numbers - more women asking for change.” cancer have a recurrence within 12 to 24 months of completing their initial treatment. Nine months after her last round of chemo, Jill got the call she had been dreading. The cancer was back, and it was incurable. On hearing the news, Jill fell on the floor. Ken got down onto the ground with her. After living her life as a virtuoso for so long, Ken’s act of love was “a very different texture” from the type of love she had experienced for most of her adult life. She let him hold her. “I’d tipped out of the world of surviving into the world of being taken by this disease,” she explained. Yet, in time she rallied.
PHOTOGRAPHS SU0PPLIED AND USED WITH PERMISSION. OPPOSITE PAGE: SHANE WILLIAMS.
The power of love In a bid to understand how ovarian cancer research had been overlooked, Jill delved into the history of cancer advocacy. “Back in the ’60s the standard treatment for breast cancer was cutting both breasts off, taking the lymph nodes, the works,” Jill said. A turning point came when a US journalist named Rose Kushner spoke out about the treatment. She refused to have her breasts cut off and began questioning the status quo. “Conventional practice started to change,” Jill said. When former American First Lady Betty Ford spoke publicly about her breast cancer diagnosis, it resulted in a spike of tests, which came to be known as The Betty Ford Blip.
“As the wife of a President, she was able to really get a big audience,” Jill said. “When I read that sort of stuff, I thought, ‘These are just individual women. I can do something like that. It hasn’t taken rocket science. It has taken women to say what they think.’” The problem for ovarian cancer sufferers, Jill learned, is a cruel Catch-22. “We literally don’t live long enough to form the army of advocates,” she said. This was something she was told by researchers at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Melbourne when she went there seeking answers. “The researchers literally said to me: ‘You need an army of advocates like breast cancer and you just don’t stay alive long enough’. I heard it from clinicians’ mouths.” A further complicating factor, Jill believed, was the sense of shame attached to women’s reproductive cancers. “There’s clear evidence women can go to their doctor three or four times before they get a satisfactory diagnosis,” Jill says. “Doctors say that is also because women are embarrassed to talk about
their own reproductive organs. I think that’s reflected in the public arena.” In September 2017, Jill woke with a splitting headache. When she tried to get out of bed, she fell to the floor. Ken called an ambulance, which rushed Jill to hospital, where doctors performed emergency surgery. The cancer had spread to her brain. Ken spent an anxious night by her side, wondering if she’d ever wake again. Jill did, and she’d had a revelation. She realised Ken had saved her life, and was much more than a boyfriend. As she lay in the hospital bed, recovering from brain surgery, she asked him if he would marry her. She laughed as she spoke about it, but the answer was not the one for which she’d hoped. As a doctor, Ken felt he couldn’t say yes to a proposal made in the aftermath of brain surgery. “It was an amazing mix of feelings,” Ken confessed when Jill interviewed him on Still Jill. He was proud Jill wanted to marry him, but “another part of me kicked in, the medical part, and that part of me said: this beautiful partner of mine, that I’m so blown away by, what she’s just said, she’s within 12 hours of major surgery.” So, even though it “sort of broke my heart”, he turned her down with the proviso that, if she still felt the same way in a few weeks, he’d reconsider. Jill’s wishes didn’t change. She told him she meant every word, and they began to plan their wedding. A local dressmaker created a gown for Jill, embellishing it with hundreds of beaded flowers. When the day came, her daughter Malia Emberson-Lafoa’i walked Jill down the aisle in a celebration of life and love. “It was a show,” Jill said, smiling. “One friend said the wedding was so good she would have bought a ticket.” Then came another coup. Jill was invited to address the National Press Club in Canberra. Preparing for the speech, she knew she had to come up with some practical ideas. “You can do those speeches and people say: but what do I do? And I thought: wouldn’t it be great if the ➝
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Legacy Jill and her daughter, Malia, at her wedding to Ken, to whom she proposed after having brain surgery.
had to find, there never seems to be everyday support unless I seek it out. I think we need not only more funding for research, but funding for OC nurses as well.” One of the cruellest things about ovarian cancer is that it can leave sufferers feeling isolated and lonely. Pink Meets Teal works to change that. “Ovarian cancer women say, ‘I feel so touched and uplifted by this’,” Jill told me.
A vital legacy
direct advocacy in Canberra helped secure $35 million for ovarian and other gynaecological cancer funding from the federal government. “I’m just kicking myself that I’ll be going before we have time [to make a real difference],” she said quietly. But there’s still no test and no cure, so she was determined to keep up the fight. With her ‘think globally, act locally’ philosophy, Jill called the seamstress who had made her wedding dress and she immediately went to work sewing 30 specially designed dresses. The top was pink, the bottom, teal. On May 8 last year, for World Ovarian Cancer Day, Jill and her phalanx of supporters gathered on the main street of Newcastle in a colourful call for better funding. They launched a petition that has attracted 45,000 signatures and is growing. Even now, her campaign is gathering traction. Women are flocking to Pink Meets Teal’s social media pages. One breast cancer survivor who now has ovarian cancer wrote a testimonial to the importance of what Jill is doing: “When I went through treatment with breast cancer, I had so much support from breast cancer nurses, I was never really frightened. I’m stage 4 OC [Ovarian Cancer]. The support I’ve received I’ve
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After her second round of chemo failed, Jill was offered a place in an immunetherapy trial but “it stopped working” just before we met. “At first I was like: I’m going to beat this disease. Now, I’m living proof of what I’ve said all along: We die quickly,” she said. “We can’t keep taking small steps forward, but I now see why we only make small steps. I’m one of the 1500 diagnosed in Australia each year. Okay, I’ve managed to make a difference but I wish there were five of me. I didn’t want to be this person, to grow up to be an ovarian cancer campaigner.” It’s a story without a happy ending. For all her spirit and guts, Jill couldn’t stop the disease from advancing. She was too ill to attend a Pink Meets Teal gala last November. In her absence, the organisation she started raised $30,000 for ovarian cancer research. Two weeks later she died peacefully with Malia holding one hand, Ken holding the other. It was as she had predicted: another loud voice shouting about the disease that whispers had been silenced. Yet her legacy lives on. Jill inspired supporters across Australia. She leaves behind an army. Thanks to her tireless devotion and strength, other women may one day be spared her cruel fate. AWW To support Pink Meets Teal, follow Facebook@pinkmeetsteal and sign the petition at change.org
PHOTOGRAPHY BY ALEX JACK.
breast cancer organisations and the teal organisations could get together and do something together.” Her idea got a round of applause. It hit a nerve. “I followed that up by saying: all you breast cancer organisations, you’ll be hearing from me.” Jill founded Pink Meets Teal, which calls for funding fairness across all women’s cancers, particularly ovarian. Ovarian cancer kills one Australian woman every eight hours, yet its five-year survival rate of only 46 per cent has barely improved in 20 years. It’s not as common as breast cancer, but is far more deadly. What breast cancer sufferers have is an army of survivors – a powerful force Jill wanted to harness. The pink in the sewing room where we first met signified the sisterhood Jill fostered between breast cancer survivors and ovarian cancer sufferers. For a long time, she felt like it was a cause she was championing on her own. But in her home city of Newcastle, a cancer survivor choir called the D-Majors threw their might behind her mission. The choir’s founder, Lauren O’Brien, heard what Jill was doing and asked the “girls’ army”, as she calls the D Majors, to help. “They just stepped right up and asked what can we do?” Lauren says. Jill was at home when she heard an unfamiliar sound and went to her balcony to investigate. “The next thing I hear, coming down my drive ...” Jill hummed a little of their tune. The D Majors were pouring into her yard and raising their voices in a show of strength and love. The song they’d chosen was Lean on Me.“It was incredible,” Jill said, a tear in her eye.“It’s a small initiative in a small town but that can grow.” A former Greenpeace activist, and ABC journalist, Jill had raised her daughter as a single mother and had never been one to back away from a fight. She made tremendous strides. Her
• • • •
Exclusive
Tur i
Dame Kristin
S COTT T H O M AS
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K
ristin Scott Thomas has a reputation for being an ice queen of the movie industry. As an actress she has immortalised those particular roles which require a certain aloofness and hauteur. Her breakthrough came in 1994 in Four Weddings and a Funeral when she played the acerbic Fiona, who is madly in love with the hapless Charles (Hugh Grant) but too proud to let him know how she feels. She went on to star opposite Robert Redford as the powerful, successfulbut-broken Annie MacLean in The Horse Whisperer, and then as a frosty,
married congresswoman who falls for a tough police detective (Harrison Ford) in Random Hearts. But it was as the brilliant, complicated, Katharine in The English Patient in 1996 – where her steamy affair with Ralph Fiennes won her multiple award nominations, including an Oscar – that she really put her mark on Hollywood. Now 59, Kristin has never played the Hollywood game. She cannot bear Los Angeles (“Who would want to actually live there?”) and has spent much of her life in France. She is not a fan of social media (“I do have an official Twitter account but it is for work purposes,” she
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says. “I think we should be aware that social media can be as dangerous as it is useful.”) And she has never really cared what people think of her. Hugh Grant famously remarked she had to be “warmed up” every morning on set, and in interviews she is infamous for refusing to suffer foolish or intrusive questions, and happier to sit in chilly silence. She has been known to launch withering attacks on “vulgar” girls with fake tans and short skirts. She is a woman who knows her own mind. I have been warned. In her latest movie role in Military Wives, true to form, Kristin plays →
RICHARD PHIBBS / TRUNK ARCHIVE/ SNAPPER IMAGES..
Dame Kristin Scott Thomas is known for playing frosty, posh Brits but behind the aristocratic cheekbones, Louise Gannon meets the real KST who learned her craft in France, loves babies and laughing, and refuses to reveal the name of the lady who keeps her skin so radiant.
Exclusive a stiff, posh, emotionally frozen colonel’s wife in a film based on the true-life story of the partners of British soldiers who formed a choir to help them deal with the pain of separation from their loved ones. Their success – appearing on television and having a chart-topping album – inspired similar choirs on bases all over the world, including 12 Military Wives Choirs in Australia from Sydney to Perth and Wagga Wagga. Military Wives is a feel-good, tearjerker of a movie from the makers of The Full Monty and, as usual, Kristin’s performance is flawless and cleverly nuanced. As Kate, whose teenage son died in conflict, she takes it upon herself to help the other military wives forget about their worries when their men are deployed to Afghanistan, and she does so by leading them in a choir. Except no one really likes her, including the wine-chugging, popular staff sergeant’s wife, played by Sharon Horgan, who wants to sing The Beatles rather than Beethoven, and pop songs instead of hymns. It is as much the story of their unexpected friendship, and the journey of these unsung heroines of combat, which makes the film such a must-see, heart-warming movie. But as ever, it is the story of Kristin playing a singular woman who is not part of the crowd. We meet in the suite of an upmarket London hotel. Kristin is wearing a long, heavy, black-andwhite tweed coat that is fully buttoned-up over elegant black dress trousers, black leather high heels and a crisp, classic white shirt. Her highlighted-chestnut hair, cut in the same voguish bob she has worn it in for the past four decades, is salon perfect. She is pencil-slim but it’s her face that stops you in your tracks – the transparent skin, those high, aristocratic cheekbones, the hooded grey-green eyes under arched eyebrows and the wide, symmetrical mouth which is, right now, shaped into a surprisingly welcoming smile. Many, many words have been used to describe Kristin’s enduring beauty. This year she
will be 60, but still the sensual-woman parts keep coming – most recently as actress Phoebe Waller Bridge’s ultimate girl-crush in the black comedy, Fleabag. Fashionistas regularly vote her the most stylish woman in the world. You wonder how it must feel to be universally feted. She gives me a sideways look then laughs. “Oh, I’ve just got one of those faces which works in front of a camera. From any angle and any distance, you will always see my eyes and my nose. I’ve grown into my face. I was never considered anything special as a child or as a teenager, but somehow I was given this gift of having a certain beauty which appeals to people on a screen. “It doesn’t make me think: ‘Gosh, aren’t I wonderful?’ I understand it’s because I work in an industry where there are a lot of people happy to pay
an awful lot of attention to making me look as good as possible. Offscreen, away from everyone, I can melt away and be invisible. And there are plenty of moments when I look in the mirror and think, ‘Ugh’. And then I quickly look away. Things aren’t always as they appear.” Right now, Kristin – or KST as she’s known to her friends – is not quite living up to her reputation. True, she won’t “go personal”. There is no hint of whether or not she is in a relationship (since her divorce 11 years ago from François Olivennes, the Parisian-based obstetrician and gynaecologist, Kristin has been linked to Game Of Thrones actor Tobias Menzies and the multimillionaire financier Arpad Busson). But she laughs a lot, and coos over tales of her two-year-old granddaughter by her daughter, Hannah, 30, the eldest of her three children (along with Joseph, 27, and 19-year-old George). “Oh God, I love babies,” she says,
The English Patient (above, with Ralph Fiennes) is considered one of her best performances.
Military Wives (right) is the lastest film to round out Kristin’s glittering career, which includes roles in Random Hearts (above) and Four Weddings and a Funeral (top).
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RICHARD PHIBBS / TRUNKARCHIVE.CO. ALAMY.
“I was never considered anything special as a child.”
dramatically. “I just love them. I have her to stay with me and we have the most tremendous fun. I can spoil her, I can be strict. But as a grandmother you don’t have that constant fear of ‘am I doing this right?’ that you do as a mother. And she behaves so well for me. She sleeps, she eats, she listens. My daughter can’t believe it, and I never imagined having a grandchild would change my life so completely.” It is appropriate we are talking about family because in so many ways, Military Wives is all about family to her. To understand Kristin Scott
Thomas is to understand her past. She, like Kate, came from a military family going back two generations. And like Kate, Kristin grew up on a military base; hers was in Dorset, England. It is not an easy past and it is only now, she admits, that she is ready to start going back to memories both poignant and painful. “I think this is something that we almost unconsciously do when we get older. I have friends – Jane Birkin, Charlotte Rampling – who also did the same. Something almost outside of you drives you back there.” Military Wives and a documentary
series called My Grandparents’ War were what drove her back there. She discovered that her quiet, reserved grandfather, Thomas, was a military hero whose brave command of a destroyer ship, HMS Impulsive, saved the lives of thousands of troops from Dunkirk. He was also awarded a Distinguished Service Cross for laying mines across an enemy minefield. “And he never said anything to us about any of it when he was alive,” she says. “We didn’t talk about it. We didn’t talk about any of it.” Grief and tragedy were forever wrapped in silence. She was five and at the military base when her pregnant mother, Deborah, told her that her father, Simon, had been killed in his fighter plane during a Cold War training mission. Six years later – after her mother had remarried and had a fifth child – her second husband, who was also a Royal Navy pilot, was killed in another flying accident. Again, there was no weeping or wailing. Within a year, a decision was made for Kristin to go to boarding school, and there she felt lonely and abandoned. She has talked about a desperate feeling of sadness as a child, but it was something she kept hidden. I ask her why, and she answers simply: “It was just the way things were. I was a child of the ‘70s. It was different times then because you just didn’t go around screaming and shouting. “And before I was even an adult I had lost two key people in my life. I had one left: my mother. I didn’t want to scream and rage at my mother because I could not risk losing her from my life. So you close down and keep it all contained. It was what I was used to. I understood the need for silence, the need to just keep on.” It was this aspect of Kate she completely understood. “I don’t think I’m like her in any way,” she says. “She lost a child, which is something I just cannot comprehend, and something →
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Exclusive
Joseph (above) and Hannah (left) are Kristin’s children with ex François (below).
“I had to do a lot of work on myself to get to where I am.” until 15 years ago. “It’s not a state of mind, it’s an illness,” she says. “It’s a crippling thing to go through. Nothing people say to you can change the way you see yourself and the world. People can say you are beautiful, they can say you are wonderful. It means nothing. I suffered from it on and off for years.” Did she have therapy, I ask. She nods. “I had to do a lot of work on myself to get to where I am now. You have to do it. Hard work. And then you start to get through it and come out the other side.” On paper she has ticked all the boxes: marriage, a career, a family and financial success. Her marriage to François lasted 18 years and they have three children – and their granddaughter – together. She has, in the past few years, moved back from France to Britain. Does she consider herself more French than English? She laughs. “When I’m in England, I miss France. In France, I miss England. I think I dress like a French woman, and I’ve learnt a lot from French women. I have an amazing lady who looks after my face. I have been going to her for years and she keeps it looking far better than it should with these facial massages which are incredibly painful but have unbelievable
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effects. And like all French women, I keep her name secret otherwise I’ll no longer be able to get an appointment.” Family, she says more softly, is the thing that keeps her anchored in life. In Military Wives, the power of family – however dysfunctional – is one of the core tenets which rings true with Kristin. “I am very, very close to my family,” she says. “My mother is still alive, which is wonderful, and of everything I ever did, being a mother myself has been pretty remarkable. I don’t think I ever thought I was doing a good job. I worked a lot but my children were always on my mind. They are all lovely and I’m so very proud of them.” The idea that she will turn 60 in May, is “rather fabulous”. “Life for me has been a process of getting better, getting more relaxed and becoming happier,” she says. “I love getting older. It’s a gift. In an ideal world I would spend my days with my family in a French orchard, eating good French food, laughing and talking and holding my grand-daughter on my knee. What could be better?” A happy-ever-after ending. AWW Military Wives opens on March 12.
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– thank God – that has never happened to me. But I do totally see the way she coped was by keeping busy, by pushing all those emotions down. It’s not a very fashionable way to deal with life, but it’s the way many of us deal with things that happen to us. You just carry on.” In her teens and early twenties, Kristin was a lost soul. Miserable at school, she trained to be a drama teacher and then realised that what she really wanted to do was act, but was “kicked off my course for being useless”, she says. “I wasn’t going in to lessons. I was unhappy. Useless.” At 19, she began working in Paris as an au pair for a couple who worked in the opera world. “One day, the mum asked me what I wanted to do. I mumbled that I wanted to be an actress but I knew it was a laughable ambition because it was never going to happen. “She just stopped me and told me never to think like that, and if that was what I wanted then that was what I must do.” She pauses, looks at her hand for a moment and then says, “It was probably the first time in my life I felt that there was someone who actually believed things were possible, and that not everything was going to end in disaster. It sounds silly but it was a real follow-your-dreams, believe-in-yourself moment. And it changed everything. I studied acting in France and started working.” I ask her why she, a girl who spent her whole life keeping all her emotions so bottled up, wanted to become an actress, and she pauses for a moment to think. “It’s simple really,” she says. “I wanted to be other people.” Then she corrects herself. “Actually, I wanted to know what it was like to be other people, to escape from being me, to try on someone else’s shoes.” She pauses again. “And to walk out on stage was – still is – terrifying. But each time you do it, you feel you have done something quite brave. Not brave like my grandfather. Brave for the person you really are underneath.” She has said, in the past, she has been too typecast in these uptight, ice-queen roles, but today Kristin seems far more relaxed about life. We talk about depression, something she suffered from
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Royal drama
MAHA
the KING
OF CHAOS He was once a petulant playboy prince, now he’s one of the world’s richest and most unpredictable rulers. William Langley investigates the eccentric world of Thailand’s King Maha Vajiralongkorn.
GETTY IMAGES.
A
s he swayed through the streets of Bangkok aboard a gilded litter, Thailand’s newly-crowned King Maha Vajiralongkorn looked down on scenes of deference and rejoicing. Last May’s spectacular coronation had been months in the planning, and the 67-year-old king, despite a reputation for quirkiness, seemed settled on a smooth transition. Almost nothing since has followed in the discreet ways of the 800-yearold monarchy. Insiders speak of a court in chaos, feuds, betrayals and conspiracies, as four-times married Maha purges the royal ranks, promotes his favourites and seeks to establish himself as a near-absolute monarch. Prominent among the casualties is the king’s ‘official concubine’, Sineenat
Wongvajirapakdi, a glamorous 34-yearold former bodyguard, whom he dismissed after publicly accusing her of “disloyalty and ingratitude”. Known around the palace as Koi, the willowy martial arts instructress was appointed to the post three months after Maha’s coronation, and showered with honours including the Most Exalted Order of the White Elephant (special class). Koi’s dismissal sent shockwaves through a nation which had barely absorbed the idea of the king keeping a formal mistress alongside his wife, 41-year-old Queen Suthida. Within hours of Koi’s fall, all references to her disappeared from the palace website, and her photograph was removed from state buildings. “Noble Royal Consort Sineenat is ungrateful and behaves in ways unbecoming of her
title,” said a palace statement. “She is not content with the honour bestowed upon her and does everything to rise to the level of the Queen.” To many royal observers, the wording clearly hinted at a power struggle between the two women in Maha’s life, in which Koi had come off worse. The concubine’s whereabouts and current status are now unknown, with a royal spokesman saying: “This lady is no longer our concern”. The post of concubine was assumed to have become defunct in Thailand during the Fifth Reign, which lasted from around 1850-1910 and saw the country’s emergence as a modern state under the revered King Rama V. “It’s pretty archaic, and most people today would find it ridiculous,” says Tannawat Suttirat, publisher of a ➝
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London-based Thai newsletter. “The feeling is that the queen went bananas and forced Koi out, but these days it’s hard to know anything for sure.” What can be said is that the British and Australianeducated Maha is one of the more eccentric monarchs of modern times. His coronation procession through Bangkok, wearing the multi-tiered Great Crown of Victory and accompanied by a troupe of elephants, marked the first time most Thais had set eyes on him. Sustained by a large hereditary fortune, Maha has spent most of his adult years enjoying a leisurely life in Europe and the United States, returning home only for visits and state occasions. Such word as Thailand had of him was not encouraging. In 2007 he appointed his miniature poodle, Foo Foo, an air chief marshal in the Royal Thai Air Force. A leaked diplomatic cable from Ralph Boyce, US ambassador to Bangkok, recounts Foo Foo attending a gala dinner “in formal attire, complete with white paw mitts”. At one point, recalled the ambassador, the pooch jumped onto the table and began drinking from guests’ glasses. When Foo-Foo died, he was accorded full military and Buddhist honours and days of state mourning. As long as Maha’s father, popular King Bhumibol, remained on the throne, Thais felt able to overlook such antics. The scholarly, saxophoneplaying Bhumibol was seen as a unifying power in a frequently fractious country. But when the king died in 2016 after 70 years on the throne, the prospect of Maha, his only son, taking his place became worryingly real. There were reports of crisis meetings across the political sphere, and influential magazine Asia Sentinel denounced Maha as “an erratic and out-of-control womaniser, wholly incapable of ruling” – only to be banned on royal orders.
Out of favour Royal consort Sineenat was showered with honours, rising through the military to rank of Major General. Three months after Maha’s coronation she was dismissed, accused of undermining the queen. Her whereabouts and status are unknown.
Yet, according to Andrew MacGregor Marshall, author of A Kingdom in Crisis, Bhumibol had serious doubts about allowing his son to succeed: “The Crown Prince was a disappointment to the king,” says Marshall, “and he tried to make him shape up. He restricted his money to stop him partying. He even suggested that if the prince didn’t improve, he’d give the throne to his daughter, Princess Sirindhorn. He thought his son would be a poor king, but he was a conservative man, and he thought a man should succeed him.” Maha, the second of Bhumibol’s four children, was born in the sprawling Dusit Palace and had a conventional royal childhood before being sent to board at Millfield, Britain’s most expensive private
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school. Music critic Rupert Christiansen, a fellow pupil, remembers him as an overweight, clumsy outsider, who took comfort from “guzzling compulsively on Thai specialities stored in a seemingly bottomless trunk kept under his bed.” Maha went on to spend a term at The King’s School, Sydney, followed by enrolment at the Royal Military College, Duntroon, near Canberra. It was after his return to Thailand that the story of his life grew murkier. To impress his father, he took various roles in the Thai armed forces, amassing an impressive array of ranks, including Field Marshal, Admiral of the Fleet and Marshal of the Royal Air Force, but seemed increasingly distracted by romantic liaisons and a preference for living outside Thailand.
Royal drama
Court of contrasts
AAP. GETTY IMAGES.
King Bhumibol (below, with Maha and Queen Sirikit), was popular and seen as a unifying force. In contrast, Maha has behaved bizarrely, making his poodle Foo Foo an air chief marshall in the air-force, and demanding his wife show subservience during their wedding.
Before his accession to the throne, his main base had been Tutzing, a sleepy village in southern Germany where he and Suthida, a one-time airline stewardess, took over a magnificent 1920s lakeside villa. “They seemed to live a quiet life, and we have had no problems,” says the village’s deputy mayor Elisabeth Dörrenberg, “although we had to ask them to remove some security cameras.” Locals say Maha would fly in to Munich airport aboard a private Boeing 737 and arrive in the village in a $200,000 Porsche 911, followed by a large entourage. With a fondness for tank tops and tight jeans, he spent much time on Lake Starnberg, aboard a powerboat, in which he and Suthida used to visit the region’s quaint waterside restaurants.
Little is known of Suthida’s life and the palace provides only scant details. It seems she was born in Pattani, a poor, ethnically divided province, where she went to a local school, before taking a course in communications in Bangkok. After graduating, she found a job as a stewardess with Thai Airways, where it’s thought she met Maha on one of his regular flights in and out of the country. In 2010 she joined the Thai army, and within two years had risen to the rank of Lieut. Colonel. Among the accolades she received was a medal for “services and sacrifices” to the Crown Prince. In one of a number of pictures taken of Suthida at the time,
she wears a scarlet guard’s tunic, matching lipstick and a bearskin hat. In spite of their cosy living arrangements, Sudhita was not, at that time, married to the prince. As far as the outside world knew, they weren’t even in a relationship. Maha’s first wife, Princess Soamsawali, was also his first cousin and mother of his daughter, Princess Bajrakitiyabha. They divorced in 1993. Maha and his second wife, Princess Sujarinee Mahidol, divorced acrimoniously in ’96 and she and her sons fled to the USA, where they were granted asylum. By the time Sudhita met Maha, he was married to his third wife, Princess Srirasmi, a former waitress who first ➝
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Royal drama King Maha’s lavish coronation in May 2019. Below: Posters on the streets of Bangkok. It is an offence to do or say anything deemed insulting to the royals.
Right: The King’s unconventional lifestyle included arriving at Munich airport with Foo Foo and Suthida wearing fake tattoos and a skimpy tank top.
told Asia Sentinel. Joshua Kurlantzick, a South-East Asia specialist at America’s Council of Foreign Relations says: “Since taking the throne, Maha has manoeuvred himself to the centre of Thai politics, decreasing the power of the army and politicians along the way. He seems intent on pushing the country closer to absolute monarchy.” Although Thailand is nominally a parliamentary democracy, the real power lies between the military and the throne. As neither institution feels strong enough to rule without the other, an uneasy accord has existed for decades, which Maha now seems set on smashing. To millions of Thais, the king is an infallible deity, the very core of the nation’s soul. Pictures of the monarch are everywhere, with all public buildings, hotels, restaurants and most homes having one on display. In public squares the royal anthem is played most mornings and evenings, and passersby are expected to stop and sing.
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All this devotion is buttressed by laws of lèse-majeste, making it a serious offence to do or say anything deemed insulting to the royal family. Every year, hundreds are jailed for offences as trivial as spitting in the vicinity of a royal palace or failing to stand for the anthem. In recent years, the law has been tightened to include deceased royals and penalties have increased, with one defendant being given a 60-year sentence for a Facebook post. Nothing suggests Maha is in the mood to ease off. With a fortune of more than $30 billion, the Thai royal family is the world’s wealthiest. It has also proved itself to be the wiliest and most resilient. Yet it has never had a ruler like Maha, the stroppy schoolboy grown into the man nobody wants to say no to. “People are worried,” Tannawat says. “We’ve had all sorts of kings before – good ones, bad ones – but never one like Maha.” AWW
GETTY IMAGES.
entered the royal household as a lady-inwaiting. Rumours of the couple’s unconventional lifestyle were fuelled by the emergence of a video showing Srirasmi wearing nothing but a Panama hat and a black G-string, hosting a birthday party for Foo-Foo. In one scene she appears to eat cake out of the dog’s bowl, followed by the royal couple singing Happy Birthday. These bizarre frolics came to an end in 2014, when Maha stripped Siriasmi of her titles and banished her from court. Several members of her family were arrested and jailed. Almost nothing has been heard of her since, and some reports say she has left the country. On May 1, three days before his coronation, Maha married Suthida, in a lavish ceremony which involved her crawling to his feet to be patted on the head with a lotus flower. Experts on royal protocol were divided as to how much of this show of subservience was necessary, but for now the country may have bigger things to worry about. Few doubt Maha is set on establishing something closer to absolute rule. A purge in October saw the sacking of more than a dozen senior courtiers – some for what the palace described as “extremely evil conduct”, others for “moral laxity” and “disobedience”. At the same time, Maha has taken command of two crack army units, neutered the Privy Council (a onceinfluential advisory body) and sent hundreds of civil servants on special courses to improve their “loyalty” to the crown. Observers noted when Prime Minister General Prayut Chan-o-cha took his oath of office earlier this year, the traditional pledge of obedience to the king remained intact, while the promise to uphold the constitution had mysteriously vanished. “The system has delivered us an apparently half-mad king who knows no boundaries,” an unnamed politician
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M AT RO G E RS
Mat and Chloe believe in showing Max and Phoenix their respect for each other, and the value of hard work.
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ack in 2000 there was a favoured tradition in the Rogers family home. Once a week, Mat would visit his parents’ house in Sydney’s Cronulla where his mum, Carol, would have made a roast and his rugby legend dad, Steve, was already sitting in front of the TV waiting for the latest episode of Survivor to start. The US series had just launched, and like many families around the globe, the entire Rogers clan was avidly tuning in for the action. “It was the original reality show that transfixed the world really, and we had Survivor night every week,” Mat – who is about to hit screens for the second time in an Australian All Stars season of the program – tells The Weekly. “It was a fun thing to share with Mum and Dad because they loved it. I remember being blown away by how hopeless some of the Americans were in the outdoors. I was like, ‘Man, these guys are hopeless – let me at it!’ And then the opportunity came around.” That first opportunity came in 2018 when Mat’s agent asked if he’d be keen to take part in the Australian show’s third season on Ten: Champions vs. Contenders. It was a firm yes. Having played both rugby league and union at the highest level, Mat’s athletic prowess served him well during the gruelling game. It also won him a new legion of fans too young to have watched the glorious career he’d carved out on the sporting field. “I met so many kids and they were like, ‘You’re from Survivor,” Mat, 43
AN
’S WE
Footballer Mat Rogers has triumphed over loss and heartbreak. When he returns to TV for Australian Survivor, he tells Tiffany Dunk, he’ll be doing it for the most important people in his life: his family.
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HAIR AND MAKE-UP BY STEPHANIE CARLSSON. CHLOE WEARS MEGAN PARK DRESS. MAT WEARS ZARA SHIRT AND SHORTS. OPPOSITE PAGE: CHLOE WEARS COUNTRY ROAD DRESS. MAT WEARS ZARA SHIRTS AND SHORTS. MAX WEARS TARGET SHIRT AND SHORTS. PHOENIX WEARS TARGET DRESS. WITH THANKS TO QT GOLD COAST QTHOTELS.COM/GOLD-COAST.
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chuckles. “They’d be with their dad and he’d be like, ‘You know he played for Australia.’ They were like, ‘What? I don’t care about that – he was on Survivor!’”Once again, the TV event bonded the Rogers family. But sadly two of its most important members were missing – Carol and Steve. Back when US Survivor debuted, Carol had been battling cancer. After some time in remission, in 2001 the cancer returned with a vengeance. It was, says Mat, “like Armageddon – she never had a chance”. Her death, just weeks after that diagnosis, “was horrific. There’s no other way to put it really,” he recalls. “Mum was the anchor of the ship, she held everything together and Dad went off the rails. Plus my brother (Don) and Dad had a pretty tumultuous relationship over the years. Without Mum being there,
a wedge was driven between the two of them and my brother lost his mind there for a while. It was pretty tough. Dad just never recovered and went into a depression and unfortunately he succumbed to that five years later, which was pretty tough to deal with.” Steve was just 51 when he died after his long mental health battle, leaving notes for his three children – Mat, Don and Melanie. Mat was the one who formally identified his father’s body. He didn’t cope well in the aftermath, he has admitted. “But I think we all learned from it, or I hope we did,” he says now. “The hardest things you go through can be the best lessons. It can make you aware or make you vulnerable. I don’t want to be a victim and neither does my wife. We’ve both been through some stuff in life where you ➝
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current wife and the mother of his two youngest children, Chloe Maxwell, 43. The pair had begun dating before Mat’s father passed away. Chloe was by his side then and remains so now. They had a rocky start. Mat was still processing the end of his marriage while Chloe had also recently come out of a long-term relationship. They were living in separate cities and both were driven in their careers – Mat with rugby union and former model Chloe as a TV presenter, co-hosting The X Factor on Network Ten. Both say they had no clue who the other was the day they met, and Mat shares that Chloe stood him up on their first proposed dates. But “we had a laugh”, Chloe says, “He was funny. And then I met his kids and saw how he was with them and I fell in love with the
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way he was as a father – and I fell in love with his kids as well.” That first meeting between Chloe and her future stepchildren just three months after they began dating is one that elicits laughter in the retelling. Mat had been injured at training and urgently needed someone to mind Jack and Skyla while he went for a scan. “Chloe watched the kids and one of them said, ‘My dad must be paying you a fortune to babysit us because you’re on X Factor – you’re on TV!” “I went in all guns blazing and they loved me from that moment on,” she smiles. The pair would weather a short break in those early days before Chloe’s mum, Di, convinced her daughter to ring Mat and invite him to her birthday party.
OPPOSITE PAGE: NEWSPIX. FAMILY PHOTOGRAPHS SUPPLIED AND USED WITH PERMISSION. SURVIVOR PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF NETWORK TEN.
could go, ‘Woe is me’. I don’t want to be a stat that people look at and go, ‘that’s the guy you don’t want to be like’. Or, ‘that’s what you don’t want to do’. I want to set a good example. “One of the things I tell my kids all the time is that, if you’re not prepared to hurt, you’re never going to learn.” Only two of those kids – his eldest Jack, 23, and Skyla, 20, from his first marriage to Michelle Rogers – met their paternal grandparents. “Jack still remembers Mum a little bit,” Mat says. “They used to bake bread together – he remembers the smell of the bread and that she’d sit him on the tabletop.” Mat’s marriage to Michelle broke down not long after his mother’s death. But fate – and a mutual friend, actor Daniel MacPherson – led him to his
Interview
“Mum loved him,” Chloe admits. “My grandmother loved him as well. So we got back together and talked about having kids. I said that I’d always wanted to be a mum and he needed to be on board with that. My mum loved him even more when he was ready to go back and have kids again.” Within a year she was pregnant with Max, now 13. Phoenix would arrive 16 months later. But while they should have been enjoying their new family, something wasn’t right. Max wasn’t hitting the same milestones as other kids his age. He wasn’t talking, wasn’t responding to his name, wasn’t engaging with people around him. Then, when Max was two, they spent the Christmas holidays with Chloe’s dad, Mike Maxwell, who said what Mat had been thinking but was too afraid to say out loud: “I think Max is autistic.” “I wanted to kill him,” Chloe reflects. “‘There’s nothing wrong with my son – how dare you!’ But it started a process of investigation for me to actually realise he was, and I needed to do Clockwise from something about it.” left: The couple The decision to step out in Sydney in 2005; take action is one Mat with Jack, that they both thank Skyla, Phoenix Mike for. “You leave and Max; it too long and it’s Mat and David
He’s close to his sister Phoenix, 12, who is intent on becoming a Matilda one day, recently making the Gold Coast United Football Club’s Women’s Under 13s premier side. “They’re touring Dallas next year,” boasts Mat proudly. “She’s really committed, which is cool.” Max is a recently converted Survivor fan but not because his father is on the show. In fact, during Mat’s season, Max became horribly upset after watching one early episode. “I asked him what was wrong,” Mat chuckles. “He said, ‘You didn’t get voted out and now that means we’ve got to watch it again next week!’” Instead, he loved the following season, thanks to contestant Luke Toki, the fan favourite who also has a son on the autism spectrum. “We watched every episode last series,” Mat chuckles. “I actually did a fishing trip with Luke and we FaceTimed Max and he was beside himself that it was Luke he was talking to. That was really cool.” Mat and Chloe stress that Max will always need extra care, but without that early intervention they don’t want to think of what could have been. “He still can’t read and write at the same level as his peers,” Chloe says of what still lies ahead for Max. “Mentally, he’s still developmentally three or four years behind. He still needs help with his social skills. Speech therapy as well – he still has speech issues to be ➝
“I fell in love with the way he was as a father, and I fell in love with his kids.”
Genat in the All Stars season of Survivor; the Rogers family in Sydney, 1981.
too late,” says Chloe. “Between the ages of two and six is when they need early intervention so they can have some semblance of a normal life.” Today, Max is a happy, candid teenager. He’s into gardening, YouTube, coding and robotics. He loves school – loves it so much he refused to take extra time off to spend more time at the beach on our shoot. He’s funny, constantly mugging for the camera and making his parents and our crew laugh. He’s a dancer who’ll start busting moves no matter where he is, oblivious to onlookers. A master of mimicry, he’s memorised the comedic lines from a plethora of movies. He’s also painfully honest – Mat warns us not to take anything Max says to heart.
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Interview
addressed. We’re trying to help him get more independent as time goes on. But a lot of his early intervention made it possible for him to kick so many goals.” “We went from having this little zombie cruising around to three months later [after starting treatment] having our son back,” adds Mat. The ease with which they managed to get Max into treatment shocked them. “We jumped a huge queue of people waiting to get into the school he got into,” says Mat bluntly. “Not because of who we were or that Max’s condition was worse than anyone else. It was for one reason: it was because we could afford it and the people before us couldn’t.” It was this heartbreaking realisation that led them to start a new venture together in 2010, the charity 4 ASD Kids. Their aim is to sponsor kids affected by autism spectrum disorders and get them into programs, taking away the financial burden from parents already struggling to cope. Parents of children with special needs have a higher rate of relationship breakdowns than those without, and the pair can understand why. “The fact there wasn’t a financial pressure that came along with that helped us,” explains Mat. “Most people don’t have marriage problems, they have money problems. Not having a money problem helped us focus on Max and the health problem, which was the real problem. We had money to pay for Max’s therapy and once we started to see results, it made us so excited that it brought us closer together.” “It’s not about curing autism,” Chloe hastens to add of the charity’s cause and her own personal goal. “I don’t want to ‘cure’ my son – there’s nothing wrong with him. He needed some extra help so he can continue to be who he is, but in a world that’s a little bit different to him, that’s all.” The pair is clearly still in love, as much with each other as with their blissful family life, which saw them relocate to the Gold Coast early in
“It made us so excited, it brought us closer together.” their relationship. “We’re on the same page,” Chloe sums up simply. “Definitely with parenting, very much so, and having respect for each other. Showing the kids we have respect for each other is important.” And while money made from successful careers meant they could gain swift access to Max’s therapy, their children are all being taught to work hard for what they have. “Never deny your children the privilege of struggle,” Chloe warns with a smile. “The greatest lesson I look back on over my years as a parent – all 23 of them – is if things are given, not earned, the satisfaction isn’t there,” adds Mat. As a new season of Australian Survivor goes to air, Mat is hoping he can add one more hard-earned title to
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his bucket list: that of winner. It would be a fitting tribute to the parents who instilled both his ferocious work ethic and his love of the game. They’d have hugely enjoyed watching him play his heart out on TV, he says. “My mum was such a character. She’d be just piling crap on me for things I’ve done in the game,” Mat laughs. “She’d be giving me a hard time but loving it as well. My dad [who for many years was Mat’s coach and boss] would be probably trying to tell me what to do and how to do it. He’d probably say exactly the right things and I’d not listen and get voted off straight away!” AWW Australian Survivor: All Stars debuts February 3 on Network Ten. If you or someone you know needs help, contact Lifeline: 13 1114, lifeline.org.au.
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Exclusive extract
My
friend Jackie,
On paper, they’d seem unlikely friends. But when former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis met free-spirited singer-songwriter Carly Simon, a rare and wonderful friendship was born. In a new book, Touched by the Sun, Carly reveals the intimate time she spent with Jackie in the decade before her death in 1994 and the deep kinship they formed. 84 The Australian Women’s Weekly | FEBRUARY 2020
t was the summer of 1983 when Carly Simon, by then famous for such hits as Nobody Does It Better, You’re So Vain and You Belong To Me, attended a dinner at the Ocean Club in Massachusetts’ affluent summer playground, Martha’s Vineyard. Also there that evening was Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. She was accompanying her son, John Kennedy Jr; himself a sometime Martha’s Vineyard resident and acquaintance of Carly’s; and he introduced the two women briefly. Conversation haltingly began and soon they were bumping into each other more frequently – and an invitation to Carly’s home on the island was issued not long after. This would prove the birth of an incredible friendship which would see them share long lunches, dinner dates, trips to the movies and theatre as well as insights on love, life and the most intimate of secrets. Now, more than 35 years since that first chance meeting, Carly has shared her memories of the woman she came to love and cherish in a new book, Touched by the Sun. Following is an edited extract Carly has granted exclusively to The Weekly.
I
From left: Jackie the political wife with John Kennedy; Jackie in 1973; Carly at the height of her pop fame; Carly with James Taylor; jet-setting style icon.
ALAMY. EVERETT/SHUTTERSTOCK. GETTY IMAGES.
Carly by Simon
JACKIE AND I USUALLY met up at the movies in the same way. When she arrived before me, I would find her inside the movie theatre by going to the ladies’ room, where she would be waiting in one of the stalls. That afternoon, at the 4pm showing of Bugsy, was no different. Her Gucci loafers were poking out from beneath a stall. I hummed a bar of a familiar song, in this case How High the Moon, which was the signal for all clear. Jackie emerged. “I almost thought the woman who came in a minute ago was you, and I ... it wouldn’t have been the worst thing, but ... well, shall we go in? Oh, Carly, I see you got popcorn ... what fun!” We took an elevator and arrived at theatre number two, finding nothing to fly in the face of a happy Thursday afternoon spent seeing Bugsy with your girlfriend. The theatre was mostly empty, with maybe 20 other people distributed like arbitrary commas
in the semi-darkness. We took off our coats and put them on the seat next to us. There hung between us a palpable silence, and for some reason I couldn’t allow it. Maybe it was only three seconds, or not even two, but the silence whipped at me like some sudden freak storm. I turned to her, this friend, this woman whose burden it was to be poised, and whose responsibility it was to set an example for the rest of us. “So,” I said, “have you seen JFK? I mean the movie. I mean the Oliver Stone movie. I mean the one that’s just out now?” “Oh no, Carly, no. No, no.” Jackie reacted as if she had been attacked. “It’s so awful. No.” I continued my crash into the reef of self-destruction. “I didn’t even mean to say that,” I said. “I just …” “No, Carly, NO.” She slumped backward into her seat. That was the end of the conversation about anything and everything ➝ FEBRUARY 2020 | The Australian Women’s Weekly
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Exclusive extract Left: Jackie at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. Right: Carly and Jackie at a bookshop at Martha’s Vineyard in 1989. Inset: President Kennedy and the First Lady arrive in South America.
“She knew he loved her more than any dalliance.” nothing could be kept in its respectable place anymore. Once Jackie told me, “It will take many generations to arrive at the kind of equality – if it ever comes – that undoes the idea that women are the smaller, weaker of the sexes, and that women have to rule with a craftiness their mates must know nothing about. The woman is clever and circuitous, isn’t she? A man is straightforward and stupid. The hairy ape.” I couldn’t help but think of Ari [Aristotle Onassis] and wonder if she was in some sly way referring to him. From my second- and third-hand knowledge, Ari always seemed like a sybaritic and slothful rogue – yet
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Jackie had also described him as a devastatingly attractive man, who used to sing Argentinian songs to her. I knew about his secret oil fields, his smashing of plates around other wives and lovers, knew about the unsubstantiated rumors that he’d had Bobby Kennedy killed. It was all too rich for me and, I suspect, infinitely so for Jackie. She had to protect herself by putting on a new set of blinders. I also remember Jackie telling me that Ari was fierce, filled with illusions of supremacy. But when Ari’s son, Alexander, died at the age of 24 from injuries suffered in a plane crash, he became convinced he was being punished for his hubris. His guilt closed in on him. It was like the fall of the House of Atreus in Aeschylus’s Oresteia. Glimpsing his own mortality, he realised he needed to become even richer, even more powerful, to combat the prospect of death. Thankfully, Jackie didn’t live to know that her son [JFK Jr] would die in the same way as Ari’s. “One is overwhelmed by the necessity to cover up the sentiments that are needed in order to go forward with one’s life. I had to make such a grand left turn so as not to be reminded of my former life,” Jackie explained. “The life would have to be so completely different,” I offered, “like landing on the surface of a different planet.” Jackie continued, “I wondered if I went to the trouble of removing signs, newspapers, photographs, mementos … never mind. He wouldn’t have seen it clearly, but the reminders were walking every day with me in the bodies of my children. Their walks, their mannerisms, the memories of
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JFK. I was dead. I couldn’t live past this moment. Rewind! Oh, please, rewind! I started to cry, and I was fortunate to be able to hide it behind the opening music of Bugsy, which had just started up. I sat there motionless, shocked silly. “I’m so sorry, Jackie,” I whispered. From my diary on that day: What sort of brain derangement sent such a signal to my wayward tongue? I could hardly concentrate on Bugsy. All the while I was thinking: I have to be so careful … She is so much more fragile than we all think. Every time a shot sounded on the screen – and the film was plenty violent – she reacted physically, dramatically, her body mimicking the victim. All I wanted to do was protect her, put my arms around her. Once the movie ended, Jackie gave me a lift home in her Communicar. Again and again I thought to apologise once more, but I also knew it couldn’t be done. I knew only that I would never bring that subject up again. So many subjects to be avoided. It was the reason why it was so hard to be as close to her as I wanted to be. I’ve thought many times about that night at the movie theatre where I watched as my foot landed in my mouth. I knew it was – it must have been – important for Jackie to keep the lustre of Camelot alive, at least the version of it she later reported to Arthur Schlesinger. For her own sake. For her children’s sake. For the sake of her religion. If it was true that she had convinced Joseph Kennedy, the family patriarch, to persuade his son that she, Jackie, would make the perfect presidential wife, then Jackie had allowed her life and her heritage to be stamped in eternity with that light. JFK, as well as all the other crass pop culture productions intent on dissecting and distorting her life, must have been terribly disorienting. After Bobby Kennedy was killed, almost
their births. First words, skating, riding, greetings, nightmares, Christmases, birthdays … worries that A.O. [this was how Jackie sometimes referred to Ari] could never erase.” Even if Ari might have been sensitive about spending time with Jackie’s children, taking them for walks around his island, Skorpios, or ushering them up to the helm of the yacht and letting them press a button now and then, I could only imagine Jackie holding back tears. Had her original gratitude toward him for saving her turned to a sour, fierce resentment? It has been written that his son’s death was the breaking point in Ari’s feelings for Jackie. He was no longer in love with her, and her manners and grace were rendered paltry, even ridiculous. In the face of the rude comments he directed at her,
sometimes even in front of guests, Jackie, as a result, spent less time with Ari in Greece. His feeling of abandonment led him to retribution: more public meanness, more allusions to her overspending, and then there were the undisguised, bull-like flirtations with other women – anything to get back at her. No one could hide such strong feelings. They come out. They just do. Jackie would toss off his behavior with cool aplomb. Still, when Ari
initiated divorce proceedings, he continued to want to protect her. In effect he told his lawyer, “I love her and I want you to be very fair”. “In the beginning,” I remember Jackie telling me once, “Ari had a way of ‘casting’ one. As if you were in his own private Greek mythology. He saw himself as Odysseus, and I was no one to argue. I was so in need of the kind of protection he was offering. I wanted it for Caroline and John. That’s what a woman innately knows – she has to protect her children in any and every way, no matter how far away from your innate self you have to go. I fell for that wide net he cast.” Jackie seemed untouched by Ari’s crude indiscretions – his blatant and tasteless womanising – and she was similarly unbothered by Jack’s. She had brought up the subject of Jack’s mistresses from time to time with no apparent discomfort or distress. Almost a year earlier, in 1991, she talked about it. In a cheerful but resigned way, she told me that of course she knew about them – she just didn’t mind their presence as much as she might have because she knew he loved her more, much more, than any of his dalliances. Wait, I remember thinking, hearing about all the mistresses, you had to pretend to be blasé? To pretend one was simply used to this in men, because, in Jackie’s case, of one’s famously handsome and lecherous father? It was “Black Jack” Bouvier, a poached and distressed drunk, who seemed to have given her the overall license to accept this particular masculine trait. Her father was almost proud of the many women he left in his charming but deadly wake. At least in front of me, Jackie never gave up that half measure of rationalising the worst, the thing that her thoroughbred horse friend – me – wouldn’t have been able to contain. “I did so terribly much want Jack to be happy,” she said once, “and then I couldn’t divide myself into the two women I had to be, or had to act as if I were.” ➝
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Whatever her reasons for marrying Ari, I do know this much: When Ari died in Paris, Jackie’s speech before the French press was formal, and without a lot of feeling. She went for scripted, memorised words. “He meant a lot to me. He brought me into a world where one could find both happiness and love. We lived through many beautiful experiences together, which cannot be forgotten and for which I will be eternally grateful.” It seemed to me that Jackie was always looking to give her life over to the care of a stronger man. Maurice Tempelsman appeared after Ari, taking charge of her financial life. After all, he was well versed in the language of diamonds – of mines and caves and undercover dealings. Jackie compared him to the other pirates she had known and loved. Maurice was safe and loving. They were good together. At the same time, it was difficult to square that Jackie – the woman from the books, the woman so central to American history and, later, global intrigue – with the Jackie in her kitchen on the Vineyard, on the receiving end of an affectionate hug from Maurice after he got back from a long walk or bike ride around the Aquinnah hills. Or the Jackie I once
saw diving off the side of Maurice’s yacht in her white bathing cap, not at all embarrassed or self-conscious about her exposed flesh. Or the Jackie who did yoga every day on the beach in the summer, and who could, according to our mutual friend Joe Armstrong, who once came upon her during a morning stroll, place both her legs behind her neck. Or the Jackie who, in between yoga stretches, was a girlishly effusive bummer of cigarettes. Or the Jackie I remember from the night I shot a music video for one of my songs, Better Not Tell Her, from my album Have You Seen Me Lately?, on the beach in front of her Aquinnah house. (It was Jackie’s idea, she who was always suggesting I bring whatever proceedings I had up my sleeve – lunches, get-togethers, musical events – over to her house.) I’d hired Latin dancers to perform alongside the song’s Spanish guitar solo. The night was cool and misty; the only sound, the light crashing of the nearby
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waves. At one point, Jackie and Maurice drifted down from the house, draped in blankets. Jackie had brought along a thermos of hot chocolate, and I remember how badly she felt that she hadn’t made enough for all the dancers. My enduring image is of Jackie dancing the tango at my “Moon Party”– as I called it – which at the time I considered one of the high points of my life, at least socially. It was a party I hosted in my barn in the summer of 1992 during a full moon, even though it was pouring lopsided rain over the enormous white tent I’d had installed over the swimming pool, which, that night at least, had a fountain in it serving to blend in with the torrent. That night, Jackie wore a sleeveless white top over a long full white skirt. Her hair was up in a tight bun and she looked amazingly like photos I’d seen of her father, in all of his Moroccan handsomeness, deep brown tan, wide-set eyes, and gorgeous facial features. Midway through the Moon Party, around the time a few guests began tossing themselves fully clothed into the swimming pool, I spotted Jackie on the dance floor with my close friend, Teese Gohl, an amazing Swiss musician and my musical director for 20 years. Teese was teaching Jackie his version of a tango, though Teese told me later he was completely winging it. The two of them, Jackie and Teese, seemed enthralled by the music and by each other. Jackie’s motions were as abrupt and delicate as a castanet. Maurice watched adoringly as her entire broad-shouldered body enfolded within the Spanish music, a lone flag gusting and snapping, eternally beautiful in the rhythms of the night. Known by all and by no one. AWW
COPYRIGHT © CARLY SIMON, 2019, EXTRACTED FROM TOUCHED BY THE SUN, PUBLISHED BY HACHETTE AUSTRALIA, RRP $32.99.
GETTY IMAGES.
Below: Five years after the death of John Kennedy, Jackie married Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis. Left: Jackie and Ari leave an Athens nightclub at 7am after celebrating Jackie’s 40th birthday.
HEPBURN MARLENE DIETRICH JEAN HARLOW KATHARINE HEPBURN and more AUDREY
164 S PREATRGO PEHEOATDOSS,
OF NTAGE R IA VI OSTALG &N
The look of love
After 20 years of marriage the best Valentine’s Day gifts aren’t always the most romantic ones.
F
ebruary. You know what this month brings don’t you? Romance. Or at least the reminder that somewhere out there somebody is getting it on or trying to get it on with somebody else by presenting bunches of roses and having diner pour deux. Meanwhile, back at our ranch and perhaps yours too, romance has long been dead. That’s not to say there isn’t love, but love and romance are completely different. According to the online dictionary, romance is “a feeling of excitement and mystery”. This ended in our relationship the day my then-boyfriend walked into the bathroom when I was showering,
sat himself down on the toilet and A M A N DA BLAIR casually dropped a number two whilst having a chat about our weekend plans. Whilst part of me thought it wonderful that we’d reached this stage of familiarity and comfort, another part of me died realising that our modesty had just been flushed away. It wasn’t just his doing. From time to time I’ve had an ingrown bikini-line hair that required attention and once a person has seen you push another person out of your nether regions I’d imagine it would be hard to conjure up “a feeling of excitement and mystery”. In fact, my sister-in-law told me of a friend who said that watching his wife WITH
give birth to their son was like watching a bomb go off in his favourite pub. So, keeping the romance going in a long-term relationship is no easy feat. There aren’t appropriate guidebooks, people are reluctant to talk of such things in mixed company and social media is no assistance whatsoever as post after post portrays lives filled with endless excitement, matching outfits and domestic bliss (#soblessed, #justlove, #perfectdays, #weknowyou’relying). But I’ve developed certain strategies to keep the fire in my loins and I’m happy to share these with you today as they may help with your own long-termer. Of course, I’m only speaking for myself. I have no idea what tricks my husband uses to keep himself aroused, but after 23 years and another summer of endless cricket, I’m absolutely convinced Steve Smith in a baggy green has a starring role. For me it’s all about geographic location and I’m most excited in the laundry. It’s the heat from the dryer, the smell of the powders, the vibration of the washing machine and the sight of my husband, red faced and puffing, down on all fours. Usually he’s searching for the stain removal kit after an argument we’ve had where I’ve told him it’s not my job to get the Bolognese sauce slop off his work shirt. I’d argue that there isn’t a woman alive who isn’t turned on about their partner doing simple domestic chores. My excitement reaches its peak if he springs it on me, that is, chooses to complete a task without actually being asked to do it. A drained dish sink delights, changing the sheets charges my batteries and he’s come to know that a folded basket of washing is guaranteed to lift my spirits and my skirt. So you can forget your chocolates, your flowers and your poetry. This Valentine’s Day look for the beau on bended knee … wiping down the front of the kitchen cupboards. He’s the keeper, the one who’ll keep the love alive. AWW
ABOUT THE WRITER Amanda Blair lives in Adelaide with her four children and a husband she quite likes when she sees him.
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ILLUSTRATION BY BRENT WILSON @THEILLUSTRATIONROOM.COM.AU.
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Inspiration
A bold experiment in inter-generational living is underway at a retirement village in suburban Sydney. And Jenny Brown finds it’s enriching the lives of young and old alike.
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at Brown’s eyes are alight with enthusiasm. “Oh, they’re fantastic, they’re our angels,” she says of her new best friends, the four University of Sydney students who are swapping companionship for free rent at the aged-care facility she calls home. Aged 79, Pat is chatting animatedly about computers, handicrafts, family history and the university course on dementia prevention she has just completed. This bright-eyed, funny grandmother gets around in a wheelchair but still has “all her marbles”, as she wryly puts it. And she loves sharing life experiences with her 30-year-old neighbour Gabrielle. Nothing too unusual about that, perhaps – except for the fact that, in a bold new initiative, they both live at a care facility in Sydney’s south, Scalabrini Bexley. That’s where Gabrielle and three other allied health students receive free rent in return for 30 hours of volunteered friendship
and conversation each month. “I tell them my door is always open any time, day or night, and they come to visit,” smiles Pat, who moved to the village three years ago when a painfully ulcerated foot finally made it impossible to stay at home. “I think there should be more dialogue between younger and older generations. If we listen, they can teach us a lot – especially about computers and phones – and we can teach them quite a bit too.” Softly-spoken Gabrielle, a recent occupational-therapy graduate, laughs out loud. “To be fair, Pat, I think you know a lot more about phones than I do. You’re on Snapchat and I’m not!” As they sit talking at Scalabrini’s Cafe Siena, cheerfully decorated with bunting in the Italian colours, their close bond is unmistakable. Pat, a mother of two, was widowed 15 years ago. Gabrielle lost her grandparents before she was 19, but has found a willing substitute in this feisty former hairdresser, pharmacy assistant and taxi driver.
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“Pat tried to teach me to sew. I’m not a very crafty person and I just didn’t have it,” confides the newly minted healthcare professional, who misses her family in Lismore, northern NSW. “But she gives us the best relationship advice. I know we all have guy problems at times, so it’s nice for all of us to have someone we can go to for that little bit of guidance. “She’s a special lady. There’s always something new that Pat is looking into or starting to try. She reminds me there’s so much out there to be experienced. I’m inclined to be a bit of a homebody but she makes me more curious about the world.” Proudly showing off the exquisite, crocheted dream-catcher she just completed, Pat chuckles. “It was the same when I had my hair salon, the staff and customers used to come to me with boy or girlfriend problems. I used to tell them, ‘I’m your (agony aunt) Dorothy Dix,’ but of course they didn’t know who she was or what that meant.” →
Pat Brown & Gabrielle Student Gabrielle says peers are often baffled by her living arrangements. “I hope this program breaks down a few barriers,” she says. “Being here is like finding a new family.”
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Inspiration
“I mix with young people to stay young, and I still can catch a chick.”
So what advice does Pat dispense? “Oh, I don’t know,” she muses. “Probably to have trust and patience. Never to say ‘can’t’ because that’s not a word in my language. And the most important thing: If you don’t put in any effort, you can’t expect to get anything back from relationships, marriage or life. It’s all the same.” With her ninth decade looming, Pat revels in the company that Scalabrini Bexley offers – especially the chance to mix with students participating in its groundbreaking Gold Soul Companionship Program (GSCP). “If I was living at home I’d be on my own, whereas here I’ve got a community all around me. I still do all the things I would do at home, except housework!” She grins cheekily. “What more could I want?” As the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety exposes horrific cases of premature death, abuse, neglect and negligence, this is
a good news story from an embattled sector that has, in recent years, been laid bare in both a shocking three-part report in The Weekly and an incisive ABC Four Corners investigation. “When I watched that documentary I had tears streaming down my face – to think anyone would treat the aged like that,” says Tracey Gill, 58, who became wellbeing coordinator at Scalabrini Bexley after a “mid-life crisis” saw her swap sales for a more caring profession. “It affected me 100 per cent, but I also got annoyed because it represented just a small snippet of the industry. That’s not what happens here.” Gill says adjusting to life in an aged-care home can be challenging.
“Quite often when people come here it’s not by choice. They might have had a few falls. They’ve had to give up their licence, give up their pets … All of a sudden they can’t cook for themselves and they’re told what their dinner is going to be. Their world as they have known it changes. So we have to try to ensure they continue to have a say, while keeping them safe and making them feel safe. “It’s kind of easy if you use common sense and think from the heart. Our residents may be old but they are still valued individuals and it is our job to make them feel that way. We find out what they have done in the past and how they want their lives to be. Then we try to hook them up so they make friends in here.” The Gold Soul Companionship Program, inspired by similar pioneering schemes in Europe and the US, is a logical extension of those efforts to combat the isolation and
PICTURE CREDITS TO GO HERE PLEASE
Gabrielle (left) says moving away from friends like Pat (right) will be challenging.
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depression too often experienced by the elderly. And intergenerational living obviously works. Walk up to Scalabrini Bexley’s front door and the first thing you notice is music – 1950s classics alternating with Italian ballads – wafting with the smell of coffee from its ground-floor cafe. Inside there’s a hubbub of happy conversation from family visitors, with a couple of babies crawling at their feet. Seventy-six-year-old Heinz Brzoson is bopping with a care assistant, although it’s only 11am. “I don’t like hanging out with the old farts like me! I like dancing,” beams Heinz, who is living with Alzheimer’s. “I mix with young people to stay young, and I still can catch a chick. You only live once, so you’ve got to make the best of it.” At 91, former managing director Neville Tucker can no longer quickstep but definitely gets a kick from the company of recent Masters of Physiotherapy graduate Hannah, who moved into the village in July 2018. “When the girls came along they started to help me, and I help them and we do very well, I think,” says the sprightly patriarch, a widower whose clan includes two sons,
Heinz Brzoson & Tracey Gill “Compared to where I worked before, this is gold,” smiles wellbeing coordinator Tracey. “There’s a lot of character here, and a lot of characters.”
four grandchildren and nine greatgrandchildren. “Hannah is just down-to-earth and she’s a great organiser who really knows how to look after old people like me.” To encourage spontaneity, the students aren’t given any particular brief on how they should interact with their elderly neighbours. Activities can include movie-watching, listening to music together, or simply chatting and going for coffee and cake. “One of the things that makes the program so sensational is that, as volunteers, the students have the ability to act on the spur of the moment after hours and at weekends when there are usually not so many staff around,” says Sydney University’s senior occupational therapy lecturer Dr Sanetta Du Toit, 49. “Staff don’t have that same freedom because they have chores to complete.”
Gabrielle learned how to make “the best” pasta sauce in Scalabrini’s “Nonnas’ Kitchen” where grandmothers share cooking skills honed over many loving decades. Hannah has honed her golfing skills, enjoying a few rounds of putt putt golf with Neville, who played 18 holes every other day until his legs gave up the struggle. They also “hang out, watch TV together, talk a lot of rubbish,” says the vivacious 25-yearold, describing her stay at Scalabrini as “an overwhelming experience”. Hannah admits her peers were puzzled to discover she was moving in with 115 senior citizens aged from their early 60s to 103, but she has found it endlessly rewarding. “After researching programs like this one overseas, I knew it was something I would get a lot out of,” she explains. “I knew I would be able to make a difference. I knew it would be very practical and help with my clinical placements in hospitals. But it’s given me so much more than that. When a resident opens up to you about →
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Inspiration their life, hearing their story, that’s something you will always have. Next day they might not be able to remember what they’ve told you, but you can. It’s all those memories …” Moreover, it’s a chance to break down stereotypes about ageing. “Before I came to live at Scalabrini I was probably a bit afraid of growing old,” Gabrielle confesses. “In general, ageing isn’t something we’re very comfortable with. It’s all that unconscious stuff you carry with you, those human things you are anxious about. Through being here, I’ve learned that life can always have purpose. It has meaning and value at any age. Getting old is difficult Neville loves teasing his student but it’s definitely not friend Hannah. “They all talk about the end of everything. The same goes for you in the dining room, but I won’t I feel I understand that residents, according to go into what they say,” he tells her, much better now. straight-faced. “No, Hannah is Dr Du Toit, who believes lovely, she’s been very good.” “The program has the lessons learned at been a reciprocal thing. Scalabrini Bexley could We have given our time enrich the lives of and companionship, but we have also young and old right around Australia. received from that connection. When “When they talk about the students, you walk into a room here, some people [the residents] talk about the friendships just light up. And learning to sew from they have made. I have observed so many Pat – that’s pretty cool too!” moments of shared joy, of belonging, and Inevitably, however, the lessons have that’s a huge thing because the elderly also included coming to terms with the can be severely isolated. It’s difficult to death of cherished new friends. Gathering measure the outcomes of a program like for “cake time” to celebrate much-loved this but wow, there have been really big lives is one effective coping strategy the changes in the residents’ quality of life students have devised. and wellbeing. It would be wonderful to “We lost five or six residents within expand this to other places in future.” the space of a month,” says Hannah, Dr Du Toit believes the project illustrates uncharacteristically sombre. “It really hit that residential care facilities are an home because all of us had worked closely important part of the wider community. with at least one of them. But it’s part of “We need that collective understanding what we do and we have had to find ways that you can’t raise a child without a village. to deal with it. There’s plenty of support I think we’ve lost that. These students have from the university and from Scalabrini had the benefit of the intergenerational staff. And the four of us here have become connection – that wonderful experience of so close through these shared experiences, being in contact with people with incredibly it’s more than just a regular friendship.” rich and interesting life experience.” AWW
Neville Tucker & Hannah
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Reach out Research by National Seniors Australia shows that as senior Australians grow older, they are more likely to be lonely, and women more than men. Mixing younger and older generations is an innovative way to deal with this but it isn’t possible in many agedcare facilities. So here are some tips from Professor John McCallum, CEO of National Seniors, on how to avoid isolation and loneliness in aged care. • Plan for your desired old age and encourage older relatives to get planning. If you plan for your care, you will have a better chance of entering a facility of your choosing. • Look for aged-care homes that encourage socialisation with facilities such as: a common activities area and a lounge area with spaces to sit and chat; a dining room with residents’ names at the table; music engagement, happy hour (where appropriate) and regular visits from therapy pets. Research shows a pleasant garden can be particularly beneficial for residents with dementia. • Check the home has staff who engage with residents and their families, and who enable the maintenance of existing social networks. Ensure, if possible, the location is close to visiting family and friends. And finally, look for an aged-care home that has an openness about it, both physically and culturally.
My story I helped my husband
come out
Teresa Leggett realised her husband was gay before he did, and that knowledge changed both their lives. Now this 45-year-old mother of two is a Mardi Gras organiser, and was just recently “best woman” at her ex’s wedding. This is her story, as told to Gary Nunn.
I was in a Brisbane pub with my first love and husband of nine years, Michael. I’d been working interstate for three months and he was taking me out to meet some of his new friends. But as the night progressed and drinks were consumed, something uncomfortable happened. One of Michael’s new male friends became angry and emotional. I looked at him, then looked at Michael. It was the behaviour of someone who felt emotionally betrayed. Suddenly I had this sinking feeling. I dashed to the bathroom and rang a friend in tears. “I think Michael’s gay,” I said. She told me I needed to ask Michael. When I broached it with him at home later that night, he earnestly denied it. It was a conversation we would have again and again. In Michael’s eyes, if he was gay, he would lose everything: his wife, family, marriage, the love of his parents, his friends, his position in the police force. Michael was very similar to his dad, who had served in the army. Michael’s mum once showed me his “When I grow up …” childhood book. In it, he’d written: “I want to be a soldier and a police officer.” And that’s exactly what he’d become. Duty, responsibility and purpose were all important to him – in his career and in our marriage.
True love I’d met Michael 12 years earlier on an army reserves course. I was 19 and he was 24. I was a dreadful soldier – I’ve never been good at following orders. In our first real conversation,
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Michael pulled me aside and gave me a lecture. He said I was a pathetic excuse for a soldier, that I was drinking too much, that I was an embarrassment to the uniform. And then we began dating. I still smile when I remember the day he proposed. Everything went wrong. It was Valentine’s Day. He’d planned dinner at my favourite restaurant on top of Mount Coot-tha in Brisbane, but the restaurant wasn’t taking bookings, and it poured so hard we were absolutely drenched and had to book an extortionate hotel. Flustered, down on one knee, he produced a ring his grandparents had made. I nodded, crying like a baby. He cried too. Looking back, I was convinced I knew it all. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind about Michael. I’d met the love of my life. The big fairytale wedding was on the hottest day on record in a huge cathedral in Ipswich. The priest was my uncle and my lace dress was made by my grandmother. Ave Maria was played, then a police bagpiper performed to our 150 guests. A decade of married life followed, eight years of which were very happy. There were times we realised we weren’t passionately in love with each other, but I consoled myself that relationships naturally grow less passionate over time. Michael had this checklist of a successful life: soldier, police officer, married. By now he was in the police force. When you’re with someone who is that confident, you go along with it. It feels right. When a rumour went around that someone
Relationships
Michael worked with was gay, he was so angry. “That slur could destroy someone’s career,” he said. After my long work trip to Canberra, when the truth dawned on me, I felt shock, then sadness. Our futures had been so intertwined. The second time we really discussed the issue, anger took over. I pleaded: “Just tell me you’re gay and we can move on.” He was stoic and silent. But that uneasy feeling kept returning, along with a very real concern that Michael might take his own life rather than ever come out. I later learned just how justified my fear was.
PICTURES SUPPLIED AND USED WITH PERMISSION.
A rainbow welcome Then the day finally came. Michael had been out late and he walked into our bedroom in tears. When he could get the words out, he told me he was gay. It was such a relief. We fell asleep that night, sobbing and hugging. He later admitted that he’d been sitting in his car for hours deliberating about whether it would be an easier route to take his own life. Michael was determined to keep his vows to me, saying that even though he was gay, he didn’t need to act on it. I didn’t want that for him. Months passed and our relationship moved fairly easily from lovers to housemates, but something was niggling. I was moving on, making new friends, but Michael wasn’t. He wasn’t comfortable in his own skin. He hadn’t yet told his family. He felt by Right: Teresa coming out he was letting everyone with Michael down. That’s when I came up with (right) and the idea of going to the Sydney Adrian (left) Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras. at their first I’d adored Mardi Gras since I was Mardi Gras in a child – the colour, the movement, 2004. Below: the music, the freedom, all the At Mardi Gras with Michael’s possibilities – and I still love it. One h sband magical night a year, the roads are Nicholas closed and the community c es ght together, filling the streets, to celebrate. All the repression, fear, discomfort, negativity and a are shaken off, and the com unity roars: “I am here, this is me.” I was hell-bent on taking Michael. It was just me, Michael a d a dear friend of mine, Adrian. made us cute fluffy bunny costumes, but it rained so hard, in the en we looked more like drowned bunnies than sexy ones! When we arrived in S ney, Adrian had a surprise: h arranged for us to be in t parade. We couldn’t beli e it. The marshalling area as a whirlwind of noise, co and smiles. I remember saying to Michael: “You feel so isolated but look, this is your community in their tho ands
… they’re waiting for you.” The closer our start time came, the more excited I became but Michael was overwhelmed. At the last moment, he decided to watch instead, and waved us off. As soon as we stepped on to Oxford Street, I heard the crowds cheering and applauding, and I saw the magic of Mardi Gras. I watched as the people in our group grew taller, grew stronger, grew in confidence. They’d fought for so long, so hard for this moment to shine. We met Michael at the end of the parade and all three of us moved on to the after-party. That night, three fluffy bunnies danced till the early morning, not wanting the excitement, the acceptance, the love to end.
We are family Michael has come so far. He’s now one of the biggest campaigners for LGBTQI rights within Queensland’s police force, and founder of the Queensland Police Service’s LGBTI Support Network, which was recognised at the 2018 Premier’s Awards. Now he’s older, wiser and realises how much he missed out on by not living his truth – and every day he makes it easier for the next person to live theirs. That’s one of the many amazing things about the LGBTQI community – every single person understands the struggle it takes to live their truth. After seeing the power Mardi Gras has, I couldn’t stay away. The following year I gathered Michael and the friends I’d met in the community and created a group called Free, Gay and Happy. Today, it has 900 members across Australia and we’re preparing for our 17th year in the parade. Thirteen years ago, I met my long-term partner John – at a gay dance party! We have two children, Mitchell, seven, and Ethan, five. And I was honoured when Michael asked me to be “best woman” at his recent wedding. His partner, Nicholas, said the most eautiful thing to me: “I love how u st l call him your husband, and now, ’s o husband.” I’ll ep doing Mardi Gras as long as there re LGBTQI people still taking their own li s, believing there’s no place for em i this world. Michael doesn’t need the rdi Gras parade anymore – he’s und is place in the community. But I do, still ed it, and I think I always will. AWW To con act The Women Partners of Gay and Bisexu l Men Service, call 1800 787 887 or email fo@womenpartners.org.au. If you or some ne you know needs help, contact Lifeli : 13 1114, lifeline.org.au. RY 2020 | The Australian Women’s Weekly
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Health
R
ight now, what do you hear? The radio chatting away? The soft rumble of traffic? Birds flitting between trees? We live our lives to a low chorus, which we largely filter out. Though for some of us, innocent everyday sounds can cause distress, anger and can even put a strain on relationships. “Let’s just say I can clear the room with a rice cake,” says Sarah-Jane. “My husband hates the sound of crunching, but for me it’s the best stress release at the end of the day. I come home and start munching on crackers or chips the minute I walk through the door an annoy hi gh about .” i hers. One i ’t cope l a deep →
GETTY IMAGES.
For some, silence is golden. Vicki Bramley investigates why we hear things differently and how sound can shape your mood, mental health and wellbeing.
20-40% of us have a noise sensitivity
“We don’t know why people can be averse to a particular sound.” – Catherine Hart, Principal Audiologist, Hearing Australia. emotional minefield all day. Misophonia, also known as 4S or Selective Sound Sensitivity Syndrome, is characterised by extreme reactions to common sounds. Sufferers describe overwhelming irritability, anger, outrage and disgust upon hearing certain trigger sounds that are innocuous to others. The tapping of a keyboard, the shuffling of feet, even the self-grooming of a cat can set some people off. The most common ‘miso’ triggers revolve around human sounds, particularly eating (think crunching, slurping, lip smacking) and breathing (sniffing, snuffling, nose whistling, etc). It can be especially tricky to manage
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in confined spaces such as buses and aeroplanes. To cope, sufferers have come up with their own strategies, including wearing ear plugs around the family home to block accidental triggers and eating separate dinners, or at least playing music during their meals. They also report humming, internal screaming (“No! No! No!”), excusing oneself to ‘use the bathroom’, turning a fan on and cancelling out the offending crunching/slurping with their own crunching/slurping. Sufferers report that stress management and taking sufficient ‘time out’ also seems to boost tolerance.
GETTY IMAGES.
fear of squeaky sounds like foam. In this tiny, snowed-in space, no yoghurt, cereal, soup, crackers, styrofoam or apples (mostly the apples) were welcome. To keep the peace we agreed tooth brushing would only happen with the bathroom door firmly shut. You may have a friend or family member with a similar aversion. The nervous grandmother who can’t stomach the sound of children playing loudly – “It’s like knives in my ears and I feel like something terrible is about to happen,” says Marianne. The quiet brother who escapes parties before it’s even polite. “It’s too much noise and I need some peace and quiet or I feel crook,” says Stuart. The otherwise amicable boss who bans a kitchen with anything more than a kettle – “All the clatter drives me crazy!”says Helen. It’s estimated 20 to 40 per cent of us have a noise sensitivity and, just like touch, hearing is tied to our emotions. You can think of sound as sensory information that’s paired with emotional information (a memory of joy or fear) and stored together in the auditory cortex. We also know hearing affects mental health. Those with noise sensitivity are more likely to report symptoms of depression, anxiety, anger and nervousness than noise-resistant individuals. Hearing loss and tinnitus (ringing/hissing/whistling/clicking in the ears) increases your risk of depression and anxiety, and in later life hearing loss hastens cognitive decline. While sound affects our mental and emotional wellbeing, the reverse is true too. In other words, how we feel can impact how we perceive sound, especially in women. A large 2013 study of reactions to sound showed women who felt emotionally exhausted before performing high-pressure tasks felt that sounds were louder and more painful afterwards. Surprisingly, the men in the study did not report this effect. On a bad day, our tolerance for sound can be diminished, and even normal conversation can be perceived as painful. For some, having hearing sensitivities can feel like stepping through an
Health
Feel the vibrations For those with hyperacusis and tinnitus, listening to pleasant, low-level sound ensures your brain is not starved for sound and is better at handling louder noises. Here’s how to do it. Remove the ear plugs, as they create an artificial hearing loss. Listen to music with no lyrics or percussion, as they go to the speech part of the brain rather than the limbic relaxation centre. Think classical. Around 50-80bpm is good.
Explore environmental music with water (if you find it relaxing), which works well because it has low and high pitch.
Keep headphones/earbuds
at 70 per cent max (which gives you four hours safe listening time). At 80-90 per cent you can only listen for 15-20 minutes.
Experiment with apps
such as ReSound Tinnitus Relief,
which has soundscapes, and Sound Oasis, which offers white noise and nature sounds.
While there’s little research on the condition, and it’s not yet recognised by the World Health Organization, we do know that it’s not just a personality quirk. Hearing isn’t a factor either, since trigger sounds can occur at any volume, loud or soft, and sufferers frequently score high on audiology assessments. Nor is it an anger issue, despite sufferers occasionally storming off or verbally lashing out. Scientists are starting to map misophonic brains and have discovered that trigger sounds send them into overdrive. A 2017 study from Newcastle University in Current Biology found the “first evidence of clear changes in the structure of the brain’s frontal lobe in sufferers of misophonia”. Brain imaging revealed that misophonic reactions are accompanied by highly exaggerated responses in regions that are critical in emotional processing, and in regulating emotional responses. The researchers also found that trigger sounds evoked a physiological
response with increased heart rate and sweating. Why crunching for one misophone and slurping for another, though? “We don’t know why people can be averse to a particular sound,” says Catherine Hart, Principal Audiologist at Hearing Australia. “That person may have had an episode or anxiety incident with that sound at some point in their life. Often, they may have other anxieties too. The thing to remember is it’s not an ear issue. For some reason the brain is reacting and filtering that particular sound and it makes an irrational fight or flight response. Sometimes cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) can help our brains fix the neurological pathways.” At the same time, some people turn to these very trigger sounds to help them relax. ASMR, or autonomous sensory meridian response, has exploded on YouTube with videos of people hair brushing, tapping, whispering and yes, crunching
apples. Those who experience ASMR report euphoric, calming ‘tingles’ from listening. One “ASMRtist”, called ASMR Darling, who created one of the most famous soporific videos (“ASMR 20 Triggers To Help You Sleep”) has 2.43m subscribers. As the craze has spread, so have the ASMR sounds: the most popular video of 2018 is called “Crushing Crunchy & Soft Things by Car!” by HelloMaphie and has been watched almost one billion times. For some unlucky misophones, the situation may be compounded by a biological trait called Sensory Processing Sensitivity. According to psychologist Dr Elaine Aron, 15 to 20 per cent of us are highly sensitive people. As well as loud noises and chaotic environments, we may be overwhelmed by strong smells and others’ stress, and need plenty of quiet time to rebalance. For those with hyperacusis, or decreased sound tolerance, chatting and even their own voice can become unbearable. In this disorder, normal levels of sound are rendered uncomfortable, distorted or painful. It can happen suddenly or gradually, and the most common cause is damage to the inner ear due to aging or exposure to loud noise. You know you have it if you feel compelled to retreat to somewhere quiet or wear ear plugs even when it’s not especially noisy. “These strategies can backfire though, because you begin starving the brain for sound,” says Catherine Hart. “It’s like when you go to bed, turn off the lights and then suddenly your ears prick up and you’re awake again. What’s happening is that your brain has effectively turned up the radar to search for those signals.” The treatment, she says, is having your hearing tolerance mapped by an audiologist, then flooding the brain with low-level pleasant sound through sound enrichment therapy (see “Feel the Vibrations”, above). For misophonia, CBT may be the only hope. “That,” says Sarah-Jane, or “learning to crunch quietly”. AWW
FEBRUARY 2020 | The Australian Women’s Weekly
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The art of a good brew Because let’s face it, there’s nothing in life that a nice cup of tea can’t fix. very morning the MOTH (The Man of the House) makes the tea. He warms the pot, drops in a generous amount of loose tea and pours on freshly boiled water. Then we wait for the tea to ‘steep’. It doesn’t matter if the plane has landed, the meeting has started, the crisis has escalated or the show is about to go on. Then we wait. The MOTH makes tea the way his dad taught him – tea that grows hairs on your chest, tea that won two World Wars. Tea so strong it wakes you up, shrivels your tongue and makes you proud to be Australian all at the same time. The MOTH believed it was his job to pass on his tea-making skills to the
E
next generation of Aussies. On winter PAT McDERMOTT weekends when our children were young he’d build a wee fire on stones at the bottom of the garden and ‘boil a billy’. “What would you do if you were cold and alone in the bush and wanted a hot cup of tea?” he asked. “Find a McDonalds,” said one. “Call the police and ask them to bring pizza,” said another. “Ring Mum on my mobile and tell her I’m in big trouble and to come and get me right away!” That would be Ruff Red. “I’d have a compass and a mobile phone and warm clothes and insect repellent,” added Flynn. “And a dog to keep me warm and a lot of food,” chirped Courtenay. WITH
Reagan, who was the eldest, said the whole idea was ridiculous. She’d never be stuck in the woods because she didn’t go anywhere that didn’t have flushing toilets. “Fine!” said the MOTH. “But while you waited for help you could make billy tea! All you need is a billy, tea leaves and matches.” “We’re not allowed to play with matches,” sniffed Courtenay. “We’re not going to play. We are going to be very careful. We’re going to find a space away from trees or bush or piles of leaves. We’ll get some twigs and a few dry leaves and make a small pile. Then we put the stones around them and fill the billy with water from a nearby creek.” “We don’t have a creek,” piped up Ruff Red. “We’ll use the garden hose,” said the MOTH undeterred. “Once the fire is burning quietly we’ll put the billy on top.” Soon the children were shrieking and dancing around the tiny fire like wild things. A head poked out of a bedroom window in the house next door. “Everybody wave,” said the MOTH, raising his beer in a salute. “What now Dad, what now?” shrieked Ruff Red with excitement. “Now we add the tea leaves and give it a good stir. In 10 minutes we’ll have the most delicious tea you’ve ever tasted. Then we’ll lie on the grass, look at the stars and think about how lucky we are.” And we did. Until the mozzies arrived that is. Our children are grown up now. They have beards and babies and busy lives. They sip ristrettos, macchiatos and decaf soy lattes on the run. But when they come home they lie on the grass and the MOTH boils the billy. “It’s just an old tin,” sniffs a grandchild. “Yep. But it makes great tea,” says the MOTH. “Do you want me to show you how to use the microwave, Pop?” AWW
TO CONNECT WITH PAT ON FACEBOOK visit FACEBOOK.COM/PATMCDERMOTTAU
104 The Australian Women’s Weekly | FEBRUARY 2020
ILLUSTRATION BY MARISA MOREA @THEILLUSTRATIONROOM.COM.AU.
Family matters
Amy lives in poverty, and dreads going back to school. Her shoes are falling apart, and she can’t afford a backpack. Her uniform is tattered, but it’s the only one she has. She often hides at recess, because she doesn’t fit in. Her parents can rarely make ends meet, so she misses out on the excursion, again. She struggles to keep up in class, and her confidence is dropping. She tries really hard, but the challenges she faces are overwhelming.
Amy has almost nothing left to give. Do you?
SPONSOR AN AUSTRALIAN CHILD TODAY. As another school year starts, children like Amy need your help. Your sponsorship will provide the essentials like a proper school uniform and the extra learning programs they need to fit in, catch up at school, and build the skills to change their lives. The Smith Family
1800 497 071
THIS PAGE: Ginger & Smart blouse, $429, and skirt, $499. Zara earrings, $24.95. OPPOSITE PAGE: Katie Eraser x Gorman dress, $329, and hat, $69. Emily Green earrings, $50.
Fashion
P H OTO G RA P H Y by ALANA LANDSBERRY • ST Y L I N G by JAMELA DUNCAN
HAIR BY BRAD MULLINS USING O&M. MAKE-UP BY NICOLA JOHNSON USING CHARLOTTE TILBURY. BACKGROUND PAINT FROM PORTER’S PAINTS. CHAIR FROM MATT BLATT.
Pop
it!
Make a statement in bold colours and prints, guaranteed to turn heads for all the right reasons. FEBRUARY 2020 | The Australian Women’s Weekly
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THIS PAGE: búl dress, $299. Dinosaur Designs necklace, $310, and bangles, from $55 each. OPPOSITE PAGE, LEFT: Obus dress, $329. Valet earrings, $159. Zara shoes, $79.95, and bag, $49.95. RIGHT: Katie Eraser x Gorman shirt, $149, and trousers, $189. Emily Green necklace, $85. Cult Gaia mules, $595, theiconic.com.au. Sans Beast bag, $199.
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Fashion
FEBRUARY 2020 | The Australian Women’s Weekly
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Fashion
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THIS PAGE: Zara blouse, $69.95. Lee Mathews shirt dress (worn as a jacket), $699, and skirt, $499. OPPOSITE PAGE, LEFT: H&M shirt, $99, and pants, $119. Zara mules, $99. Kate Sale earrings, $50, jerichoroadclothing. com.au. RIGHT: Zara dress, $69.95, and blazer, $159. H&M scarf (in hair), $24.99. Arms of Eve bracelets (top) $50, (middle) $75, (bottom) $75.
Fashion
THIS PAGE: Kate Sylvester top, $369, and skirt, $459. Birkenstocks, $159, styletread.com.au. Sans Beast bag, $249. OPPOSITE PAGE: Marimekko tunic, $425, skirt, $395, and bag, $295. Valet earrings, $119. ALL PRICES ARE APPROXIMATE.
FEBRUARY 2020 | The Australian Women’s Weekly
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Fashion workshop
The
sustainable Bassike Committed to ethical, sustainable manufacturing and responsibly-sourced materials. Bassike shirt dress, $695, and pants, $420.
Sans Beast Pieces are constructed from responsibly sourced eco PU and are proudly cruelty-free.
Sans Beast bag, $229.
Sans Beast bag, $149.
Atmos&Here Both shoes below are made using vegan materials.
Autark A modern take on slow and ethical fashion, pieces are created ethically and fairly in Australia. Autark shirt, $329, and pants, $369.
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Atmos&Here sandals, $99.99 each, theiconic.com.au.
The following designers are taking an ethical or sustainable approach towards sourcing, manufacturing and designing clothing, footwear and accessories.
EDIT Everlane
Use es sustainable materials m and is ethicallysourced. Ev verlane heel els, $218 eac .
Spell & the Gypsy Collective Incorporates sustainable fibre use, as well as environmentally conscious dye and printing practices.
PHOTOGRAPHY BY PHILLIP CASTLETON. STYLING BY STEFANI ZUPANOSKA. ALL PRICES ARE APPROXIMATE.
Spell & the Gypsy Collective top, $229, and shorts, $139.
A.BCH + CHIEF STUDIO A.BCH’s pieces are biodegradable, recyclable or up-cycled from waste, while Chief Studio clothing is sustainably made using organic fabrics and waterless digital printing. A.BCH shirt, $260. Chief Studio trousers, $238.
Sans Arcidet Paris S This bag was manufactured using traditional artisan techniques. Sans Arcidet Paris bag, $180, theiconic.com.au. FEBRUARY 2020 | The Australian Women’s Weekly
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Fashion workshop
Brie Leon made these bags using vegan materials.
Nice Martin The brand ethically produces its clothing in Indonesia. Nice Martin dress, $149.95.
Torrance
Brie B i LLeon b bags, $139 each.
All garments are designed using premium materials, including natural fabrications, ethically-sourced leathers, and beautiful hand-embellished materials.
From St Xavier Sustainable and ethically-produced handbags and clutches.
Torrance shirt dress, $349. Nice Martin skirt, $149.95.
From St Xavier clutch, $189.95.
The Bondi di Sh
lub
Organic and ecologicallyfriendly materials from Fairtrade family farms in Brazil and the Amazon.
Using vegan ified eco-friendly glue, the entire shoe can be recycled. All packaging is completely biodegradable or compostable, and five per cent of all profits go to the “Fight For Our Reef” campaign by the Australian Marine Conservation Society.
Veja V-10 sneakers, $195.
The Bondi Shoe Club shoes, $89.
Veja
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From St Xavier Bag, $119.95, theiconic. com.au.
Twoobs are 100 per cent vegan. Twoobs sandals, $169.95, theiconic. com.au.
Help enhance firm and radiant skin with Beauty Rosehip. Beautiful skin starts from within. Nature’s Way Beauty Rosehip tablets contain Rosehip extract and Collagen to help enhance skin firmness, improve skin elasticity and help promote skin health from the inside out. Formulated with added Grapeseed extract, Biotin and Vitamin C & E, Nature’s Way Beauty Rosehip helps promote skin regeneration and collagen formation to help maintain skin health, for a more radiant you.
Available at: Always read the label. Follow the directions for use. If symptoms persist, talk to your health professional. CHC73554-0319
Beauty
Taking cover Meet the new ‘protective make-up’. Just like your best sunscreen, it’s broad spectrum and high protection. Apply it liberally and evenly – but remember, you still need water-resistant sunscreen if swimming or sweating (and Cancer Council Australia also recommends layering the two for long days in the sun). Don’t forget to touch up frequently! HIGH COVERAGE Maybelline Dream Urban Cover SPF40, $25.95, is broad-spectrum with clarifying niacinamide and nourishing vitamin E.
BUILDABLE COVERAGE Avene Tinted Compact Cream SPF50, $17.99, is perfect for touch ups on the run with broadspectrum mineral filters and vitamin E.
LIGHT COVERAGE Revision Intellishade TruPhysical SPF45, $75, is a lovely, broad-spectrum moisturising mineral tint with a host of antioxidants. w
Sun We all know sake of our sk and dark spo ne
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c
the sun for the ing is confusing what your skin ley.
Saving face Sunscreen speak
Sunsc S creen safety is in the spotlight, and there’s no doubt we need it to reduce our risk of brown spots, wrinkles and crepey skin. The best type? The one you’re happy to wear religiously.
Let’s decipher some new w phrases you might encounte while sunscreen shop ing. REEF SAFE Free of c icall filters linked to coral bleaching. Hawaii has banned some, however dermatologist Dr Natasha Cook says “the science is not clear”. OCEAN SAFE Highly waterresistant formulas that are less likely to wash off in the waves and possibly affect marine life. ORGANIC Sometimes used to describe mineral sunscreens or other ingredients inside, e.g. organic rosehip oil.
PHOTOGRAPHY BY ALANA LANDSBERRY. STILL-LIFE PHOTOGRAPHY BY KRISTINA SOLJO. STYLING BY REBECCA RAC. HAIR AND MAKE-UP BY KELLY TAPP.
BROAD SPECTRUM/UVA Contains UVA shields (since only UVB rays come under the SPF rating). Remember, there’s no UVA measure so we never know exactly how much UVA protection we’re getting. Best move: choose excellent UVA shields like Mexoryl and zinc, plus added antioxidants to fight sun damage. BLUE LIGHT is next on the spectrum after UVA/UVB. It’s emitted from the sun and your smartphone/tablet/computer. It’s linked to pigmentation and collagen breakdown. WITH SUNSCREENS The product may have an SPF rating overseas but hasn’t been tested in Australia. Elizabeth Arden Great 8 Eight Hour Daily Defense Moisturizer with Sunscreens, $50.
Physical sunscreens
Chemical sunscreens
aka mineral sunscreens, scatter UV using i zinc or titanium dioxide. Here’s what you need to know:
Absorb UV light into the skin, convert it to heat and deactivate it. Here’s what you need to know:
THEY’RE GENTLE and don’t
THEY’RE LIGHT with a
cause allergic reactions, with strong, long-lasting protection.
“cosmetically elegant” feel and invisible finish for all skin tones.
THEY’RE DIFFERENT Titanium dioxide (TD) is better at diverting UVB rays which make us burn; zinc is better at reflecting the UVA rays that drive dark spots and wrinkles. Blends offer the best of both.
THEY’RE SAFE according to current research. Common filters have been shown to enter the bloodstream, “but no direct correlation to any negative effect has been shown,” says Dr Cook.
THEY’RE SHEER thanks to nano
THEY’RE BEST when blended with
particles. The Environmental Working Group says these don’t penetrate skin. In one study less than .01 per cent of nano zinc entered the bloodstream.
other chemical or mineral filters (as some types break down quickly in the sun) and antioxidants to boost protection against free radicals.
LIGHT
TOTAL
Try: Clinique City Block Sheer Oil-Free Daily Face Protector SPF25, $42, blends zinc and TD into a make-up primer.
Try: Ultra Violette SPF50+ Queen Screen, $47, feels like a serum and offers extra peptide protection against sun damage.
SILKY
BEST
Try: Paula’s Choice Super-Light Daily Wrinkle Defense SPF30, $29.95, a wearable zinc tint for fairer skins.
Try: La Roche Posay Anthelios XL Ultra-Light Fluid SPF50, $29.95, contains the ultimate UVA filter, Mexoryl.
NONNANO
Try: Medik8 Physical Sunscreen SPF30, $78, is packed with peptides, amino acids and antioxidants.
HANDY
Try: Nivea Sun Sensitive Protect SPF50 4 hour Water Resistant, $11.99, gives affordable cover for your whole body. FEBRUARY 2020 | The Australian Women’s Weekly
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Beauty
Hot spots
Out, damned spot!
We all know how pesky pigmentation can be and research shows it’s more ageing than wrinkles. So, if we’re still getting uneven tone despite donning hats and high SPF, what are we doing wrong? Getting hot, apparently. Experts know UV exposure causes blotches (including melasma) and now they blame heat, too. Heat causes our melanocytes to produce pigment, lowers antioxidants in the skin and increases proteins that break down collagen. One study found just 30 minutes of heat three times per week can change your skin after six weeks. Dr Cook’s suggestions? “Keep cool and wear mineral sunscreens that physically block infrared (heat)”.
To fade blotches, “add in a prescription hydroquinone or kojic acid cream from your dermatologist,” says Dr Cook. But first, try the ultimate clarifying trio:
PEELS EL with alpha hydroxy acids or beta hydroxy acid h acids can gently exfoliate excess pigment out ut of tthe skin.
: Ole Henriksen Glow2OH D Dark Spot Toner, $39.
Pictured below are the areas we often forget (or neglect) to apply sunscreen to, according to a 2019 study. Solution: Mesoestetic Sun Stick Mesoprotech SPF50+, $49.80, contains nourishing rosehip oil in a sensitive, ultra-high protection, broad-spectrum formula.
VITAMIN C brightens the skin, builds collagen and protects from further damage.
Try: Murad Rapid Age Spot Correcting Serum, $115.
NIACINAMIDE (vitamin B3) blocks pigment and strengthens skin health.
Try: Dr Natasha Cook Concentrated Illuminator, $99 .
Patch test: what spot removal really feels like Matching your blotches to a treatment depends on your skin and your pigmentation. Is it a freckle, an age spot, a sun spot, or melasma (which can be worsened by laser, according to Dr Cook)? Then there’s the treatment types. Pico, Q Switch, Erbium, CO2 peel ... ask your dermatologist which one suits, how many visits it takes and the results, since not all patches completely disappear. So, what happens when they are zapped? My spots are small and not too dark; they almost disappear with a dab of concealer and a nice overcast day. I use the right skincare but they won’t budge, so dermatologist Dr Eleni Yiasemides at SouthDerm suggested BBL Sciton. It’s a broadband light device and after a few hot flashes, it was done. My spots darkened for the next week (and were trickier to cover) before fading again. Did they disappear? No. Was it worth it? Yes, they’ll need upkeep next year but, months later, they’re still far softer. With a trio of visits they may even disappear.
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Beauty
Ace your base
THE W E E K LY
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Beauty
A clean slate
If you’re planning a clear-out, start the year with a simple set of skincare superheroes, says Vicki Bramley. REMOVER
11 1 10
2
3
9
6
CLEANSER Your best cleanser leaves you feeling fresh and light, not tight. And cleansing oils and balms are great at grabbing grime, since like attracts like. They also have a lot of slip for a mini face massage at night, especially if they have fragrant oils that calm the mind. Try (6) Sunday Riley Moon Tranquillity Cleansing Balm, $76.
DAY SERUM, CREAM
7
4
8
If you want visibly refreshed skin, include the most impressive multi-taskers: vitamin C, vitamin A and niacinamide.
Antioxidants, especially vitamin C and niacinamide, are the multi-taskers we need to protect and repair daily damage. Try a potent hero like SkinCeuticals CE Ferulic, $170, or the plant based (9) Clarins Double Serum, $78. Skipping straight to moisturiser? They can carry antioxidants, too. We love (10) Liberty Belle Rx Superhero Antioxidant Moisturiser with Anti-Pollution & Blue Light Defence, $138.
124 The Australian Women’s Weekly | FEBRUARY 2020
NIGHT SERUM, CREAM This is the ideal time to apply vitamin A, the ultimate ingredient that “rewinds” your skin by boosting collagen, elastin and cell turnover. Start with a retinol form like (8) Dr Dennis Gross Ferulic + Retinol Anti-Aging Moisturiser, $115, and work up to Medik8 Retinol 3TR+ Intense Advanced 0.3% Vitamin A Serum, $75.
THAT’S IT! If you can’t tolerate vitamin A, try peptides, which are proteins designed to soften lines, in (11) The Ordinary Multi-Technology Peptide Serum, $24.90, and of course wear sunscreen daily. And if there’s one thing you buy for your hair make it (1) Olaplex No.7 Bonding Oil, $49.95, because it softens, strengthens, glosses and protects up to 230 degrees.
You can apply face creams and serums up to the orbital bone. Inside, stick with eye creams to minimise irritation and maximise on your specific concerns, whether fine lines, dehydration, puffiness or dark circles. Avene Derm Absolu Youth Eye Cream, $70, boasts a natural retinol alternative called bakuchiol. Ole Henriksen Banana Bright Eye Cream, $56, is a tinted whip packed with brightening vitamin C.
PHOTOGRAPHY BY KRISTINA SOLJO. STYLING BY VICKI BRAMLEY. ALSO SHOWN IN PHOTOGRAPH TOP LEFT: (3) KORA ORGANICS COTTON HEADBAND, $29. ALL PRICES ARE APPROXIMATE.
Refreshers like (7) Mecca Clean Slate Micellar Water, $30, feel lovely, and now there’s the brilliant (2) Face Halo Original, $30 for three. These little washable microfibres make a fantastic, eco-friendly alternative to wipes. Simply wet one and swipe it over your face to remove make-up. Or, for a polished feel, use after your usual cleanser.
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lung condition, to take precautions to protect our lungs. It’s easy to take good lung health for granted, until you have a problem with your breathing. So how do we take care of our lungs? Y
• T H E AU
126 The Australian Women’s Weekly | FEBRUARY 2020
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his summer started with catastrophic bushfires in many parts of Australia. I know in my general practice, we were seeing an unusually high number of people suffering from irritated eyes, blocked noses, coughing and trouble breathing due to weeks of choking smoke. This was reflected in hospital admissions too, with NSW Heath reporting increases in hospital presentations for asthma and breathing problems during the bushfire emergency, and almost double the usual number in the worst-affected areas. This prompted a reminder for all of us, especially those with a pre-existing
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’S
From asthma to bronchitis, almost one in three Australians lives with a lung disease. So how can you protect your lungs, especially in bushfire and storm season? What can you do to make them stronger and healthier?
RALIA
Love your lungs Bushfires
Even for those with healthy lungs, bushfire smoke can be a challenge. If you can, stay inside with air conditioning switched onto recycle. Avoid exercising outdoors and see your GP if you’re coughing consistently or have trouble breathing. If you have asthma, you will hopefully be familiar with your Asthma Action Plan. If you are on a preventer, make sure you are taking it regularly, and
Health
Looking after your lungs WHAT WE CAN ALL DO to strengthen, protect and care for our lungs in these special events and for the long term? • Don’t smoke. Ever • Exercise every day to the point of puffing for at least 20–30 minutes • Regular yoga practice can be beneficial for breathing problems • Spend regular time in nature, among trees or by the ocean • Avoid exercising outdoors on poor air quality days
PROFESSOR PHELPS: PHOTOGRAPHY BY YIANNI ASPRADASKIS. GETTY IMAGES. ISTOCK.
• Wear a mask for protection against infection and pollution at times of high risk • Avoid crowds during the flu season • Have an annual flu vaccine and ask your doctor about a pneumococcal vaccine • Avoid exposure to indoor pollutants • If someone at home has a respiratory illness, take precautions to avoid exposure • When air quality is low, close the windows and switch on air conditioning. Or visit an air-conditioned venue such as an indoor shopping mall or public library.
carry your relieving medication with you at all times. If you have asthma but you don’t have a plan – or it needs to be updated because of current environmental conditions or because you are experiencing more symptoms – then visit your GP for a review. You don’t need a prescription to buy reliever puffers like Ventolin, but you do need instructions on when and how to use it.
Thunderstorm asthma
In recent years we have heard about a number of formerly rare events called “thunderstorm asthma”. According to the National Asthma Foundation, “thunderstorm asthma can happen suddenly to people in spring or summer when there is a lot of pollen in the air and the weather is hot, dry, windy and stormy.” It can happen to anyone living in the city or the country, even if they’ve never had asthma. Those who have hayfever, for instance, are at a higher risk for thunderstorm asthma. Seek shelter indoors in the wind gusts before and during thunderstorms. If there’s air conditioning, switch it to recycle. For more advice, visit nationalasthma.org.au
Vaping update
A relatively new challenge for lung health, “vaping” is the inhaling of nicotine vapour from a device such as an e-cigarette. What many people hoped would provide a new
way to improve their health by helping them to quit smoking cigarettes has emerged as a serious health concern. There has been an outbreak of lung injuries or deaths associated with vaping in the USA. As of December 2019, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed 55 deaths. Details are emerging but at this stage it appears that cases are related to people using vaping with cannabis or using products from informal sources, but the causes are not fully known. My advice at this stage is to exercise caution about vaping and ask your GP for advice on proven strategies to quit smoking.
Indoor air pollution
When we think about air pollution, we usually think about the outdoors. But indoor air quality also has an impact on your lung health. Sources of indoor pollution include fuel-burning heaters, exposure to smoking, some building materials and furnishings, mould, household products that emit fumes, and other household chemicals. The situation is made worse if your home or office has poor ventilation. Effects of exposure can include nose and throat irritation, headaches, dizziness and breathing problems. One popular way to assist with purification of indoor air right now is with pot plants. It’s important to also identify sources of indoor air pollution (with advice at yourhome.gov.au) and keep your home well ventilated. AWW
Should we wear face masks? WEARING MASKS outside of a surgical theatre wasn’t something we used to see in Australia, only in Asian countries where there is a high degree of awareness of air pollution and the contagion of respiratory infection. I am often asked if they work. WE ARE ACCUSTOMED to wearing masks in general practice, for the protection of patients and for ourselves. We make sure there is a constant supply of masks in our clinic reception area, and we insist that anyone with a cough or fever who may be contagious puts one on while they wait. SO YES, there is a reduction in spread of respiratory infections if you wear a mask and this is particularly important for people with respiratory problems. But what about masks as protection against airborne particles? The answer is that it depends on the type of airborne particles causing the poor air quality and the type of mask. ORDINARY PAPER dust masks, handkerchiefs or bandanas do not filter out fine particles from bushfire smoke and are generally not very useful in protecting your lungs. Special face masks called ‘P2’ masks (around $8 for three at hardware stores) filter bushfire smoke, providing greater protection against inhaling fine particles. FEBRUARY 2020 | The Australian Women’s Weekly
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We believe financial literacy will help shape a more equal future for Australian women. Head to financiallyfitfemales.com.au for great stories as well as handy resources for savings, investments, superannuation and more. Every step you take now can help change your future. It’s never too early or too late to get financially fit.
Creating a nation of wealthy, woke and wise Australian women.
T E G TO
Medical Q&A
Ask the doctor
wit h
PROFESSOR KERRYN PHELPS
Q
I’ve heard that ibuprofen can cause meningitis. Is this true and what’s the risk? J.P., NSW. Ibuprofen is one of the most commonly used analgesics and anti-inflammatory medications. Aseptic meningitis (inflammation of the lining of the brain) is a rare but increasingly recognised side effect, mainly among people with an underlying autoimmune connective tissue disorder.
Q
I have black floating spots in my eyesight, but only in front of my left eye. They’ve been coming and going for a couple of months and seem to be more frequent now. Is this something I should see my GP or an optometrist for? D.A., Tas. The most likely cause for the floater is a posterior vitreous detachment. Any recent change in your vision should be assessed, either by an optometrist or your doctor, who will determine whether you need to see an ophthalmologist (medical eye specialist).
PROFESSOR PHELPS PHOTOGRAPHY BY YIANNI ASPRADAKIS.
Q
I’ve had a cyst on the back of my neck for four years; sometimes it is barely noticeable, at times it swells almost to ping-pong ball size. I’m in my late 40s. Should I have it removed? Anon. This is most likely a sebaceous cyst. Because of its history of intermittent inflammation, I would advise you to have it removed by a plastic surgeon before it increases in size again.
Q
My husband is in his mid-50s and sometimes – perhaps in times of heat or stress – comes out in a rash on his chest, which the doctor says is Grover’s disease. It usually subsides with a cortisone cream. Is there anything you’d recommend in terms of diet, soaps and creams? Anon. Grover’s disease, also called transient acantholytic dermatosis (TAD), most often occurs in men over 50. The itch can be worsened by heat, humidity, sweating and the sun. Use a soap substitute and a chemical-free moisturiser regularly. Antihistamines and mild cortisone creams can settle outbreaks.
DID YOU
KNOW?
Heatwaves are likely to worsen in the future due to climate change. Check weather reports and plan visits to air-conditioned venues during the hottest parts of the day. Drink plenty of water (a sign you are drinking enough is that your urine is a pale straw colour), avoid alcohol and hot drinks, find a cool place out of the sun. In the long term, encourage tree planting in your area. H AV E a
QUESTION? If you have a question for Professor Kerryn Phelps, write to: Ask The Doctor, GPO Box 4178, Sydney, NSW 2001 or email openline@bauer-media. com.au. Letters cannot be answered personally. See the Contents page in this issue for the location of Bauer Media Limited’s Privacy Notice.
Q
Occasionally I get a pinprick pain behind the inner corner of my right eyebrow. It usually lasts a few hours. Is this a headache or something else? B.M., Qld. There are several possibilities for your symptoms including trigeminal neuralgia or a cluster headache. Your GP will take a comprehensive history and arrange appropriate investigations or referral.
EASY TO USE
Health news EDITED by VICKY BRAMLEY
80%
of those with coeliac disease remain undiagnosed and long-term exposure can increase the risk of infertility and cancer, says Coeliac Australia, so it’s important to see your GP if you’re having any unexplained symptoms. Recent findings in the journal Gut show that in those with a genetic predisposition, frequent gastro infections are associated with a higher risk of developing coeliac disease autoimmunity, and high gluten intake further increased risk. Coeliac Awareness Week is 13-20 March.
Walk fast e g a w o l s to
Pounding the pavement could be a sign of successful ageing. In a study of more than 1000 45-year-olds, those with the slowest gait (3.9 feet per second) had poor physical foundation at midlife. They also had accelerated ageing with facial changes, organ deterioration, brain changes and worse
cognitive function than those with the highest gait (5.7 feet per second). Training to walk faster may not reverse changes but will contribute to overall health. In a separate study in Scienmag, it was discovered that butyrate, a short-chain fatty acid produced in the gut, can alter ageing. Butyrate is
Bingeing is a brain disease Women are more susceptible to emotional eating, but it’s not due to hormones, say researchers at The Florey In nstitute of Neuroscience and Mental Health in Melbourne. They put sugary food just out of reach of mice, and then let them eat for 15 minutes. Only females binged. Dr Robyn Brown believes the behaviour is tied to the female brain and is testing a neural circuit to see if it’s involved. These findings, she said, “help reduce the stigma that people who overeat can’t control themselves. It says that person has a brain disease”.
Shake it off
produced by fermentation of dietary fibres in the gut, which in turn stimulates production of a pro-longevity hormone that regulates energy and metabolism. In the study, increased butyrate lead to the production of neurons in the brain. The results may lead to food-based treatments to slow ageing.
GETTY IMAGES.
DID you KNOW
Ultrasound can improve tremor for three years without serious side effects, according to a study in Neurology, the journal of the American Academy of Neurology. Essential tremor is a neurological condition that affects 800,000 Australians. It involves uncontrollable shaking in hands, arms, legs and voice, which interferes with everyday tasks like drinking, dressing and writing. Currently, deep brain stimulation is used for severe tremor. By comparison, focused ultrasound thalamotomy benefits are immediate and three years after the study, participants had still improved in hand tremors, disability and quality of life.
“Effervescent vitamins can erode tooth enamel, kombucha’s low pH can be as damaging as soft drink and even bottled waters are acidic,” says dentist Dr Angie Lang. Her picks for preserving tooth enamel? Tap water and tea. (When you tire of those, try her sugarfree, non-acidic, vitamin and prebioticfilled drink Swirlit, $29.70 for six.
Lose the bruise with Hirudoid. ®
Available in leading pharmacies. Always read the label. Use only as directed. If symptoms persist see your healthcare professional. *Reference: In one study of 10 healthy volunteers, the time it took for 50% of the bruise to be absorbed was 2.1 days for Hirudoid and 4 days for the inactive cream. Research conducted by B. Larsson, S. Fianu, A. Jonasson & B. Forsskahl. Financial sponsor of research unknown.
ASMI 29576-1118
Clockwise from top: Loretta restaurant; Ortega Fish Shack; Egmont St. Eatery; Rita restaurant; Customs by Coffee Supreme.
Ultimate
ESCAPE With the steep hills behind dotted with charming weatherboard cottages and a beautiful working harbour, Wellington offers the ultimate city long weekend away. Pack your walking shoes – and an appetite.
EXPLORE There’s something incredibly charming about Wellington, an enviably green city that’s grown organically around its harbour location. Despite the hills, it’s easy to enjoy and discover on foot. For a good overview, catch the Wellington Cable Car from Lambton Quay to Kelburn and then take your time walking back down to the city through the stunning botanic gardens. Work up an appetite along the way and stop in at Tinakori Road in the
picturesque village of Thorndon for coffee or lunch, followed by some unhurried browsing of the suburb’s local antiques and collectables stores. For a taste of culture, make your way back to the city centre where Te Papa Tongarewa (Museum of New Zealand) offers hours of insight into Māori, colonial and natural history alongside an ever-changing collection of contemporary permanent and travelling collections and exhibitions.
EAT There is absolutely no shortage of great places to eat in Wellington – the biggest challenge will be finding
Promotion streets of Cuba with rustic wooden furnishings and eclectic collectables at every turn. Each bean roasted, hand packed or ground by the team is sourced from producers who farm sustainably and in turn contribute to their communities through economic and social return.
PRODUCED BY STORY
SHOP
enough meals to fit it all in. Stop by Loretta for a beautiful interior and a huge menu that takes diners from breakfast through to late-night dinners, or make your way to Egmont St. Eatery, tucked away in a vibrant laneway. This stylish and inviting eatery has made its mark in Wellington with its fresh and seasonal food (you’d hardly know it was once an industrial carpark). For authentic Peranakan dishes inspired by the streets and kitchens of Penang, visit the beautiful Little Penang on The Terrace, run by the hospitable husband and wife team, Tee Phie and Keith Cheah. Their delicious Malaysian food has earned them local Wellington devotees for many years. At Rita, the food is amazing, the chef and crew are like family and the style of the cottage is Wellington to a T. Book ahead because this tiny 26-seat eatery is popular with locals and fills up fast. Finally, don’t leave Wellington without a taste of their delicious seafood; book a table at Ortega Fish Shack and enjoy dinner cooked by one of the city’s most respected chefs in the restaurant’s gorgeous homely and eclectic marine-inspired interior.
Pick up plenty of gourmet goodies along the way with a few special places worth seeking out. Pop into Moore Wilson’s fresh food emporium for fresh baked goods, one of their renowned fresh orange juices or a selection of mouthwatering cheeses and dips from their deli cabinets. There are also plenty of local products on the shelves including Six Barrel Soda Co’s unique specialty soda syrups, Mayan Man’s Cacao Husk tea and Earthend honey. Stop at Wellington Chocolate Factory for a chocolate tour or one of their mind-blowing hot or iced chocolates, then pick up a block of their fairtrade chocolate to take home (if you can resist tucking into it yourself).
Weta Workshop Clockwise from top: Wellington Chocolate Factory; Customs by Coffee Supreme; Little Penang; Havana Coffee Works headquarters and cafe.
RECHARGE Power up your morning or afternoon with some of the best coffee in the city at the small but popular Customs by Coffee Supreme, seek out Pour and Twist for their manual brew coffee or head to Havana Coffee Works in the iconic avocado-green art deco building for a complete coffee experience. A Wellington stalwart in the city’s robust coffee industry, the cafe sits alongside the roasting and packing room and the company’s headquarters, complete with interiors inspired by the
Take a behind-the-scenes tour of Wellington’s five-time Academy Award-winning design studio and practical effects facility for a fascinating insight into the craft behind film-making. wetaworkshop.com
FOR MORE INFORMATION AND TO PLAN YOUR WILD WEEKEND, VISIT WELLINGTONNZ.COM
E D I T E D by F RA N A B DA L L AO U I
Seasonal bounty
Mid-week meals PAGE
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Hearty salads PAGE
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Amazing desserts PAGE
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Pick your
protein salads Being a ‘flexitarian’ means adding new, beneficial foods to your diet. Include a variety of vegetables and discover delicious things to eat and boost your health, too.
P H OTO G R A P H Y by JAMES MOFFATT • ST Y L I N G by OLIVIA BLACKMORE
Test Kitchen
Add fish R E C I P E PAG E 1 3 8 Mega grain and green bowl
Add lentils R E C I P E PAG E 1 3 8 Mega grain and green bowl
FEBRUARY 2020 | The Australian Women’s Weekly
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Mega grain and green bowl Add beef Broccoli and barley salad
SERVES 4 PREP AND COOK TIME 20 MINUTES
⅓ cup (80ml) extra virgin olive oil, plus 1 tablespoon extra 1 clove garlic, crushed 2 x 250g packets microwave brown rice and quinoa mix 600g brussels sprouts, trimmed, halved 300g cavolo nero (Tuscan kale), trimmed 1 teaspoon smoked paprika 2 medium avocados (500g), sliced ⅓ cup (65g) pepitas, toasted
TZATZIKI DRESSING 2 Lebanese cucumbers (340g), seeded, grated coarsely, plus extra thinly sliced ½ teaspoon sea salt flakes 1 cup (280g) Greek yoghurt 1 small clove garlic, crushed 3 teaspoons lemon juice 1½ tablespoons finely chopped fresh dill
Broccoli and barley salad SERVES 4 PREP AND COOK TIME 45 MINUTES
1 cup (200g) pearl barley 350g broccoli, cut into small florets 1 bunch broccolini (175g), halved lengthways 500g vine-ripened cherry tomatoes 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil 100g baby salad leaves
OREGANO SALSA 1 cup firmly packed fresh flat-leaf parsley leaves, chopped finely ½ cup firmly packed fresh oregano leaves, chopped finely 2 green onions, sliced thinly 2 tablespoons baby capers 1 long red chilli, seeded, chopped finely ½ cup (125ml) extra virgin olive oil ¼ cup (60ml) sherry vinegar
PICK-YOUR-PROTEIN 600g beef rump steak OR 4 x 220g salmon fillets OR 400g piece fetta, plus 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
1 Cook barley in large saucepan of boiling salted water for 35 minutes or until tender. Drain; transfer to bowl. 2 OREGANO SALSA Combine ingredients in a bowl; season. Top with extra oregano, if you like. 3 Preheat a large oiled grill plate (or pan or barbecue) over medium heat until smoking. Place broccoli,
PICK-YOUR-PROTEIN broccolini, tomatoes and oil in a bowl; stir to coat. Grill broccoli and broccolini for 3 minutes until light char marks appear. Add to bowl with barley. Grill tomatoes, turning, for until blistered; add to bowl. 4 Cook protein on hot grill plate: BEEF Grill beef for 4 minutes on one side, turn, cook for a further 3 minutes on other side for mediumrare or until cooked to your liking. Transfer to a plate and rest, covered loosely with foil, for 10 minutes. Slice thickly across the grain. SALMON Cook salmon for 2 minutes on each side for medium or until cooked to your liking. Flake into bitesized pieces. FETTA Cut 30cm squares of foil and baking paper. Place foil on bench and top with paper. Pat fetta dry with paper towel. Place fetta in centre of paper and drizzle with the 1 tablespoon oil. Bring sides of foil and baking paper together and fold down to seal; twist ends. Cook parcel on grill plate for 5 minutes on each side until fetta is hot. Remove from foil. Cut into bite-sized pieces. 5 Add protein mixture to barley mixture; toss to mix well. Transfer barley mixture to a platter or divide among plates. Drizzle with the salsa. Serve with salad leaves and remaining salsa.
138 The Australian Women’s Weekly | FEBRUARY 2020
12 red mullet fillets (960g), skin on OR 400g can lentils, drained, rinsed
1 TZATZIKI DRESSING combine cucumber and salt in a bowl; refrigerate for 20 minutes or until cucumber releases liquid. Drain in a colander; squeeze out excess liquid. Transfer cucumber to a bowl; add remaining ingredients. Stir to combine; season to taste. Top with extra cucumber and dill if desired. 2 Heat 2 tablespoons of the oil in a large frying pan over medium-high heat. Cook garlic for 30 seconds. Add rice and quinoa mix; cook, stirring, for 5 minutes or until starting to crisp. Transfer rice mixture to a bowl; season. 3 Heat 2 teaspoons of the oil in same pan; cook brussels sprouts, turning occasionally, for 5 minutes or until charred and tender. Transfer to a plate. 4 Heat another 2 teaspoons of the oil in same pan; cook cavolo nero, turning, for 2 minutes or until just starting to wilt. Transfer to a plate. Wipe pan clean. 5 Combine paprika, extra oil and your choice of protein in a bowl; season. Heat remaining oil in pan over high heat. 6 Cook chosen protein: FISH Cook fish for 2 minutes on each side or until just cooked through. LENTILS Cook lentils until warmed through. Add to rice mixture; stir gently. 7 Divide rice mixture among bowls; top with fish, if using, brussels sprouts, cavolo nero, avocado and pepitas. Drizzle with dressing.
Test Kitchen
Add fetta Broccoli and barley salad
Add salmon Broccoli and barley salad
R RECIPES EXTRACTED FROM FLEXIBLE F PLANT-BASED, $39.99, P AVAILABLE WHERE A ALL GOOD BOOKS A ARE SOLD AND AT A AWWCOOKBOOKS. A COM.AU. C
COOK, FREEZE, EAT! By setting aside time on the weekend for meal prep, you’ll save time and stress getting dinner on the table during your busy week. Try these recipes from The Weekly’s new cookbook, Meal Prep.
Pork and green olive meatloaves with sweet potato mash R E C I P E PAG E
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Everyday food
FRIDGE AND FREEZER GUIDE This chart will help you determine how long to store meals in the fridge and freezer. The fridge temperature should be at 5°C or below, the freezer at -15°C. Always store raw and cooked food separately in clean, airtight containers. Refrigerate meat, poultry, fish and even rice as soon as possible after cooking, especially casseroletype dishes; stand no longer than 1 hour to cool before transferring to fridge or freezer. Decant large quantities to smaller containers for rapid cooling. CURED MEATS/ SALAMI/BACON FRIDGE 1 WEEK FREEZER 2 MONTHS COOKED CHICKEN DISHES FRIDGE 3–4 DAYS FREEZER 2–3 MONTHS COOKED MEAT DISHES FRIDGE 3–4 DAYS FREEZER 2–3 MONTHS Moroccan pulled beef R E C I P E PAG E
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COOKED FISH DISHES FRIDGE 2–3 DAYS FREEZER 2 MONTHS SOUPS & STEWS FRIDGE 3–4 DAYS FREEZER 4 MONTHS RICE FRIDGE 3 DAYS FREEZER 4 MONTHS COOKED VEGIES FRIDGE 3–4 DAYS FREEZER 2 MONTHS
Everyday food Roast chicken with green pumpkin and broccolini curry MAKES 4 PORTIONS PREP AND COOK TIME 50 MINUTES (+ STANDING TIME)
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil 1.2kg chicken, patted dry, butterflied GREEN PUMPKIN AND BROCCOLINI CURRY 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil 2 red shallots, sliced thinly ¼ cup (75g) green curry paste 500g butternut pumpkin, peeled, cut into 3cm pieces 400ml can coconut cream 2 bunches broccolini (350g), trimmed, halved crossways 1 tablespoon brown sugar 2 tablespoons lime juice
SESAME CAULIFLOWER RICE 1 medium cauliflower (1.5kg), cut into florets 1 tablespoon sesame oil 3 green onions, sliced thinly ASSEMBLY INGREDIENT Thai basil leaves, to serve
1 Preheat oven to 180°C (160°C fanforced). Line an oven tray with baking paper. Rub oil over chicken; season well. Place chicken on lined tray; roast for 50 minutes or until juices run clear. Cover loosely with foil. Rest for 15 minutes before carving. 2 GREEN PUMPKIN AND BROCCOLINI CURRY Meanwhile, heat oil in a large,
ASSEMBLY Cut chicken into quarters and serve with pumpkin and broccolini curry and sesame cauliflower rice. Top with Thai basil leaves to serve.
heavy-based saucepan over medium heat. Cook shallots, stirring, for 2 minutes. Stir in curry paste; cook 1 minute. Add pumpkin; stir to coat. Add coconut cream and 1 cup water; bring to boil. Simmer for 6 minutes. Add broccolini; cook 3 minutes or until tender but still crisp. Remove broccolini. Stir in sugar and lime juice. 3 SESAME CAULIFLOWER RICE Meanwhile, process cauliflower until very finely chopped. Heat sesame oil in a large deep frying pan over mediumhigh heat. Cook processed cauliflower, stirring, for 12 minutes. Add green onions; cook, stirring, for 3 minutes or until cauliflower is cooked.
TO FREEZE Cut chicken into quarters. Divide chicken, pumpkin and broccolini curry and sesame cauliflower rice into 4 individual portions and store in freezer-proof,
microwave-safe containers. Label and freeze. TO REHEAT Thaw in fridge or microwave on DEFROST for 10 minutes. Heat on HIGH for 3 minutes or until chicken is warmed through.
Moroccan pulled beef MAKES 8 PORTIONS PREP AND COOK TIME 3 HOURS 20 MINUTES
PHOTOGRAPHY BY JAMES MOFFATT. STYLING BY KATE BROWN. FOOD PREPARATION BY REBECCA LYALL.
1 bunch coriander 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil 1.5kg piece beef bolar blade roast 2 tablespoons Moroccan seasoning 1 onion (150g), chopped finely 2 cloves garlic, crushed 1 tablespoon harissa paste 1 tablespoon ground cumin 1 litre (4 cups) beef stock 400g can cherry tomatoes TAHINI DRIZZLE ⅓ cup (90g) tahini ⅓ cup (60ml) lemon juice ½ teaspoon ground cumin ASSEMBLY INGREDIENTS couscous or quinoa, to serve
1 Preheat oven to 160°C (140°C fanforced). Separate coriander leaves from stems and roots (reserve leaves for serving). Wash stems and roots well; chop finely. Heat oil in a large cast iron or other flameproof casserole dish. 2 Coat beef in Moroccan seasoning. Cook for 3 minutes each side until browned; transfer beef to a plate. Reduce heat to low. Add onion; cook, stirring, for 5 minutes until softened. Add garlic, harissa, cumin and chopped coriander stems and roots; cook, stirring, for 30 seconds until fragrant. Add stock, tomatoes and beef; season. Cover; bake in oven for 3 hours until beef is very tender. 3 TAHINI DRIZZLE Meanwhile, whisk tahini, lemon juice, cumin and ¼ cup water in a small bowl until smooth.
ASSEMBLY Shred beef using two forks. Serve pulled beef, tahini drizzle and couscous or quinoa. Top with reserved coriander leaves, if you like. TO FREEZE Divide pulled beef into 8 portions and store in freezer-proof, microwave-safe containers. Label and freeze. Freeze individual portions of tahini drizzle. TO REHEAT Thaw pulled beef and tahini drizzle in fridge. Microwave beef on HIGH for 3 minutes until warmed through. Serve with thawed tahini drizzle.
Harissa beef, tomato and lentil stew MAKES 6 PORTIONS PREP AND COOK TIME 2 HOURS 10 MINUTES
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil 800g beef chuck steak, cut into 3cm pieces 1 large onion (200g), chopped coarsely 2 cloves garlic, chopped coarsely 2 tablespoons tomato paste 1½ tablespoons harissa paste 1 fresh bay leaf 1 litre (4 cups) salt-reduced beef stock 2 x 400g cans cherry tomatoes 2 x 400g cans chickpeas, drained, rinsed 400g can brown lentils, drained, rinsed ASSEMBLY INGREDIENTS 600g green beans, trimmed, boiled, steamed or microwaved Greek yoghurt, to serve mint leaves, to serve
1 Heat 1 tablespoon oil in a large cast iron casserole dish over medium-high heat. Brown beef in batches for
4 minutes, stirring occasionally. Transfer to a plate or bowl. 2 Add another 1 tablespoon oil to pan. Cook onion and garlic, stirring, for 3 minutes. Return beef to pan. Add pastes and bay leaf; cook, stirring, for 1 minute. Add stock and tomatoes; bring to the boil. Season. Reduce heat to low; cook, covered, for 1½ hours. Stir in chickpeas and lentils. Cook, uncovered, over medium heat for a further 20 minutes until beef is tender and sauce thickens slightly.
ASSEMBLY Serve stew with beans and yoghurt. Top with mint leaves. TO FREEZE Divide stew into 6 individual portions and store in freezer-proof, microwavesafe containers. Label and freeze. TO REHEAT Thaw in fridge or microwave on DEFROST for 10–15 minutes. Heat on HIGH for 3 minutes or until stew is warmed through.
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Pork and green olive meatloaves with sweet potato mash
MAKES 4 PORTIONS PREP AND COOK TIME
40 MINUTES
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil 1 large onion (200g), chopped finely 3 slices sourdough bread (150g), chopped coarsely ¼ cup (60ml) almond milk 500g lean minced pork 1 egg, beaten lightly 1 cup (180g) pitted green Sicilian olives, chopped finely ½ cup firmly packed oregano leaves, chopped finely ¼ cup (20g) flaked almonds 250g cherry truss tomatoes SWEET POTATO MASH AND BEANS 2 medium orange sweet potatoes (800g), diced ¼ cup (60ml) almond milk 200g trimmed green beans, boiled, steamed or microwaved
Vietnamese caramel chilli pork
MAKES 4 PORTIONS PREP AND COOK TIME
20 MINUTES
1 cup (150g) coconut sugar 4 cloves garlic, sliced thinly 2 fresh long red chillies, sliced thinly ¼ cup (60ml) soy sauce 2 tablespoons fish sauce 800g pork tenderloin, trimmed, sliced thinly BROCCOLINI AND NOODLES 2 bunches broccolini (350g), trimmed, halved crossways 200g thin egg noodles ASSEMBLY INGREDIENTS 2 tablespoons coarsely chopped roasted unsalted peanuts 1 fresh red chilli, sliced ⅓ cup coriander leaves
ASSEMBLY Serve pork, broccolini and noodles, topped with peanuts, chilli and coriander leaves. TO FREEZE Divide pork, broccolini
1 Place sugar and ¼ cup water in a large non-stick frying pan over medium heat. Cook, without stirring, for 2 minutes until sugar dissolves. Increase heat to high; cook for 3 minutes, swirling pan occasionally, until a bubbling caramel forms. Carefully add ⅓ cup water, garlic, chilli, soy sauce and fish sauce; bring to a simmer. Cook for 6 minutes or until thickened and sticky. Add pork; cook, turning, for 3 minutes until just cooked through and sauce is sticky. 2 BROCCOLINI AND NOODLES Meanwhile, cook broccolini in a saucepan of salted boiling water for 3 minutes. Drain; refresh in cold water, then drain again. Cook egg noodles following packet directions; drain.
and noodles into 4 individual portions and store in freezer-proof, microwave-safe containers; spoon over caramel sauce. Label and freeze.
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TO REHEAT Thaw in fridge or microwave on DEFROST for 8 minutes. Heat on HIGH for 4 minutes or until pork is warmed through.
1 Preheat oven to 220°C (200°C fan-forced). Heat 1 tablespoons oil in a large non-stick frying pan over medium heat. Cook onion, stirring, for 6 minutes or until softened; season well. Transfer to a large bowl; cool slightly. 2 Meanwhile, process sourdough until chopped coarsely. Add 1 cup breadcrumbs and almond milk to onion; combine well. Add pork, egg, olives and ¼ cup oregano; mix well. Divide into quarters. Lightly grease four holes of a Texas muffin pan and place on an oven tray; press pork mixture into greased holes. 3 Combine remaining breadcrumbs, ¼ cup oregano, 1 tablespoons oil and almonds; season well. Press breadcrumb mixture gently onto meatloaves. Bake for 15 minutes. Remove meatloaves carefully from muffin pan using a pallete knife; place directly on oven tray. Add tomatoes to tray; bake for a further 5 minutes. 4 SWEET POTATO MASH AND BEANS Meanwhile, boil, steam or microwave sweet potato until tender; drain. Mash potato and almond milk; season. Boil, steam or microwave beans until tender but still crisp; drain. ASSEMBLY Serve meatloaves with roast tomatoes, sweet potato mash and beans. TO FREEZE Wrap each meatloaf and a quarter of the tomatoes in a 30cm square foil piece. Divide sweet potato mash and beans into 4 individual portions and store in freezer-proof, microwave-safe containers. Label and freeze.
Everyday food Mushroom and kale lasagne
ASSEMBLY INGREDIENT 60g salad leaves
MAKES 6 PORTIONS PREP AND COOK TIME 1 HOUR 20 MINUTES
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil 800g Swiss brown mushrooms, sliced 1 medium onion (150g), chopped finely 2 cloves garlic, chopped finely 1 tablespoon thyme leaves 250g fresh lasagne sheets 225g bocconcini, sliced thinly ½ cup (40g) grated parmesan KALE BÉCHAMEL SAUCE 60g butter ⅓ cup (50g) plain flour 1 litre (4 cups) milk, warmed ½ bunch kale (250g), stems removed, leaves shredded ½ teaspoon ground nutmeg 1 cup (80g) grated parmesan
1 KALE BÉCHAMEL SAUCE Heat butter in a heavy-based saucepan over medium heat until melted and starting to bubble. Add flour; cook, stirring continuously, for 4 minutes until a pale straw colour. Remove pan from heat. Add half the milk, whisking until smooth. Add remaining milk, whisking until smooth. Return to heat, stirring, for 5 minutes until thickened. Stir through kale and nutmeg until kale wilts. Stir in parmesan to combine; season. 2 Preheat oven to 180°C (160°C fanforced). Heat oil in a large heavy-based frying pan over medium heat. Cook mushrooms, onion and garlic, stirring, for 15 minutes until browned and liquid is almost evaporated. Add thyme; season.
Lightly grease base and sides of 2.5-litre (10-cup) ovenproof dish. Spoon a quarter of the Kale Béchamel Sauce over the base. Cover with 2–3 lasagne sheets. Spread half the mushroom mixture over lasagne sheets. Spread another quarter of the Kale Béchamel Sauce over mushroom mixture. Top with another layer of lasagne sheets. Repeat layering until you finish with a sauce layer. Lay bocconcini evenly on top, then sprinkle with parmesan. Cover with greased foil; bake for 15 minutes. Uncover; bake for a further 20 minutes until lasagne sheets are cooked and top is golden brown. ASSEMBLY Serve lasagne with salad leaves. TO FREEZE Divide lasagne into 6 individual portions and store in freezer-proof, microwavesafe containers. Label and freeze. TO REHEAT Thaw in fridge or microwave on DEFROST for 10–12 minutes. Heat on HIGH for 3 minutes or until lasagne is warmed through.
RECIPES EXTRACTED FROM THE AUSTRALIAN WOMEN’S WEEKLY MEAL PREP, $34.99. AVAILABLE WHERE ALL GOOD BOOKS ARE SOLD AND AT AWWCOOKBOOKS. COM.AU.
In season
tomatoes
Warm summer days delight us with sun-ripened tomatoes, and these four recipes showcase their flavour perfectly. P H OTO G R A P H Y by JAMES MOFFATT • ST Y L I N G by OLIVIA BLACKMORE
146 The Australian Women’s Weekly | FEBRUARY 2020
Fresh produce
“For a final flourish, drizzle over extra virgin olive oil and fresh basil leaves.”
T E S T K I TC H E N
TIP The base is made from quinoa which is gluten free and suitable for those with a mild sensitivity to gluten.
Summer lovin’ tomato tart R E C I P E PAG E
148 FEBRUARY 2020 | The Australian Women’s Weekly
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Fresh produce
Tempeh chips and mashed toms
Fabulous fattoush
SERVES 4 PREP AND COOK TIME 20 MINUTES
SERVES 4 PREP AND COOK TIME 30 MINUTES
300g block tempeh 2 tablespoons white (shiro) miso ⅓ cup (80ml) extra virgin olive oil 1 tablespoon honey 1 teaspoon smoked paprika 250g cherry truss tomatoes 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
1 Preheat oven to 200°C (180°C fanforced). Line a large and small oven tray with baking paper. 2 Split block tempeh in half through the middle; cut crossways into 1cm wide chips. Stir miso, half the olive oil, honey and paprika in a large bowl; add tempeh chips, turn to coat. 3 Place chips on large lined tray. Place tomatoes on small tray, drizzle with red wine vinegar and remaining olive oil. Bake both trays for 20 minutes, turning chips halfway through cooking time, or until golden. Mash tomatoes lightly with a fork. Serve chips with tomatoes. Not suitable to freeze or microwave.
Summer lovin’ tomato tart
SERVES 4 PREP AND COOK TIME 40 MINUTES
1 large (100g) Lebanese bread round ¼ cup (60ml) extra virgin olive oil 2 teaspoons za’atar 2 tablespoons pomegranate molasses 2 tablespoons lemon juice 1 baby cos lettuce 1 Lebanese cucumber, sliced thinly 6 (300g) radishes, sliced thinly 3 green onions, sliced thinly 250g heirloom cherry tomatoes, halved ⅓ cup fresh mint leaves
1 Preheat oven to 200°C (180°C fanforced). Line a large oven tray with baking paper. 2 Split bread round into halves; place crust-side down, on tray. Brush with 1 tablespoon of the olive oil; sprinkle with za’atar. Bake for 5 minutes or until crisp. 3 Meanwhile, whisk pomegranate molasses, remaining olive oil and lemon juice together in a large bowl. Add lettuce, cucumber, radishes, green onions and tomatoes. Sprinkle with mint, toss gently. Serve topped with crumbled bread.
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½ cup (100g) quinoa ¼ cup (40g) quinoa flour ½ cup grated vegetarian cheddar 1 egg 2 tablespoons sunflower seeds 75g soft goat’s cheese ½ cup (125ml) cream 400g heirloom tomatoes, sliced ¼ cup small basil leaves
1 Preheat oven to 180°C (160°C fanforced). 2 Bring quinoa and 1 cup of water to the boil in a small pan. Reduce heat to low; cook, covered, for 10 minutes or until liquid is absorbed. Cool. 3 Combine quinoa, quinoa flour, vegetarian cheddar, egg and sunflower seeds. Press mixture into a 22cm loose-based tart tin. Bake 20 minutes or until golden. Cool. 4 Process the goat’s cheese and cream until smooth; spread into tart shell. Top with tomatoes and basil leaves. Season.
Fifty tomatoes and seed pasta SERVES 4 PREP AND COOK TIME 20 MINUTES
500g cherry tomatoes, halved 2 shallots, chopped finely ¼ cup (60ml) extra virgin olive 1 tablespoon white balsamic vinegar 300g thin wholegrain spaghetti 50g pine nuts, toasted 50g pepitas (pumpkin seed kernels) 50g sunflower seeds 1 cup baby rocket leaves
1 Process half each of the tomatoes and shallots with the extra virgin olive oil and white balsamic vinegar until smooth. Season to taste. 2 Cook the wholegrain spaghetti in a saucepan of salted boiling water until almost tender; drain. 3 Transfer to a large bowl. Stir in the pureed tomato mixture, remaining tomato halves, remaining shallot, toasted pine nuts, pepitas and sunflower seeds to combine. Stir in the baby rocket leaves. 4 Serve the pasta topped with grated vegetarian parmesan-style cheese or crumbled soft goat’s cheese, if you like. Not suitable to freeze or microwave.
RECIPES EXTRACTED FROM THE SEASONAL VEGETARIAN, $49.99, AVAILABLE WHERE ALL GOOD BOOKS ARE SOLD AND AWWCOOKBOOKS. COM.AU
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Sizzling barbecue P H OTO G R A P H Y by JOHN PAUL URIZAR • ST Y L I N G by M I C H E L E C RA N STO N
If you’re entertaining with a barbecue in the garden this summer, try our meaty centrepieces and serve with some tasty sides.
Texas-style beef burger R E C I P E PAG E
FOOD PREPARATION ANGELA DEVLIN.
153
Outdoor cooking
Garlicky yoghurt chicken SERVES 6 PREP AND COOK TIME 40 MINUTES (+ MARINATING TIME)
200g Greek yoghurt 2 green onions (green shallots), chopped 2-3 cloves garlic, peeled 1 tablespoon finely grated lemon rind 2 teaspoons ground cumin 2 teaspoons ground coriander ½ teaspoon smoked paprika 1 teaspoon sea salt flakes 1.6kg chicken pieces (breasts and thigh cutlets) on the bone, skin on 2 teaspoons extra virgin olive oil, approximately 2 lemons, halved
1 To make marinade, add yoghurt, onion, garlic, rind, spices and salt to a small food processor and pulse until combined; transfer to a large bowl. Add chicken pieces and coat evenly. Cover and refrigerate 3 hours or overnight. 2 Preheat the barbecue to medium. Drain any excess marinade from chicken pieces. Grease barbecue plate with olive oil. Place chicken skinside down on barbecue plate. Cook with hood closed until browned on both sides, turning halfway for about 25 minutes or until cooked through. Add lemon halves to barbecue 5 minutes before end of cooking time. 3 Serve with lemon wedges and Greens and Fetta Salad. Not suitable to freeze or microwave.
Garlicky yoghurt chicken
Greens and fetta salad
Greens and fetta salad SERVES 6 PREP AND COOK TIME 10 MINUTES
150g sugar snap peas, trimmed, halved lengthways 150g baby beans, trimmed, halved lengthways 1 cup (120g) baby frozen peas, thawed 1 baby cos lettuce, coarsely chopped 2 green onions (green shallots), chopped finely 100g Greek-style fetta, crumbled DRESSING ⅓ cup (80ml) extra virgin olive oil 1 tablespoon lemon juice 1 tablespoon sherry vinegar
T E S T K I TC H E N ½ garlic clove, finely grated
TIP
1 DRESSING Place all ingredients in a screw top jar, shake well. Season to taste. 2 Arrange vegetables in a serving bowl; crumble over fetta and drizzle with Dressing. Not suitable to freeze or microwave.
The yoghurt marinade adds loads of delicious flavour but also acts as a tenderiser, giving succulent results.
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Miso carrots
Oregano potatoes
Fennel and chilli
Outdoor cooking
Texas-style beef burger This recipe is from Melbourne chef Adrian Richardson who stars in the online cooking series The Chef’s Secret. To watch Adrian and learn his insider tips for gas barbecuing go to bright-r.com.au SERVES 6 PREP AND COOK TIME 30 MINUTES
1.5kg minced beef (not too lean) 1½ teaspoons ground cumin 1½ teaspoons smoked paprika 1½ tablespoons jalapeno chilles, finely chopped 1 long red chilli, seeded, finely chopped 1½ tablespoons red onion, finely chopped 1 egg yolk ¼ cup (20g) panko breadcrumbs 1 tablespoon chopped flat leaf parsley 1 tablespoon chopped coriander 1 tablespoon kecap manis 1 tablespoon vegetable oil 6 slices cheese 6 burger buns, halved lettuce, tomato slices, pickles, finely sliced red onion, ketchup to serve
1 Combine beef, cumin, paprika, jalapenos, chillies, onion, egg, breadcrumbs herbs and kecap manis in a large bowl. Season with salt and mix well. Divide mixture into 6 even patties. 2 Preheat the barbecue to medium-hot. Brush patties with oil and place on barbecue plate. Cook patties for about 5 minutes on one side, turn patties, reduce heat to medium-low. Top patties with cheese and cook further 4 minutes with hood closed until cooked to your liking and cheese is starting to melt. 3 Meanwhile, toast the buns and top with lettuce, tomato, patties, pickles, red onion and ketchup. Uncooked patties suitable to freeze. Not suitable to microwave.
T E S T K I TC H E N
TIP For perfect beef patties use a ratio of 400g lean beef to 100g fat to keep burgers moist and juicy. To make a fragrant herb brush, tie a few sprigs of thyme, rosemary and bay leaves with string. Dip in oil and brush patties.
Vegetable parcels Fennel and chilli
Oregano potatoes
Miso carrots
SERVES 6 PREP AND COOK 40 MINUTES
SERVES 6 PREP AND
SERVES 6 PREP AND COOK TIME 40 MINUTES
6 baby (780g) fennel, quartered lengthways 2 yellow banana chilli, sliced thickly 6 cloves garlic, bruised 6 sprigs rosemary ¼ cup (60ml) verjuice ¼ cup (60ml) extra virgin olive oil
COOK TIME 40 MINUTES
1kg kipfler potatoes, scrubbed 6 cloves garlic, bruised 6 sprigs fresh oregano 60g butter, chopped 1 medium (140g) lemon, cut into wedges
Place 2 large pieces of foil on the bench then lay a piece of baking paper on top. Divide ingredients between each piece of foil/paper and season with salt and freshly ground black. Fold into a parcel to completely enclose vegetables. Place on an oven tray. Preheat the barbecue to medium-high. Place the parcels on the barbecue and cook with the hood closed for about 25 minutes or until vegetables are just tender. Not suitable to freeze or microwave.
Cut potatoes into 1cm slices. Place 2 large pieces of foil on the bench then lay a piece of baking paper on top. Divide ingredients between each piece of foil/paper, season with salt and freshly ground black. Fold into a parcel to completely enclose vegetables. Place on an oven tray. Preheat barbecue to medium-high. Place parcels on barbecue and cook with the hood closed for about 30 minutes or until potatoes are tender. Not suitable to freeze or microwave.
1½ tablespoons white miso paste 1½ tablespoons water 1.2kg baby carrots, washed and tops trimmed 8cm piece (40g) fresh ginger, sliced ¼ cup (60ml) peanut oil ½ cup loosely packed fresh coriander leaves Combine miso and water in a small bowl. Place 2 large pieces of foil on bench; lay a piece of baking paper on top. Divide carrots, ginger, oil and miso mixture between each piece of foil/ paper, season with salt and freshly ground black. Fold into a parcel to completely enclose vegetables. Place on an oven tray. Preheat barbecue to medium-high. Place parcels on barbecue, cook with hood closed for 20 minutes or until carrots are tender. Serve sprinkled with coriander. Not suitable to freeze or microwave. FEBRUARY 2020 | The Australian Women’s Weekly
153
Outdoor cooking
Chilli, lime and lemongrass snapper with herb salad SERVES 4 PREP AND COOK TIME 40 MINUTES
1 long red chilli, coarsely chopped 20g ginger, coarsely chopped 2 double kaffir lime leaves, vein removed 2 cloves garlic, coarsely chopped 1 green onion (green shallot), chopped 1 lemongrass stalk (white part), sliced 3 coriander roots, washed, chopped 1½ tablespoons vegetable oil 1 teaspoon sea salt flakes 1.4kg whole snapper extra chillies, optional lime wedges to serve HERB SALAD 1 small red chilli, seeds removed ½ clove garlic 1 tablespoon grated palm sugar 2 tablespoons lime juice 2 tablespoons fish sauce 1 tablespoon vegetable oil 200g packet frozen shelled baby soybeans (Edamame), thawed 200g baby cucumbers (qukes), chopped 1 cup each loosely packed coriander, mint and Thai basil leaves 1 red shallot, thinly sliced steamed rice to serve
1 Process chilli, ginger, lime leaves, garlic, onion, lemongrass, coriander roots, oil and sea salt in a small food processor until a paste forms. 2 Pat fish dry with paper towel. To ensure fish cooks evenly and flavour penetrates the flesh make 3 deep cuts in each side
of fish. Spread paste thickly over both sides of fish. Place fish on a medium oven tray lined with foil then baking paper. Add a couple of extra chillies to baking tray if desired. 3 Preheat barbecue to medium-high. Cook the fish, with the hood closed, over indirect heat, for approximately 15-20 minutes or until flesh flakes easily. 4 HERB SALAD Chop chilli, garlic and palm sugar together on a board until finely chopped; transfer to a small bowl.
Stir in lime juice, fish sauce and oil. Check seasoning and adjust balance of hot, sour, sweet and salty to taste. Just before serving combine edamame, cucumber, herbs and shallot in a bowl, drizzle over one tablespoon of the dressing and toss to combine. 5 To serve, carefully transfer fish to a serving platter and scatter with herb salad. Serve with remaining dressing and steamed rice if desired. Not suitable to freeze or microwave.
Barbecue tips and tricks NATURAL GAS
DIRECT HEAT
Cooking on a natural gas barbecue is clean, economical and convenient. It provides instant heat with a turn of a dial which distributes evenly across the barbecue plates. A gas barbecue gives control and accuracy allowing the cook to create delicious meals easily outdoors.
This method is when the food is cooked directly over the burners with hood open. It’s used for searing and best for food that requires short cooking times such as steaks, sausages or burgers.
154 The Australian Women’s Weekly | FEBRUARY 2020
INDIRECT HEAT This is used with hooded barbecues
when lower temperatures and longer cooking times are required. It’s best for large cuts or joints of meat and poultry on the bone. The interior heat circulates around food, cooking it without burning. The burners directly under the food are switched off, while burners around the food are left on. Most
modern barbecues have thermometers built into the lid – so it doubles as an oven when hood is closed.
RESTING After the heat of the barbecue, resting meat and poultry helps redistribute the juices inside the flesh. Factor in at least 10-30 minutes depending on what you are cooking.
Pop’s famous bbq skewers
Perfectly seared with natural gas. Natural gas Naturally part of every day. bright-r.com.au
Brighter is an initiative of the Australian Petroleum Production & Exploration Association. Authorised by S Browne, Melbourne.
P H OTO G R A P H Y by JAMES MOFFATT STYLING by OLIVIA BLACKMORE and KATE BROWN
4 ways with
frittata No-one likes a boring lunch and these frittatas are perfect for the school or office lunchbox. Basic frittata MAKES 6 PREP AND COOK TIME 40 MINUTES
1½ tablespoons semolina 2 small (180g) zucchini 1 small (120g) potato, scrubbed, unpeeled 6 eggs 1 cup (240g) ricotta 1 clove garlic ¼ cup chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley ½ teaspoon sea salt flakes
Preheat oven to 220°C (200°C fan-forced). Lightly grease a 6-hole (¾ -cup/180ml) Texas muffin pan. Sprinkle greased holes with semolina. Using a vegetable peeler, cut 1 zucchini into ribbons. Line pan holes with zucchini, overlapping at different angles. Coarsely grate remaining zucchini and potato; squeeze out excess liquid. Whisk eggs, ricotta, garlic, parsley, salt flakes and grated vegetables in a medium bowl. Spoon mixture into pan holes. Bake for 25 minutes or until set.
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Lunch box
1 2
FOOD PREPARATION BY REBECCA LYALL AND ELIZABETH FIDUCIA. RECIPES FROM THE AUSTRALIAN WOMEN’S WEEKLY VEGETARIAN BASICS COOKBOOK.
3 4
Flavour twists 1 Pumpkin and rosemary
2 Tomato and pine nuts
Make Basic Frittata, adding ½ cup (85g) packed coarsely grated pumpkin, squeezed dry, and 1 tablespoon fresh chopped rosemary leaves to the egg mixture. Top frittatas with 2 tablespoons pepitas (pumpkin seed kernels) before baking. Continue as directed in the recipe.
Remove six pieces of semi-dried tomatoes from ½ cup (75g) drained semi-dried tomatoes and reserve. Finely chop remaining. Make Basic Frittata, adding the chopped tomato. Place a reserved tomato on top of each frittata, then sprinkle with ¼ cup (40g) pine nuts before baking. Continue as directed.
3 Kale and lemon
4 Smoky corn and chilli
Rub 1 cup (25g) shredded kale leaves with 2 teaspoons olive oil, 1 teaspoon grated lemon rind and a pinch of salt. Make Basic Frittata, using 1 zucchini to line pan holes. Replace second zucchini with half kale mixture. Top frittatas with remaining kale mixture and 50g crumbled fetta before baking. Continue as directed.
Make Basic Frittata, using 1 cup (160g) thawed, drained frozen corn kernels instead of the potato. To the egg mixture, add 1 fresh thinly sliced small red chilli, ½ cup (40g) grated vegetarian parmesan-style cheese and ½ teaspoon smoked paprika. Continue as directed in the recipe. FEBRUARY 2020 | The Australian Women’s Weekly
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Discover the art of baking with Charlotte Ree and her magical recipes to satisfy your sweet tooth.
C H A R LOT T E ’S
TIP For perfectly even layers, weigh your batter-filled cake tins before baking.
desserts P H OTO G R A P H Y by LUISA BRIMBLE • ILLUSTRATIONS by ALICE OEHR
158 The Australian Women’s Weekly | FEBRUARY 2020
STYLING BY LEE BLAYLOCK.
Just
Lemon cake with raspberry buttercream
Sweet sensation
Lemon cake with raspberry buttercream SERVES 12
250g unsalted butter, at room temperature 360g caster sugar 2 teaspoons vanilla bean paste 4 large eggs, at room temperature 250ml buttermilk finely grated zest and juice of 2 lemons 750g self-raising flour 50g freeze-dried raspberries RASPBERRY BUTTERCREAM 250g fresh raspberries 2 teaspoons lemon juice 2 tablespoons caster sugar 350g unsalted butter, at room temperature 2 teaspoons vanilla bean paste 500g icing sugar, sifted FILLING 400g full-fat ricotta, at room temperature 400g mascarpone, at room temperature 1.2 litres thickened cream, plu us 3 tablespoons extra 1 tablespoon vanilla bean paste 250g fresh raspberries
1 Preheat the oven to 180°C. Grease and line two 22cm springform tins with baking paper. 2 Place the butter, caster sugar and d vanilla in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment and beat until light and creamy. Add the eggs and beat well. Add the milk, lemon zest and juice and flour and mix to combine. Divide the batter between the prepared tins and smooth with a spatula. Bake for 40 minutes, or until a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean, swapping the cakes halfway through to ensure even baking. Set the tins on baking trays and leave to cool. 3 RASPBERRY BUTTERCREAM Puree the raspberries, lemon juice and caster sugar in the bowl of a food processor until smooth. Pass the mixture through a fine sieve into a bowl, pressing on the solids to extract as much liquid as possible. 4 In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, beat the butter and vanilla on high speed until pale and fluffy. Reduce the speed to medium and
Vanilla cake with ricotta icing and roasted peaches R E C I P E PAG E
161 add the icing sugar in three batches, beating well after each addition and scraping down the side of the bowl as needed. Add the berry puree and beat until combined. Set aside. 5 FILLING Process the ricotta and mascarpone in a food processor until smooth. Whip the thickened cream and vanilla in the bowl of the stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment. Add the ricotta mixture and the extra thickened cream and beat until combined. 6 To construct the cake, cut each cooled cake in half horizontally, trimming the top of each cake to create four flat, even layers. Place the base of one cake on a
serving platter over your lazy Susan. Top the base with one-third of the filling and a sprinkling of fresh raspberries. Repeat with two more layers and the remaining whipped cream and raspberries, then place the final cake half on top. 7 To ice the cake, dollop a large spoonful of buttercream onto the cake and smooth it with a palette knife. Spread the icing around the side of the cake and smooth with the palette knife. Decorate with the freeze-dried raspberries. You can add a splash of colour by placing fresh flowers on top as we have done here – but note that these are not edible. Store leftovers covered in the fridge for up to 2 days.
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Shortbread caramel slice SERVES 18
225g plain flour, sifted 115g rice flour, sifted 120g caster sugar pinch of sea salt 200g salted butter, at room temperature TOPPING 150g salted butter 150g caster sugar 80ml golden syrup 400g can sweetened condensed milk ½ teaspoon sea salt, or more if you are a salt fiend like me 200g dark cooking chocolate (70% cocoa), roughly chopped
1 Preheat the oven to 150°C. Grease and line a 30cm x 20cm x 3.5cm baking tray with baking paper. 2 Combine the flours, sugar and salt in a bowl. Rub the butter in with your fingers until a crumble begins to form. Place in the tray and flatten out evenly with the back of a wooden spoon. Bake in the oven for 40 minutes, or until golden. Remove from the oven and prick the shortbread with a fork. Allow to cool completely in the tin.
3 TOPPING Place the butter, sugar, golden syrup, condensed milk and salt in a wide, heavy-based saucepan and heat gently, stirring to melt the butter. Bring to a simmer and continue to simmer for about 10-15 minutes, stirring constantly to stop the mixture sticking to the bottom of the pan and burning. When the caramel is thick and fudgy, pour it over the shortbread and smooth out with a palette knife. Leave to set for 30 minutes. 4 Melt the chocolate in a double boiler, or in a heatproof bowl set over a saucepan of simmering water (ensuring the bowl doesn’t touch the water). When melted, spread it evenly over the set caramel. Leave for 2 hours to set, then turn out and cut into 18 pieces. Store in an airtight container in the fridge for up to a week.
160 The Australian Women’s Weekly | FEBRUARY 2020
For extra indulgence, add some caramel popcorn to the top of the Shortbread Caramel Slice, if you like.
Sweet sensation Vanilla cake with ricotta icing and roasted peaches SERVES 8
185g self-raising flour 170g caster sugar 125g unsalted butter, at room temperature 2 large eggs, at room temperature 80ml full-cream milk 1½ teaspoons vanilla extract edible flowers, optional, for decorating ROASTED PEACHES 3 peaches, halved 1 tablespoon honey 1 vanilla pod, split ICING 250g full-fat ricotta, at room temperature 250ml thickened cream, at room temperature 100g icing sugar, sifted
1 Preheat the oven to 180°C. Grease a 20cm springform tin and line the base with baking paper. 2 Place the flour, sugar, butter, eggs, milk and vanilla in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment. Beat on low speed until combined (about 30 seconds). Increase the speed to high and beat for 2–3 minutes, or until thick and pale. Spoon the batter into the prepared tin. 3 Bake for 45 minutes, or until a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean. Leave to cool in the tin for 5 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack to cool completely. 4 ROASTED PEACHES Arrange the peaches cut-side up on a baking tray
sprayed with non-stick cooking spray. Drizzle with 1 tablespoon of water, the honey and scraped vanilla seeds and add the vanilla pod to the baking tray. Bake for 30 minutes, or until soft. Remove from the oven and leave to cool completely. 5 Once the cake and peaches have cooled, prepare the icing. 6 ICING Beat the ricotta, cream and icing sugar until thickened and combined. Spread the icing over the top of the cake. 7 Just before serving, arrange the roasted peaches over the icing and drizzle any additional syrup over the top. Finish with some edible flowers, if you like.
RECIPES EXTRACTED FROM JUST DESERTS BY CHARLOTTE REE. $29.99, PLUM, AVAILABLE WHERE ALL GOOD BOOKS ARE SOLD.
FEBRUARY 2020 | The Australian Women’s Weekly
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Test Kitchen We’re LOVING
SMART FRIDGE 2.0 The Samsung 825L Family Hub French Door Fridge in black steel finish isn’t just smarter than your average fridge, it could be the smartest device in the house. It can stream your playlists, order takeaway and show what’s in the fridge by remote with interior cameras. It’s next-level refrigeration! For more information, visit harveynorman.com.au.
x o b h c Quick bites Lun treats SWEETNESS FOR ALL
Kez’s Kitchen’s range of sweet treats are gluten free, and some are FODMAP friendly and refined-sugar free. Available from supermarkets; visit kezs. com.au for information.
Happy medium
Seal in the goodness Smoothies are a great breakfast on the run, especially in summer. The Sunbeam NutriSeal Vacuum Blender has vacuum seal technology to remove oxygen, so your green smoothies prepared ahead of time stay fresher and greener for longer. $399, visit sunbeam.com.au.
162 The Australian Women’s Weekly | FEBRUARY 2020
Did you know about 40 per cent of Australians prefer steak cooked medium? We asked celebrity chef and meat maestro Adrian Richardson for his top tips. “For me, cooking on gas is the best way. It gives me the control and accuracy I need to make sure every steak is perfect.” His new online cooking series The Chef’s Secret offers up loads of tips and recipes to help you be a better cook. To view go to bright-r.com.au and download the free e-cookbook.
Get the kids’ lunchboxes organised by baking our easy quick-mix banana and apricot loaf. In a large bowl, combine 1 cup mashed banana, 180ml buttermilk, 300g White Wings premium selfraising flour, 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon, 200g chopped dried apricots, 50g toasted muesli, 2 beaten eggs and 80g melted butter. Stir until well combined and spread into a greased and baking paper lined 14cm x 24cm loaf pan. Sprinkle the top with another 50g toasted muesli and bake in a 180˚C oven (160˚C fan-forced) for about 45 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. Cool in the pan. Freeze slices wrapped in foil or plastic for stress-free morning or afternoon tea snacks.
CLAUDIO NAPOLITANO.
E D I T E D by FRAN ABDALLAOUI
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EAAgainst ENGAGED! i all ll o s,Brad B d
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BABY No.3FOR MICHAEL BUBLE
A family who relocated from London to Sydney found a special home in this Federation beauty, writes John McDonald. That said, it wasn’t so beautiful at first…
All the right
moves
P H OTO G RA P H Y by MAREE HOMER ST Y L I N G by KAYLA GEX
Homes
M
oving a household from one side of the Earth to the other is challenging, but perseverance and a little good luck will see things through. Such was the case for Andrea Stark and her family, who had been living in London for 15 years until a move to Sydney cropped up in 2013. They had packed up all their furniture, sent it to storage in their new home city and moved into a serviced apartment while they searched for a place to buy. Four months elapsed before Andrea and her husband, both originally from New Zealand – plus their two HOME DESIGN children Olivia, now 15, TIP and Luke, 13 – found this 2 380m Federation property “We invested in good a stone’s throw from a soundproofing with harbour beach in Sydney’s aluminum-framed eastern suburbs. “From the acoustic-glass doors moment we set foot inside, in the living room and kitchen, and we added we knew we wanted to double glazing to the make it home,” says Andrea. bedroom windows,” The interior of the says Andrea. “No circa-1910 house was very matter what’s going dated, with a palette that → on outside, this house is tranquil, cosy and calm on the inside.”
The original ornate ceiling was retained in the dining room, while the table was handmade by a woodworker in Kent, England.
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The kitchen was designed in a classic “plain English” style that Andrea favoured from her time living in London. “The central island is a great gathering spot,” she says.
166 The Australian Women’s Weekly | FEBRUARY 2020
Homes
MAREE HOMER/BAUERSYNDICATION.COM.AU
“I wanted a peaceful bedroom with warm greys, whites and snuggly soft linens,” the owner tells us.
included creamy yellow walls, blue floor tiles and lots of chintz and clashing patterns. But, says Andrea, “it had all the features we were looking for: high and detailed original ceilings, tall French doors, beautiful cornices and generously-sized rooms. If felt really unique, different to anything we’d viewed.” However, it was in need of a renovation. Andrea approached Tania Handelsmann and Gillian Khaw of Sydney architecture and interiors firm Handelsmann + Khaw. “I’d read about Tania and the beautiful work she’d done in New York on a style blog, and was thrilled that she’d recently returned to Sydney and was launching a new business here. We loved all the concepts Tania and Gillian presented to us.” In conjunction with Alvaro Bros builders, stage one of the project took just under a year, including the design component. “The main architectural gesture was to create one large double-height entry foyer out of two small existing rooms, with a new staircase and custom Jacobean-style panels to convey a sense of grandeur,” says Tania. “Bathrooms were renovated in a classic style, with grey tonal materials and more wall panelling in place of tiles to give the spaces warmth and character. “Initially we weren’t going to do that, as bespoke bathrooms are costly, but [we] decided it was worth the expense,” she adds. “We converted one of the external verandahs into an ensuite for Olivia, too.” The family moved in before the kitchen, dining area and laundry were renovated. “The original kitchen was tiny and tucked into one end of the space that forms the bigger kitchen today,” says Andrea. They waited two years to → FEBRUARY 2020 | The Australian Women’s Weekly
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Homes
HOME DESIGN
TIP “Do your research when it comes to things like hardware and joinery,” advises Andrea. “There can be massive differences in pricing.”
“Bathrooms were renovated in a classic style, with grey tonal materials and more wall panelling to give the spaces warmth and character,” says Andrea. remodel the kitchen – much longer than planned – but this had its advantages. “Living with the existing kitchen meant we had a much better idea of where best to position new windows, new doors, joinery and utilities,” says Andrea. The second stage of the project was completed in 2017, and the end result is splendid. Enter and you find yourself in the airy and inviting foyer. Walk around a table filled with treasures gathered during the family’s travels and you head straight into the kitchen and dining area, with floorto-ceiling sliding doors that lead out to the patio and pool. The kitchen is painted in a bespoke grey that Andrea concocted after numerous visits to her paint supplier. To the left of the foyer is a library, powder room and the laundry; to the right is a formal lounge. And behind the dining room lies the family room. Up the new staircase are four bedrooms; the main bedroom has an ensuite and also a walk-in wardrobe. There is also an office where Andrea, a graphic designer, can work. The terrace’s solid double-brick construction helps regulate the temperature year-round, says Andrea. There is an air-conditioning/heating system and fans in the bedrooms, which keep things cool in summer. It’s a beachy and breezy home, quite different from their house in London, but holding the same precious memories and memorabilia. AWW
168 The Australian Women’s Weekly | FEBRUARY 2020
D-I-Y Tips
Stain shifter
Home hints
For grass stains on o sports clothes, mix up equal parts water, white vinegar, cloudy am mmonia and liquid laundry soap in a spray bottle e, spritz liberally on the e stains, leave for 10 m minutes, then wash as a usual.
E D I T E D by GEORGINA BITCON
READER’S PRIZE HINT
Ask Smart swap S G up plastic cling wrap Give th his year – substitute stretchy silicone covers, beeswax food wraps, w reusable plastic/glass co ontainers or waxed paper sa andwich wrap.
Clean load C To o prevent lint from clinging to o your clothes in the wash, put a couple of pairs of old pantyhose in with the load.
La abel free Health H l hh hack k Your sandwich press is a quick and clean way to grill summer vegetables, such as eggplant, zucchini, capsicum and asparagus.
GETTY IMAGES. ALAMY.
Get crafty Kids bored? Let them paint smooth, rounded or flat pebbles in shades of green, then dot with white ‘spikes’ and patterns, and stand them in a pot to create an instant cactus garden.
Using a citrus-based goo remover or nail polish remover, clean the printing from PET containers used to sell salad leaves, wash and dry, and repurpose for food gifts.
THE W E E K LY
I ve an vasion of mealybugs on my moth orchid (phalaenopsis). What can I do to get rid of them without damaging the plant? B. Chung, Mooloolaba, Qld A: Mix ¼ cup methylated spirits with 1 cup of water and either dab it directly on the bugs with a cotton bud or spray it on.
S H A R E your DOMESTIC
SECRETS Send your handy hints or questions to: Home Hints, The Australian Women’s Weekly, GPO Box 4178, Sydney, NSW 2001, or email openline@bauermedia.com.au. We pay $75 for the reader’s prize hint each month.
To prevent thread from tangling when hand-sewing with double thread, knot each end of the cotton separately.
C. Bebb, Kenwick, WA. Avoid a trip If you’re camping this summer, slit pool noodles along their length and wrap them around the guy or awning ropes of the tent to make them more obvious and prevent tripping.
Sweet sensation Don’t throw away overripe bananas – chop roughly and freeze until solid, then whizz them in a food processor until smooth and creamy, and either eat immediately or freeze again to use as a healthy and delicious alternative to ice cream.
Boredom buster On a long journey, if your child is sitting near the window in a car, plane or train, a set of reusable gel stickers will provide instant entertainment and can be easily removed from the glass.
Get extra pop Soak popcorn kernels in water for about efore popping 1 – this results in far fewer unpopped kernels.
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What’s on
anu Feildel
We chat to the My Kitchen Rules judge about the show’s fiercest competition yet.
You’ve mentored the returning ‘Fave’ teams – what can we expect? I’m very competitive. The fact I’m working with teams that have already been in the competition is in some way an advantage, but also not so much when they think they know better and don’t listen – it’s an interesting challenge. I’m there to win, so we worked hard. Was there anything else difficult about mentoring? We were spending only a couple of hours with them while they were prepping – as soon as service started we had to walk away. It doesn’t matter how many things you can tell them how to do, when you’re not there and you can’t see what’s going on you’re just hoping for the best.
In the past contestants have been accused of bullying and bad behaviour. Being more hands-on, did you see more respectful behaviour? Yes, the better way to win the fight is to cook the best. You don’t have to score low, you don’t have to cheat or get angry – just get even, and get even with food. Is Pete Evans an impartial judge? What did you do to impress him? Yes – he’s right down the middle. When I was mentoring I was making sure I knew what Pete and Colin liked … I was always saying you should add a little bit of this for Pete, or don’t put that on the plate for Colin. I’m not sure Colin worked that way.
How heated did the competition get between yourself and Colin? It got heated at times. We’re friends – we have known each other for a long time so our friendship is definitely there still. But when it’s a competition you put your friendship aside for a bit. Which of you is the most competitive? I believe some of Colin’s scores were a little low compared to the public for example – I thought he was playing on the scores a little, he was a bit harsher with his critiques, but that’s alright. AWW MKR: The Rivals premieres February on the Seven Network.
At the movies EMMA
In a delicious new adaptation of Jane Austen’s beloved comedy, Anya Taylor-Joy stars as the wealthy young matchmaker who plays cupid with her inner circle (with mixed results), all while navigating her own romantic missteps. Bill Nighy, Miranda Hart and Josh O’Connor also star. In cinemas February 13.
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NICHOLAS WILSON. UNIVERSAL PICTURES.
What will fans like most about season 11, MKR: The Rivals? What we really enjoyed, especially Colin [Fassnidge] and I, was mentoring the teams. Being more involved, and not just talking about food or judging but getting into the kitchen and sharing our knowledge, I think that is what fans will enjoy the most.
Entertainment
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Inspiration for a weekend away or special night out. • JANUARY 31 The Twilight at Taronga concert
COMPILED BY NICOLE HICKSON. DAMIEN BREDBERG. JUSTIN RIDLER. LIAM SHARP. RENE VAILE. DAMIAN BENNETT.
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series returns with performers including Kasey Chambers (2), Pete Murray and Bernard Fanning. twilightattaronga.org.au • FEBRUARY 4 Marta Dusseldorp (7) takes to the Sydney Theatre Company stage to star in The Deep Blue Sea, a drama about loss, longing and having the courage to want more. sydneytheatre.com.au • FEBRUARY 7 With Perth’s City Beach Quarry Amphitheatre as the setting, the West Australian Ballet will deliver a spectacular program in Light and Shadow: Ballet at the Quarry. waballet.com.au • FEBRUARY 7 The Perth Festival (1) has more than 250 events and performances to dazzle audiences during the festival’s three-week run. perthfestival.com.au • FEBRUARY 8 Melbourne Theatre Company will presentt B Benjamin j i LLaw’s ’ debut work, the funny and a moving Torch the Place (3), at the Arts Centre e Melbourne. mtc.com.au • FEBRUARY 16 Don’t misss In Conversation with Margaret Atwood (6), as The Handmaid’s Tale author discusses her h career at Sydney’s Darling Harbour Theatre before travelling around d the country. margaretatwoodlive e.com.au • FEBRUARY 25 The Australian Ballet’s The Happy Prince (4) leap ps onto the stage at the Queensland Perforrming Arts Centre, before travelling to Melb bourne and Sydney later in the year. austra alianballet.com.au • FEBRUARY 28 For its 60th birthday, the Adelaide Festival is delivering an exc citing program of music, theatre and art. Tim Minch hin (5) will kick things off with the free birthday concert on opening weekend. adelaidefestival.com.au BOOK NOW! Spirit of the Dance (8) celebrates movement in all its forms. The show opens at the Glasshouse, Port P Macquarie on April 21 before visitin ng other locations around Australia. me ellenevents.com.au
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E D I T E D by JULIET RIEDEN
Suspense thriller
American Dirt
REVIEW BY JULIET RIEDEN. ILLUSTRATION BY LIZ ROWLAND.
by Jeanine Cummins, Tinder Press In the heart of every migrant is hope, it’s a dreamy driving force more powerful than those of us who live in comfortable “lucky” countries can ever comprehend. This book crystallises that emotion and imbues it with a compelling urgency that makes Jeanine Cummins’ brilliant American Dirt essential reading. The thriller intertwines the stories of men, women and children desperate enough to cling to the roof of La Bestia train network as it thunders through Mexico towards the promised land: el norte. The tale centres on bookshop owner Lydia and her smart son Luca, eight, seemingly unlikely candidates for this perilous escapade but as we soon discover there is no “typical” in the world of illegal aliens. In the opening scene they are cowering in the bathroom shower stall while 16 members of their family are massacred in the back yard by Los Jardineros. Lydia’s husband Sebastián is among the dead, murdered with his barbecue spatula still in his hand. He’s a newspaper journalist and we later discover his profile story about La Lechuza, the cartel’s head honcho, has angered el jefe. If Lydia and Luca are to survive they must flee … immediately. Their tortuous journey involves a stream of horrors. And as they travel they meet others – including two troubled sisters – also
About the author Jeanine Cummins, 45, was born on a US naval base in Spain, but grew up in Maryland, US. “My family is Irish and Puerto Rican, and we lived in a community that was not only extremely diverse, but also (unusually) very racially integrated.” After working in publishing Jeanine turned her hand to her first love, writing, including her bestselling memoir A Rip in Heaven. She writes from her home on the Hudson River where she lives with her husband and two daughters. “We live in the woods, and we like to watch the animals in the forest. Our most recent discovery is that a bald eagle has built a nest we can see from our window. We watch him fly.”
risking their lives to get to the US and end up trekking with a “coyote” people smuggler across the desert. “I’m acutely aware that the people coming to our southern border are not one faceless brown mass but singular individuals with stories and backgrounds and reasons for coming that are unique,” says Cummins, who was inspired to write the novel to give a human face to the US immigration policy. “When I saw our government was taking children away from their parents at the US border, I think my feelings about it can accurately be described as panic,” she says. “To me, the whole book takes place on American dirt. This dirt is as American as that dirt and some random, arbitrary line on a map shouldn’t decide whether a person lives or dies.” Her breathtaking tale doesn’t shy away from the shocking reality of narco atrocities and it stays with you. “I believe that stories can absolutely shape our thinking. I’ve read books that have completely changed my understanding of certain elements of our culture, books that have blown open my mind. Of course, those are the kinds of books I hope to write.” This is one of those books. FEBRUARY 2020 | The Australian Women’s Weekly
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mm n i d r Wonderful books for lazy holidays, edited by Katie Ekberg and Juliet Rieden.
Literary r
The Drover’s Wife by Leah Purcell, Hamish Hamilton
INLAND by Téa Obreht,
Perlman, Vintage Black humour abounds in this slick and thought-provoking part thriller, part love story. The author has no doubt drawn on his own early experience as a junior lawyer in a commercial law firm, where bullying and intimidation were the norm. Protagonist, married father-of-two Stephen Maserov, has swapped teaching for law and now realises he is stuck working all hours in a job he hates. When his wife asks
him to move out, he gets desperate and embarks on a risky assignment to defend a company besieged by sexual harassment accusations.
AKIN Emma Donoghue,
Pan Macmillan Michael is a boy in need. His father died of an overdose 18 months ago, his mother is in prison for drug possession and his grandma, who was looking after him, has just passed away. His new guardian is greatuncle Noah, a retired chemistry professor who lives in New York’s Upper West Side and opts to take Michael with him on a visit to his childhood hometown of Nice in France. The duo is so very different but what unites them is where the poignancy of this novel shines through.
Hachette The American dream comes under the microscope in this lyrical tale of Arizona frontierswoman Nora Lark, whose husband has disappeared while searching for water and whose elder sons have also vanished. As Nora waits with her younger son and hopes for the return of her menfolk we also meet Lurie Mattie, actually our hero and a murderer on the run. Superb storytelling with a mythical aura.
GETTY IMAGES.
Actor, playwright and author Leah Purcell grew up u reading Henry Lawson’s fam mous he 1892 short story Th Drover’s Wife carry ying around her own batttered copy of the book an nd annotating it with her h childish sketches. The tale of the pregnant woman isolated in the family’s two-bedroom hildren hut with her four ch deep in Australia’s hi high h country reached into her soul. This novel, which also incorporates some of Leah’s family history, is just one of her reworkings of the tale – first came the stage play and soon there’ll be a film. And in this courageous reimagining of the classic she has created something of a thriller, with the woman now named Molly Johnson and Aboriginal. The result is engrossing and truly powerful.
MAYBE THE HORSE WILL TALK by Elliot
Books
Memoir
Fiction
Olive Cotton, A Life in Photography
The Best Kind of Beautiful by Frances
by Helen Ennis, HarperCollins
The undercurrent of wit in Sunday Mail journalist Frances Whiting’s tale of love, family and friendship has all the appeal of a Richard Curtis movie. And while we’re not quite in Love Actually there is a hilariously cheesy Christmas hit – ‘Santa Was A Jazz Cat’ – at the heart of this infectious story. Music is the metier of the Saint Claire family with patriarch jazz man Lucas sort of famous, and his theatrical wife “L’Amanda” and their three offspring producing beautiful melodies togeth her. But Florence wantss to escape her child d-star status for the so olitude of plants. As an n activist she meeets greenie Albert Flowers, a partyloving socialite, and while they are incredibly diffeerent, love will surely y bloom. Won’t it?
When she was just 11, in 1922, Olive Cotton was given a Kodak Brownie box camera by her aunt. Two years later, while holidaying on SSydney’s northern beaches, she met 13-year-old Max Dupain, the son of family friends, and a union began. They took photos of each other, created their own darkrooms and developed their work. And as young adults Olive joined Max’s photography studio where their romance developed. This gentle biography follows Olive, who divorced Max in the mid-1940s, remarried and raised her children first in a tent and then in a basic cottage in country Cowra. She died aged 92 in 2003 and was one of our greatest photographers. TELL ME WHY by Archie
Roach, Simon & Schuster Singer-songwriter Archie Roach was tiny when he was stolen from his family and put into the foster system. He believed his parents had died but it wasn’t until his teens that at he learned what had really happened. This unflinching au utobiography underlines the power of Archie’s spirit through a life of shocking struggle. Well might he ask “why?””.
VERY NICE by Marcy Dermansky,
Bloomsbury
Whiting, Pan Macmillan
Zahid Azzam is Rachel Klein’s silky haired writing professor, who she can’t help but indulge in a dalliance with. It’s a tad naughty but feels harmless until on vacation Zahid pops up as an unexpected houseguest at her mother’s Connecticut home. Rachel’s father has recently left mum Becca and the appearance of Zahid in her swimming pool is about to shake things up. He is captivated not so much by Rachel, but by her mother. This edgy rom-com has an extra frisson of social comment.
flatmates and workmates, fl singer/waitress Hannah and dancer/waitress Mona and how suddenly their lives are to change forever.
UNFOLLOW by Megan
THE LAST VOYAGE OF MRS HENRY PARKER
Phelps-Roper, Hachette
by Joanna Nell, Hachette
Aged five the author was picketing against homosexuals, who – herr preacher dad told her – were wicked and should die. He ran the Westboro Baptist Church – a sect now famous thanks to Louis Theroux’s TV exposé. Megan didn’t find her own voice until she was 26 and today is an advocate for tolerance and diversity.
THE 24-HOUR CAFÉ by Libby Page,
Hachette The second book from author Libby Page’s six-figure publishing deal is every bit as captivating as her debut The Lido. Set in an all-night diner opposite London’s Liverpool Street station, we learn about the hopes and dreams of
Evelyn Parker is on her 662nd voyage on the Golden Sunset. She’s the wife of the ship’s retired doctor and now the couple can enjoy life aboard without the pressures of Henry’s job. But Evelyn can’t find Henry and as she searches the nooks and crannies of the ship to find him, a lifetime of memories tumbles out. A touching love story about the power of memory when the mind is failing.
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Books
Rural tales
Taking Tom Murray Home by Tim Slee, HarperCollins
When bankrupt Tom Murray burns down his own farmhouse rather than relinquish it to the banks, he accidentally kills himself. His wife Dawn is not just distraught she she’s incensed, and in an act of protest puts her husband’s body on a horse and cart for a 350km funeral procession through country Victoria to bury him in Melbourne. Black humour abounds, highlighting the plight of dairy farmers as cheap milk meets consumer demands and the salt of our wide brown land suffer. This is a truly Australian yarn, superbly written which evokes Henry Lawson and Banjo Paterson. THE DESERT MIDWIFE
by Fiona McArthur, Penguin The burning heart of Australia, the Red Centre, is the backdrop for this girl-meets-boy tale of love and loss from rural fiction bestseller Fiona McArthur. Informed by Fiona’s own life as a midwife in n country Australia, our protagonist is Ava, an outback midwife who falls for Zac en route to Alice Springss. But their thrilling adventure turns quickly tto disaster and that’s when drama unfolds.
Thriller
The Truants
by Kate Weinberg, Bloomsbury
An impressive debut from journalist Kate Weinberg follows a group of college students who, under the tutelage of maverick professor Dr Lorna Clay, rescue crime legend Agatha Christie and other female authors from critical disparagement. Lorna is a dangerous role model espousing debauchery as a necessary adjunct to artistic endeavour. Jess Walker is our vulnerable narrator, the middle child of a middle-class family in a dull part of middle England, determined to change her life. She is obsessed with her tutor, so much so that she wants to be her and when she meets sexy Georgie, intriguing Alec and geologist Nick, an exciting world opens up. Together they are rulebreakers but their daring flips into tragedy.
THE INSTITUTE by Stephen King, Hachette This is not one of Stephen King’s famed horror chillers, but it is scary. The ghouls here are very human and the story shows all the brilliance of the author’s writing skills in a potent attack on contemporary America. The institute of the title is a demonic state facility where extraordinary children with gifts including telekinesis and telepathy are put through a series of tests which range from the relatively simple to the appalling and painful. The aim is to harness the children’s powers and they are told they will be returned to their parents once their work is done, though the reader knows this is unlikely, not least because 12-year-old Luke’s parents were executed after he was abducted. The plot also concentrates on the staff who truly believe their experiments are for the greater good. Sound familiar? With echoes of the Holocaust and allusions to Trump’s America this could be King’s best novel yet.
are called on when she helps apprehend a White House intruder. But when her boss turns up dead, Hayley discovers a conspiracy against the controversial President. Unsurprisingly the novel has already been optioned for TV.
CHARLOTTE PASS
by Lee Christine, Allen & Unwin Murder is in the chill airr of the Charlotte Pass sk ki resort when patroller Vanessa discovers human bones. Sydney’s detective Pierce Ryder is called in; the bones are from a woman who went missing g back in 1964. As the village is snowed in there’s a second murder.
THE STRANGERS WE KNOW
by Pip Drysdale, Simon & Schuster DEEP S STATE bby Chris Ch H C Hauty,
Simon & Schuster It’s deeply refreshing to see a kick-arse woman – Hayley Chill – at the helm in this nail-biting West Wing political thriller. The new intern is also an army veteran and her skills
Infidelity gets a thrilling new take when Charlie thinks she spies her husband Oliver’s photo – the one she took on their honeymoon – on a dating app. Gulp. She signs up to the app, but what follows is way more alarming than a cheating hubby.
Historical fiction
A MURDER AT MALABAR HILL
by Sujata Massey, Allen & Unwin Inspired by pioneering lawyer Cornelia Sorabji, this delightful murder mystery, the first in a series, takes us to the streets of 1920s Bombay. Our heroine is Miss Perveen Mistry, who, in joining her father’s law firm, has become one of very few female lawyers in India. She must execute the will of a wealthy mill owner but very quickly Perveen senses something is wrong.
arden Josephine’s Ga by Stephanie Parkyn,, Allen & Unwin
It’s 1794 in France and the nation is steeped in the blood of the Revolution. Threee months earlier Rose de Beauharnais was imprissoned in Les Carmes and senteenced to death, her husband an a alleged traitor. Now thee day of reckoning has come. Alexandre has already been executed and Rose’s date with the guillotine is up. As she tries to calm her nerves, the doors of the prison are thrown open. She and all those within these walls are free. But less than a decade later Rose is back in a different sort of prison, married to Napoleon Bonaparte, her name changed to Empress Josephine of France. In her gilded cage, her only escape is tending her garden and in the friendship of two other women who become her touchstones. A fascinating insight into the woman whose sexual prowess was famous and whom Napoleon ultimately divorced.
Children
THE LIGHT AFTER THE WAR
by Anita Abriel, Simon & Schuster Vera and friend Edith are the lucky ones as they arrive in Naples in 1946. This novel was inspired by the author’s mother’s experiences escaping from a train heading for Auschwitz, a memory that haunts this story at every turn. The girls’ mothers threw them from the carriage and in doing so saved their lives. Now they must fend for themselves. After the war Vera finds work with the US Embassy in Italy where she falls for a dashing captain. But when he disappears, she and Edith embark on a lengthy journey to Ellis Island, Caracas and finally Sydney.
THE PARIS MODEL
by Alexandra Joel, HarperCollins Grace Woods goes from outback sheep station to modelling for Christian Dior in Paris. Her new world is glamorous and exciting, and when she meets dishy Philippe Boyer she is walking on air. But Philippe is involved in international espionage and soon so is Grace, risking her life.
3+
4-7
12+
THE UNDERHILLS by Bob
THE PAINTED PONIES by
Graham, Walker Books
Alison Lester, Allen & Unwin
MYTHS, LEGENDS & SACRED STORIES Penguin
Tooth fairies April, Esme and baby brother Vincent stay with grey nomads Grandma and Grandpa while mum and dad go on a molar pickup. There are always special treats and learning to box a teabag in their teapot home is a blast. With a bag of warm cakes, the children fly to the airport to give Akuba a coin for her lost tooth.
Prolific author Alison Lester brings us a delightfully colourful tale of the circus ponies that Lucky, Matilda’s grandma, used to travel with in their wagon. “There were dogs who could play football, dancing goats, clairvoyant hens.” When her parents spot wild ponies they capture them for the show, later releasing them.
From Europe through Asia, Africa, the Americas and Oceania, this captivating children’s encyclopaedia of magical creatures and terrifying monsters is easy to read for enquiring young minds. Information boxes and vibrant colour plates complete a real keepsake to hand on to the next generation.
FEBRUARY 2020 | The Australian Women’s Weekly
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Money
How tobe super ethical E D I T E D by GENEVIEVE GANNON
The growth in ethical super funds means it’s easier than ever to do good while saving for retirement.
Is ethical investment riskier?
There has long been scepticism around ethical investing, Effie says. “There always was a fear from a consumer perspective, is there a trade off? Do I get less return? That’s definitely
not the case. When you look at the past performance of ethical super funds they’ve done really well.” Part of what shocked Dr King when she learned she was investing in tobacco was that it seemed like bad business. “Declining returns and growing business threats present a clear and present financial risk for investors in tobacco,” she says. Ethical investment is normally directed towards sectors with longterm growth, Effie says. “Renewable options, that’s a growth sector so they’ve got long-term growth prospects.”
Where is your money?
Start by looking at your product disclosure statement. Even if you have an “ethical” fund, it’s worth taking the time to understand what you’re actually investing in. “Ethical” has unfortunately become a bit of a buzzword in the financial sector, Effie explains. “Some of the unethical investments that are screened out are fossil fuels, weapons, tobacco and logging. But is animal cruelty? You’ve got to actually see where they’re investing and where they’re not.” Your fund manager should be able to provide you with a breakdown of the companies your fund is currently
178 The Australian Women’s Weekly | FEBRUARY 2020
investing in. The Responsible Investment Association Australasia provides a wealth of information about navigating this complex area.
Look before you leap
You can then speak to your fund manager about what options they have. They may be able to offer you an ethical option. Yet if your fund has one “ethical” option but maintains holdings in areas that are not meeting your ethical standards, you may want to consider looking elsewhere, Effie says. She cautions again being rash. “Don’t rush straight out of your super fund because there are so many things attached to it. You may be on a very lucrative insurance policy. There may be exit fees,” Effie says. “Get some expert advice before you run.” One thing she does advise is letting the fund know why you’re leaving. “Ethical investment has been around for a long time but it’s gaining momentum because people are starting to realise that if the government’s not going to fix these issues we as investors can, and that’s a very powerful thing.” AWW
GETTY IMAGES. ALWAYS CONSIDER YOUR PERSONAL CIRCUMSTANCES BEFORE ACTING ON FINANCIAL ADVICE.
O
ncologist Bronwyn King always wanted to save lives, but she never expected the best way to do so would come from examining her finances. When she discovered the default setting on her superannuation fund meant she was supporting the production of cigarettes, she was horrified. She now heads Tobacco Free Portfolios, a company that has driven a significant reduction in investment in cigarettes. But tobacco isn’t the only questionable product super funds invest in, she says. Weapons, slavery, pornography and logging are just some of the industries Australians may be supporting without realising it. Canstar Editor-at-Large Effie Zahos says there is a growing appetite for ethical investment but most people don’t know where to start. Legislation that requires super funds to make their investments more transparent has been deferred until the end of next year, so we spoke to experts about what you can do to ensure your hard-earned salary is not supporting industries you ethically oppose.
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Behind closed doors
1 Kutin, J., R. Russell, and M. Reid, Economic abuse between intimate partners in Australia: prevalence, health status, disability and financial stress. Australian and New Zealand journal of public health (2017).
PRODUCED BY STORY
With one in six women reporting signs of financial abuse, it’s important to recognise the signs for yourself or someone close to you.
Money can be a sensitive topic for many of us, particularly if you are in a situation where you’re not in control of your finances. Whether it’s limited access to cash or constant scrutiny of spending, a financially abusive relationship can take many forms. According to Jan Breckenridge, Associate Professor at the University of New South Wales’ Gendered Violence Research Network, financial abuse can occur without physical violence and can be overt or incredibly subtle. However, regardless of the method, the planned outcome for the perpetrator is always the same – control. “There are three key ways money is used to abuse a partner: financial control, financial exploitation or sabotage of work or study which limits economic opportunities. A perpetrator might withhold money, track the other person’s spending online, block access to their own accounts or create debts in the victim’s name,” Breckenridge explains. “We see so many forms of control – maybe they’ve changed a password on an account and have withheld details of the new password. People can be asked to work in the family business with no pay or asked to do chores at home in return for money.” For many, lack of financial autonomy is what keeps them in a situation that they might otherwise leave.
“Through my research it’s been clear how economic abuse can create a situation where often women have to leave relationships with nothing.” “Financial literacy is one important area that can help everyone spot the warning signs of abuse – either for themselves or for someone close to them. It’s not necessarily about looking for it, but if there are signs of financial stress, sometimes it’s an indicator that something is not okay.” Financial abuse can impact all types of relationships, age groups, cultures and extended family dynamics. Commonwealth Bank Group Executive Sian Lewis says, “Many Australians know domestic and family violence is an urgent issue but less are aware of how closely it’s linked to financial abuse. “Financial abuse is a hidden epidemic with research telling us it is prevalent in about 90 per cent of domestic and family violence situations. As one of Australia’s largest banks, we have a responsibility to do what we can to address this disturbing issue. “Over the past five years, we’ve committed $30 million to programs that have helped people affected by domestic and family violence, offering support to vulnerable customers when they need it most. “But we know there is more to be done. That’s why we’re investing in
If you or someone you know is affected by domestic violence, please call 1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732). In an emergency, call 000.
and partnering with a range of leading community organisations, academics, survivors and advocates to develop new financial solutions and support to help those affected achieve long-term financial independence.” Find out more about financial abuse by visiting commbank.com.au/ financialabuse
WHAT ARE THE FINANCIAL ABUSE WARNING SIGNS? 1. You are prevented from contributing to household income by getting a job or earning income. 2. Your partner controls how all of the household income is spent. 3. You have been forced or pressured to take out a loan or credit card in your name. 4. You have to ask for money for basic expenses. 5. Your partner monitors what you spend and expects to see receipts.
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Puzzles
Find A Word
Easy Crossword
H T U M I Z A A O E N S S C M
1
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U R O A H L S N R S O U A S E B S O T L T E E B R I N T O T B R R E E U H O I
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E L A U L S
E P O C S E L E T I H U N R S E O N E M E N N I D O T E
D N N T E A N O C U R V T S N
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13 14
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J O T G I U C O C O E L A A O I U O A T L S L M R P L U T O
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18 19
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M P P P R M L E Y R U C R E M A A E
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L A E R T P B T T V E R R A Y A I
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I O E D E R E T S U L C
R N T S T A S I T R A N S I T S U E S R E P Y X A L A G O N R A T S C O R P I O S U N E V
WIN 5 X $100 We’ve hidden a collection of words related
to space in the grid. They can be spelt horizontally, vertically, diagonally, backwards and forwards, but always in a straight line. When you have found all the words listed below you should have 13 letters in the grid left over. These will spell the winning word. Write the winning answer on the coupon on the last Puzzles page for your chance to win $100. ANDROMEDA
IONOSPHERE
ROVER
ANTARES
JUPITER
SATELLITE
APOGEE
LEO
SATURN
ASTEROID
MARS
SCORPIO
ASTRAL
MERCURY
SOLAR
AZIMUTH
METEOR
STAR
CANCER
MOON
SYSTEM
CLUSTER
NEBULA
TAURUS
COMET
NEPTUNE
TELESCOPE
COSMOS
ORBIT
TRANSIT
EARTH
PERIHELION
UNIVERSE
GALAXY
PERSEUS
URANUS
HUBBLE
PLUTO
VENUS
22 23
24
25
26
ACROSS
1. 4. 9. 10. 11. 12.
14. 16. 19. 21. 23. 24. 25. 26.
Artefacts display centre Prestige, ranking Live through danger Barrack for, … them on Hand’s width, eg Ocean mammal, bottle-nosed … Published or distributed Take for granted Fermented dairy product Purple stonefruit Minimum, the … possible Carry out, … the plan Military guard, on … duty Medical fitness
DOWN
1. Greatest amount 2. Texts for plays 3. Workers’ organisation, trade … 5. Intrigues, … her fancy 6. Dentures, false … 7. More powerful 8. Prepared to start 13. Two-wheeled vehicles 15. Hemispheres’ divider 17. Strange, abnormal 18. Metal alloy, stainless … 20. Wheat or barley, eg 21. Portion, part 22. Netting material
Solution in next month’s issue.
WIN 5 X $100 When you complete the crossword, the letters on the shaded squares, reading left to right, top to bottom, will spell the winning answer. When you have the winning answer, write the answer on the coupon on the last Puzzles page for your chance to win $100. FEBRUARY 2020 | The Australian Women’s Weekly
181
ACROSS
1. 5.
8. 11. 15. 16. 17. 18. 20. 21. 22. 24. 25. 27. 29. 30. 34. 35. 36. 37. 40. 42. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 50. 52. 54. 56. 58. 61. 62. 64. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 72. 74. 76. 79. 80. 82. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90.
Most puny and weak Supports, … up in an argument Enclosed sporting venue Round red-purple vegie Sense of self Snooker implement Stage of a relay Tofu bean Walks with difficulty Group baked together, a … of loaves A long way off Readily available, draught beer on … Spoken test Tea flavour, … Grey Song, Boogie Woogie … Boy Intolerant, narrow-minded Windscreen’s cleaner Oak-tree nut Join forces Pimples condition Him and her Garment join Clothesline fasteners Gum, paste Bloodsucking insect Behave Low male singing voice Rudely brief John Williamson song, Old Man … Rocky outcrop Stake in poker Crusted dish Fastened with a knot or bow Whip up, … violence Parentless child Almonds, cashews etc Looked at Pinpoints, finds Own, possess Shakespeare’s nickname, the … In a tidy way Heavily bandage Slender stalk Hawaiian garland Toboggans Putrefy, decay Swampy land in southern USA Pop concert, eg Home and Away star, … Nicodemou J. M. Barrie story, Peter … Type of poem Kitchen garment Boxing injury, cauliflower …
92. Heart monitor (1,1,1) 94. Light musical drama 98. Sicilian ice-cream cake 102. Harsher, … penalties 105. Basil-flavoured spaghetti sauce 108. Squander 111. Revolve rapidly 113. Affectionate term for father 115. Reticent, restrained 116. Posing no difficulty 118. Burglar’s swag 120. Square root of 100 121. Barrier across a river 122. Winter flakes 123. Solo musician, … piper 125. Impassioned, an … speech 128. Sudden sharp pain 131. Poke with finger 133. Chinese spice, star … 135. Convicted criminal 137. Handed out playing cards incorrectly 141. Hottest 144. Bunchy clumps of grass 148. Bored or frustrated, … up 150. Vigour, vim 152. Rented 153. Open-back van 154. James Stewart classic, … a Wonderful Life (2’1) 155. Consume, … the resources 156. Small pouch 157. Extols 158. Intense desire 159. Poppy drug 162. Large bird, powerful … 163. Fairy godmother’s magic stick 166. Fiddled the accounts, … the books 168. Live internet digital movie machine 169. Does needlework 171. Apiece 172. Can be heard, is … 173. Fishing-net material 174. Nuisance 175. Dodged payment, … tax 178. Develop a fondness for (4,2) 181. Irritates 182. Bauxite, aluminium … 183. Cry of pain or distress 184. Slightly open 185. Movie, … Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest 188. Play or exercise ring, … hoop 189. Old Russian leader 191. Chocolate treat, Easter …
182 The Australian Women’s Weekly | FEBRUARY 2020
192. Children’s guessing game (1-3) 194. Washtub 197. Eternally, for … 198. Old pubs 200.Makes a mistake 202. Search for 204. Blacksmith’s workplace 205. Artist’s painting stand 208. Friendly relations 209. Deducts, takes away 214. Person, … being 215. Electrical measures 218. Truck-drivers’ compartments 220. Musical twosome 221. Chrysalis 222. Lukewarm 223. Japanese poem 224. Smaller quantity, … than before 225. Stain with colour 226. Tiny vegetable 227. Word used to surprise someone 228. Unfastens and removes, … the trailer 229. US actress, Halle … 230. Scoundrel 231. Sudden chilly spell (4,4)
DOWN
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 19. 23. 26. 28. 30. 31. 32. 33. 38. 39.
Feral pig (4,4) Employing, … staff Part of a shoe Rip, rend Round capsule of raw cotton Animal of the desert Japanese snack, … roll Walk casually Additional cricket run Throbbing pain Carry, … the load Discards, … away One of eight babies born together Nickname for senior army officers (3,5) System of relaxing exercise Arctic waters feature Circular coral reef Pseudonym Whole and unbroken Recline, … back Fish spawn Saddle with unwelcome task, … with Avoided, … capture Song, I Can … Clearly Now
41. 42. 43. 44.
Bewitching Initiated Expert pilot, eg Trims plants, … the hedge 46. Merriment, have … 49. Mineral spring 51. Distinguished female singer 53. Twelve in the evening 55. Count, … on 57. Flip, … a pancake 59. Inborn 60. Eye complaint 63. Price, cost 65. Frankfurter in a bun (3,3) 70. Powerful dog-faced monkeys 71. Correspond in sound 73. Big fibber 75. Chardonnay or Merlot, eg 77. Fortune-teller’s deck of cards 78. Mosque tower 79. Piano piece, Clair de … 80. Protracted tale 81. Notice, espy 83. Move slowly, … along the runway 91. Donkey 93. Lettuce variety 95. Extended the validity, … her licence 96. Uppermost part 97. Smartphone program 98. Scam, swindle 99. Move lightly and quickly 100. Fatty tissue 101. Amazement 102. Body of water, Caspian … 103. Goodfellas actor, … Liotta 104. West Indian folk song 106. Devoured, had … 107. Fork prongs 109. Confuse, … his wits 110. Pace of music 112. Fastener, safety … 114. Fuss and bother 117. Song, Here Comes the … 119. Or nearest offer (1,1,1) 122. By hook or by crook 123. Grazing land 124. Singer, … King Cole 126. Cry of a kitten 127. Nautically astern 129. Colony insect 130. Hydrogen or methane, eg 132. Stops, ceases 134. Rage
136. Author of To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper … 138. Warning sound 139. Small whirlpool 140. Space centre structure, rocket … 142. Too, as well 143. Did crawl or backstroke, had … 145. Rare 146. Window ledge 147. Give rise to 148. Style of hat 149. Eat in a restaurant, … out 150. Former tennis star, … Sampras 151. Soul, mind 160. Small pools of water 161. Be offended, take … 164. Highest point 165. Diversion, bypass 167. Decorative skirting board, eg 168. Large brown wingless NZ insect 169. Men’s businesswear, … and ties 170. Roused from sleep 176. Doctor for animals 177. Eagle nests 179. Crops up, occurs 180. Child’s plaything 182. Clumsy fool 186. Recede 187. Insisted on, … her rights 188. Chopper landing facility 190. Remove wallpaper, eg 193. Penne, eg 195. Enclosed (6,2) 196. Shallow and superficial (4-4) 199. Central issue 201. Huge mythical bird in The Arabian Nights 203. Short-sighted 204. Flutter, … wings 206. Get distracted, … track of time 207. Pursued 210. Dominance, have the … hand 211. Stuffed bear 212. Find disgusting 213. Unspecified object 216. Atlas pictures 217. Wound with a knife 218. Small block of ice 219. Group of aligned nations
Solution in next month’s issue.
The Colossus 1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
15 17
18
20
21
22
26
27
29
30
31
32
38
40
52
61
54
55
56
72
57
74 80
95
96
112
113
99
100
122
123
139
124
101
141
142
150
154
175 176
178 179
180
184
199
192
193
194
211
212
217 222
195
206
213
207 214
218 223
226
196
202 205
221
186
200 201
204 209 210
170
181
185
191
208
228
169 173
189 190 198
147
162 168
183
197
132
157
161
177
182
131
146
156
172
215 216
119
151
155
167
130
144 145
149
166
203
118
136
143
159 160
188
104
117
128 129
135
171
220
127
134
153
174
103
110 116
158
187
102
108 109
125 126
148
165
89
121
140
152
78
93
115
133
77
83
88
120
163 164
66
76
92
107
114
60
75
87
98
105 106
59
82
91
97
50
65
81
86 90
138
58
44
69
73
85
137
49
68
84
111
48
64
79
94
34
43
63
67 71
24
28
42
47
53 62
70
41
46
51
14
36
39
45
13
23
33
35 37
12
16
19 25
11
219 224
225
227 229
230
231
FEBRUARY 2020 | The Australian Women’s Weekly
183
Insider WIN 5 X $100
Layered: – cake, eg Song: You – It Well
Low footstool
Hermit, solitary person
Estimated time of arrival (1,1,1)
Individual taste: – to his own
Tennis success: grand – Sob, weep
Lorikeet, rosella
Jewel
Personal assistant (1,1) Handy hint
Require
Orderly Become enraged: lose your –
Gene code (1,1,1) Pine tree sap, eg
Duty rota Elector
Jealousy: green with –
Ireland Omen
Stretch to last: – out resources Utilise
Not high: inPeriod time: a – number end of an –
Vicinity: in the local –
China’s ex-Portuguese colony
Anger, wrath Summit, peak
Part of body: solar –
Timid, Australian modest Hotels Association Emcee, show host (1,1,1)
Leafy veg: bok – Cracker biscuit
Play School bear: Big –
Witness, observe Movie: One – Day Use spade: – a hole
Australian fish: Murray –
Paradise pair: Adam and –
Soup: – and ham Meadow
Song: We – Australian
All the ins and outs: every – Alternatively Rouse from sleep
Brink: on the – of success, eg
Take exam, eg
GETTY IMAGES.
The clues for this puzzle are all within the grid itself. Write your answers in the direction shown by each arrow. All answers run left to right or top to bottom. When you have finished, the letters on the shaded squares will spell the winning answer. When you have the winning answer, write it on the coupon on the last Puzzles page for your chance to win $100. Solution in next month’s issue.
Temporary relief Tennis ace: Lleyton –
Tennis ace: – Williams
Clueless 10
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17 25
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24 20
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15 7
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6 9
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14 24
4
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16 10
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7 24
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6 24
24
24
24 13
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5
7
23
21
18
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7
21 25
12
12
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24
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21 4
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7
7
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184 The Australian Women’s Weekly | FEBRUARY 2020
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E N
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WIN 5 X $100 In this puzzle, each letter of the alphabet is represented by a number from one to 26. We’ve put in three numbers and their corresponding letters in the top panel. Fill this in as you go, then use your letters to fill in the squares below the panel to get your winning answer. When you have the winning answer, write it on the coupon on the last Puzzles page for your chance to win $100. Solution in next month’s issue.
20 10
25 21
8 25
22
S
10
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26 22
20
23
10
11
25
26
10 12
24
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3 18
17 25
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7
Got your hands on the latest AWW Puzzle Book yet? On sale now at $9.99, it’s packed with crosswords, clueless, find a words, cryptics, quizzes and more, plus hundreds of great prizes! Available at stores and newsagents.
Cryptic Crossword 1
2
3
8
4
5
6
7
9
ACROSS
1. 5.
8. 9.
10
12
16
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10. 11. 12. 14. 15. 16.
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23
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Bogglewords
Can you work out the words or phrases depicted here? Solution overleaf.
1. COUNCLOSETERS 2. YENOMRUOY YENOMRUOY 3. 011011010 HOPE, DYLAN 4. CHAWHOWHORGE
24.
Criticise toboggan (6) I’m backing rage at desert vision (6) Returned note to posh English school (4) Named Ron again to be in custody pending trial (2,6) More in spun fine wool (6) One abstaining from food more quickly? (6) Observe spy from East (4) Four, yes, get climbing plant (3) Fit to remove top from table (4) Statement showing Queen knocked back port (6) Remarking nothing lost heart (6) Trail on rise? Take further action! (6-2) Sources held up light brown colour (4) Stud I ring from artist’s room (6) Created a home from need on street (6)
Sudoku
Each number from 1 to 9 must appear in each of the nine rows, nine columns and 3 x 3 blocks. Tip: No number can occur more than once in any row, column or 3 x 3 block. Solution overleaf.
DOWN
2.
Turning machine left to heat up (5) 3. Crowded state of Den’s city we hear (7) 4. Finance specialist turning to incomes (9) 5. Spoil returning ram (3) 6. Inclinations to redesign prams (5) 7. Gent finds long swimmer is well-mannered (7) 11. Prying fan initially swaps cooking utensil (6,3) 13. Take confident strides, turning pets away from home (4,3) 15. Female thespian’s current hair (7) 17. Lubricated and worked hard from beginning (5) 19. Courage and impertinent assurance (5) 21. Which person would laugh at West? (3) Solution in next month’s issue.
7 5 9
8 9 1 6
9
6
6 4 8
3
2
5 9 7
2
8 4
9 7 3
7
Spot The Difference Test your powers of observation. The two pictures at right may look the same, but we’ve made five (5) changes to the one on the right. Can you spot them all? Solution overleaf.
FEBRUARY 2020 | The Australian Women’s Weekly
185
How to enter & win!
Answers
February BOGGLEWORDS: 1. Close encounters. 2. Double your money back. 3. Bits and bobs. 4. Who’s in charge?
Write your puzzle answers on the relevant line, then cut out the whole coupon and MAIL to:
AWW Puzzles 2002 PO Box 415, Eastern Suburbs, MC NSW 2004
image. 2. Red flower top right quarter changed to pink. 3. Stem removed bottom right quarter. 4. Centre of flower bottom left quarter changed to yellow. 5. Flower changed to blue.
January INSIDER:
Winning answer: Resort.
Entries must arrive by February 26, 2020. Draw date and time: 12:00pm AEDT on March 4, 2020.
nowtolove.com.au/ awwpuzzles click on
'Australian Women's Weekly Puzzle Entries', select the relevant magazine issue number and fill in the issue's answers. Only one online entry is accepted per issue.
COLOSSUS:
To enter ONLINE simply go to
Find A Word: Easy Crossword: Insider: Clueless: NAME ADDRESS
R E A R E A T E N
A P B T I A A T N U T I N T S A C H E A R S H E S E A R C H L L O H F O R B I D W E A V A N D R E
A L I A S T A B BO T D N P E A R L A E V I S T A K L A R VA A U T R E V I C S N I C H E O A E E C C F U NN E L S EWE MA T C O I E S S A Y ME AN D H A S N H L A S S OR I E N T A L T I P O E R F I Z Z P AN T R I E S T E N E T N GU R U D RONGO A D P A I O F OR G E T Z ON E O F F C A D U G N E C HO E D R GOV E R N A L T E A A S C E ND A M A L AW I O E I C B P V E L C RO A C H A R G E O WA T O O N I GG L E C OR ANG E Y O C H B T S I N C H T R A I P S E S G I N U R O A S WA N S C A T T E R S A K E A T T S V I S I R E P E L S E E N V P RO R I D X A Y H F P I S T ON S YOK E S G O Y I S N E AG E R C D I L OV E E T R AW L C T D I R G E S E S A S S Y S D E EMS
G R A N D A D D E W
T A R E R E A T S T O S O N A R E Y E S
A P AN I C L C A P E S L U D E I OM E G A R A T ROGAN A U N I ON HOC K H F A R E S M C M Y T L N E X A C T GA D A F F I X E S B U T G A C R E F A TM R A P E L E T S T A B L E O I MP L Y D N L E S U R N U E K E RO S E N E N B RO T E M U R T D E A R S O D I S T R I C T E L E RO S P N L D D L E D T A A R C A D E E A C HO P I N O E L T E R E R P I MB I B E E L YOD E L S R U A RO S E T A H E A L T H V D G HOR ROR O E B E R G E A MAGN E T E H F R I NG E R L E R L I N E C L I A B L E E N D E L E T E I E A T T E D X S T A L ON S T A A X E D T N T H E R I T R P R E T E N C E L R I T C H U A O R EM I N I R E K I ND L E T E DG E S S W D UO E R D I S E T H R A P I D U D P H B AN N OW U S A M I M I C R Y G A T F O C A GA T E S E L V E N K E V I N E T E L E AN S E AOR T A N RO L G E A R N S M G S SWE E T Y H A S T E
1 2 6 8 9 3 7 5 4
7 5 3 6 2 4 1 9 8
8 9 2 3 1 7 4 6 5
3 7 4 5 8 6 2 1 9
6 1 5 2 4 9 8 3 7
9 3 7 1 6 8 5 4 2
5 4 1 9 7 2 3 8 6
2 6 8 4 3 5 9 7 1
EASY CROSSWORD:
Winning answer: Rest. P I T O E MA S B S H E O E N S S
E X P E N S E R I G H T
N C I L T E A O O H L A N I MA I C O D N R MA D E N A M D E A D S C R U S E S A O N I N VA D S G E D L I S H R U L T T S E A Y S T E A D
L
B T E N E D Y T A E S I E D E Y
CRYPTIC CROSSWORD: E C L A V I S G T R E L Y R F L OW E Y A P R O T R L I G AM B N M E N T A R Y
C R H OG A C S T OR E C R P OW
A L I T E M R E R G P E R N OU A E E N T AW L A T L I R ON A N M
K N G E A N D I N S V A Y L I C D
FIND A WORD:
Winning answer: Sandcastles.
CLUELESS: 1=E, 2=X, 3=Z, 4=W, 5=U, 6=S, 7=C, 8=M, 9=L, 10=Y, 11=P, 12=N, 13=I, 14=D, 15=F, 16=G, 17=Q, 18=R, 19=A, 20=B, 21=T, 22=J, 23=V, 24=H, 25=O, 26=K.
Winning answer: Thongs.
FEBRUARY 2020, VOL 90, NO 2. BAUER MEDIA LIMITED, ABN 18 053 273 546. Head office: 54 Park Street, Sydney, NSW 2000. Letters: GPO Box 4178, Sydney, NSW 2001, (02) 9282 8000. Melbourne: 102-108 Toorak Rd, South Yarra, Vic 3141, (03) 9823 6333. Printed by Ovato, 31-35 Heathcote Road, Moorebank, NSW 2170. Distributors: Gordon and Gotch, 26 Rodborough Road, Frenchs Forest, NSW 2086, (02) 9972 8800. *Recommended and maximum price: Australia, $7.50 inc GST. Subscription rate: NZ, 1 year $A120; other countries (no GST applies) 1 year $A180. To subscribe, phone 13 61 16 (8am-6pm MondayFriday EST) or visit magshop.com.au. Recipes, instructions and patterns in this magazine are for personal use only, not for commercial purposes. Material in The Australian Women’s Weekly is protected under the Commonwealth Copyright Act 1968. No material may be reproduced in part or whole without written consent.
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Aquarius
Pisces
Aries
FEB 20-MAR 20
MAR 21-APR 21
Happy birthday, Aquarius – progressive February gifts you sudden insights, swift changes of perspective and completely unexpected pleasures. Yes, there is Mercury retrograde’s inevitable glitches and bickering, but there’s also plenty of celestial support for moving through hurt to healing. Pied Piper Mars in the sign of poetic licence makes you very persuasive and if other people’s behaviour seems downright bizarro, well, we all have our peculiarities, don’t we, Aquirkyans? Venus will help you find the best in difficult people or situations (it’s there if you look).
Venus enjoying a lush month of sensual indulgence is set to float your love boat, so what could go wrong? That would be mid-month Mercury backsliding through Pisces – which can make your communications confusing to others, who may hear your intuitive take on things as fact, or take your inspired proposals as promises. You mean one thing, they understand something entirely different, so be as clear as possible to reduce mix-ups. When the sun and new moon dance a pas de deux in Pisces on February 24, let your imagination meander – this often drops something lovely into your lap.
As vivacious Venus sashays into Aries for a month-long romp, romance wears a bold new look. And while Mars joining a trio of ambitious planets could torch a burning urge to go, go, go, this month’s Mercury suggests listening to creative inspiration rather than trying to make things happen. Resist pushing for change that isn’t ready to manifest. If February’s combustible chemistry sparks kneejerk reactions, honour your instincts to withdraw and process triggered emotions. Don’t blow rebuffs out of proportion or buy into anyone’s idea of who you are – adjusting their viewfinder isn’t your call.
Taurus
Gemini
Cancer
A P R 2 2 - M AY 2 1
M AY 2 2 - J U N 2 2
JUN 23-JUL 23
With love planet Venus morphing from dreamy to steamy and lusty Mars joining a gang of heavenly bodies in your sector of adventure and wisdom, February’s a fabulous month to revise your personal love style. And when mid-month’s Mercury retrograde performs an illusion-busting removal of the rosy specs, then ready or not it’s time for an eyes-wide-open look at that situation you’d rather ignore. Once seen it can’t be unseen, but according to Taurean self-help author Dr Wayne Dyer, the good news is that when you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change as well.
Geminis intuitively understand that love isn’t just for sharing with one special person, it’s a way of relating to everything. And February fizzes with opportunities to play the game of love with everyone, including kids, the elderly and total strangers. Your mind’s hot wired right now to make fresh connections and initiate new projects, but with Mars igniting arguments and drama, this month’s major pitfalls are conversational exaggeration, overblown promises and inflated expectations. But most of you know the Mercury retro drill by now: retreat, review, reflect, reset and don’t believe all you read.
Mars moving into your partnership department for the first time in two years reignites relationship fires. Or lights a new flame. Or says sayonara to something that’s run its course – whichever’s applicable. No partner, no problem, because an alignment between Mars and Uranus ensures you’re this month’s attraction magnet even with retrograde Mercury’s edgy personal politics. Restraining sharp remarks and critical observations isn’t easy, but if someone’s antsy consider what that says about how they’re feeling. And if you want more love in your life, the solution’s simple: give more love.
JA N 2 1 - F E B 1 9
188 The Australian Women’s Weekly | FEBRUARY 2020
Horoscopes
ILLUSTRATIONS BY LUCILE PRACHE/THE ILLUSTRATION ROOM.
with
LILITH ROCHA
Leo
Virgo
Libra
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AU G 2 4 - S E P 2 3
SEP 24-OCT 23
Mercury taking this month’s interactions undercover into undiscovered territory can be thrilling, confronting or a mixture of both. And with Mars returning after two years to your house of self care, the backing track to February 9th’s annual full moon in your sign has to be Leo Whitney Houston’s version of, “learning to love yourself is the greatest love of all”. Valentine vibes combined with Mercury in low gear make this month ideal for reflecting on the roles all kinds of love play in your life, because as Leo Madonna so succinctly puts it, “Love is like breathing, you just have to do it.”
When Venus lights February’s romantic candles and ardent Mars pays its every-other-yearly visit to your house of creative play, get ready for a juice boost of confidence and charisma. Which makes you the least likely of all signs to be fazed when Mercury swerves into reverse mid-month and old relationship issues resurface, since planetary retrogrades echo the past. Love’s still in the air, though, so do what you can to keep it there by not letting people’s assumptions or inconsistencies make you cranky; because the more relaxed you are, the more negotiable this month will be.
As Venus morphing from watery to fiery ignites your heart’s desires, keep in mind that inspiration tends to arrive in stillness, followed by results which manifest through movement. February’s Aquarian variations feature a radical balancing act between dreams and reality, facts and fantasy – challenging aspects, but nothing love can’t overcome. No question that Mercury backtracking while Mars is in go-getting mode feels like one foot on the accelerator while the other pumps the brakes, but this stop-go energy can be usefully applied to decluttering not just stuff, but old attitudes, behaviours and habits.
Scorpio
Sagittarius
Capricorn
O C T 2 4 - N OV 2 2
N OV 2 3 - D EC 2 1
D EC 2 2 - JA N 2 0
This February, Venus decrees that when you feel good you look even better, so lavish some quality care on numero uno. The quartet of heavenly bodies in your ideas sector advises care in selecting which to take to the next level. And when Mercury scrambles signals mid-month, try to say things in the way you’d want them said to you. Sing rather than sting, because irritable people can’t create a peaceful world; only a compassionate mental attitude can do that. Love is a decision we can all make at any time under any circumstances, and Scorpios have the discipline and determination to do it.
This month’s personal hotspot for Sagittarians is Venus firing your penchant for flamboyant presentation. A new style-up can be great fun under this transit, producing surprisingly magical results, plus high-octane Mars motoring into your zone of strategy and production could bring a lucrative new opportunity. Practise patience during February’s final fortnight when Mercury backpedals, details get lost in translation and people take what you say the wrong way. It’s a period when the nurturing company of your innermost circle is often preferable to the madding crowd.
With Venus up close and personal in your home zone this month, what could be cosier than intimate nesting and entertaining at Casa Capricornia? And when spunky Mars rocks up mid-month to the planetary party already percolating in your sign, single or spoken for you’re this month’s signature dish. The notso-fab news is that you might experience tendencies to act out old narratives, as something you thought was sorted uncovers another layer of the existential onion. It’s advisable to take care of important business before Mercury reverses mid-month and everyone’s discernment heads temporarily offline.
FEBRUARY 2020 | The Australian Women’s Weekly
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Travel
New horizons Scandinavia and Russia will be the focus of Sky Princess’ Europe 2020 season. Princess Cruises’ 11-night roundtrip cruises from Copenhagen to Scandinavia and Russia on board Sky Princess start from $2569 per person twin share, and run from April to August 2020. Stops include Oslo, St Petersburg, Tallinn and Helsinki. Visit princess.com.
Beam me up, barista!
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t 19 storeys high and 330m long (25m longer than Sydney’s Centrepoint Tower lying sideways), the Sky Princess is truly like a floating city. The heart of the ship is the Piazza – a glittering gold threestoreyed atrium with grand winding staircases and water features. It’s here, while en route from Trieste to Athens, I discover one of Sky Princess’ biggest – and possibly best – new features. Suffering from jetlag, I go in search of coffee. The barista looks down at his device then greets me by name and asks if I’d like a flat white – the same order I’d made earlier in the day. One longstanding criticism of cruising has been that the larger the ship, the less personal the service – so when you’re one of around 3000 passengers, little touches like this go a very long way.
The new, deeper personalisation of service is part of Princess Cruises’ new high-tech MedallionClass, and Sky Princess is the first ship to be built from the ground up with the innovative technology. It works by downloading an app to your smartphone or device that operates through a small medallion you carry with you on board. More than 7000 sensors are located around the ship, and whenever you go near one your photo flashes up on the crews’ devices so they can see who you are and your preferences. It might sound a little Big Brotherish, but you choose how much or how little information you share, so the level of personalisation is up to you. It comes with other benefits too, perhaps the coolest being that your cabin door will magically unlock as
you approach it thanks to your medallion – so no more rooting around for lost keys or swipe cards. The new app also allows you to locate and message friends or family you’re travelling with, and if you’re like me and don’t know your port from your starboard the location tracker can be particularly handy. But perhaps the most popular function is the app-based ordering service, which I put to the test on my second day on board. With book in hand and a premium spot on a chair by the pool, I don’t want to join a queue at one of the restaurants so I use the app to order pizza and a glass of wine directly to me. With the medallion in my pocket the waiter is easily able to locate me; and I can track the progress of my order. It’s like Uber Eats – at sea! Clever.
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Michele Crawshaw is captivated as much by the modern technology on Princess Cruises’ brand new liner, Sky Princess, as the passing scenery.
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BERGEN TO STOCKHOLM This 14-night cruise from Bergen to Stockholm on Viking Star in a Veranda Stateroom includes all main meals on board, beer and wine with lunch and dinner and a shore excursion at every port. From $9,295pp, companion flies free^. Visit travelassociates.com
CELEBRITY STYLE Italy & Greek Islands fly, stay and cruise package includes return airfare, two nights accommodation in Rome and a 10-night cruise on Celebrity Edge from Rome in a Concierge Balcony cabin. From $7239pp*. Visit travelassociates.com
13 NIGHTS IN NEW ZEALAND Discover the enriching cultural experiences and extraordinary landscapes on a 13-night New Zealand cruise. Holiday like never before with Princess MedallionClassTM, available onboard Regal Princess®. RRP From $1,799pp** twin share. Visit princess.com.au
IN SEARCH OF THE NORTHERN LIGHTS Witness the luminous aurora borealis dancing in the sky on Viking’s 13-day In Search of the Northern Lights ocean cruise between London and Bergen, Norway. RRP $7,195pp plus Explorer Sale offer – companion flies free. Visit vikingcruises.com.au
MEDITERRANEAN ODYSSEY Explore some of the Mediterranean’s most historic ports on Viking’s 13-day Mediterranean Odyssey ocean cruise travelling between Venice and Barcelona. RRP $8,995pp plus Explorer Sale offer – Free 2-night city extension in Barcelona. Visit vikingcruises.com.au
BE MY GUEST Trafalgar’s exclusive Be My Guest dining will have you breaking bread with a charismatic local in their home, working farm and vineyard with over 100 experiences to choose from across all seven continents. Trafalgar’s Italy trips start from RRP $2,575pp. Visit trafalgar.com
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ITALY AND GREEK ISLANDS Our fly, tour and cruise package includes return airfare, one night stay in Rome, 12-day small group tour from Rome to Venice, two nights accommodation in Venice and a 7-night cruise on Azamara Journey in a Club Veranda stateroom. From $10,989pp. Visit travelassociates.com
Conditions Apply
MAJESTIC FIJI Our best sale ever, Oceans of Offers is on now. Relax and enjoy the journey as you cruise to tropical Fiji onboard Majestic Princess®, the newest and largest Princess ship in the region. RRP From $1,499pp* twin share. Visit princess.com.au
*Fares are per person twin share based on voyage 8054. Terms and conditions apply. Full details on princess.com **Fares are per person twin share based on voyage G034. Terms and conditions apply. Full details on princess.com. ^Terms and Conditions: Airfares are on an airline of Viking’s choice in Economy class, include airline/airport taxes and available from major cities in Australia (Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth or Sydney). Both guests must fly together on the same flights in both directions. All offers are subject to availability of airline and booking class. Airline schedules are subject to change without notice and Viking is not liable for any additional costs incurred due to airline schedule changes.
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personalised to y ou You’re not made to fit that cookie-cutter mold. And neither should your next holiday. No matter the destination, the ship, your style or budget, it’s important that your cruise is perfectly personalised to you. With over 100 offices Australia-wide and partnerships with every major cruise line, Travel Associates advisers are the experts in planning exceptional holidays for every one of their clients. Put your next cruise holiday in experienced hands.
ITALY & BEST OF GREEK ISLANDS FLY STAY & CRUISE PACKAGE From the incredible new Magic Carpet to the 29 unique food and beverage experiences crafted by a Michelin-starred chef, Celebrity Edge® takes modern travel to lavish new heights. Your 12-night package from Rome includes: Return international flights Airport and port transfers throughout 2 nights accommodation in Rome with breakfast daily 10-night cruise from Rome on Celebrity Edge® in a Concierge Balcony Cabin All main meals on board Activities and entertainment on board Shipboard gratuities BONUS US$625 onboard credit* Classic Beverage Package*
From $7855* for 12 nights *
Cruise departs 28 Aug 20. Deal 9387426. I TA LY
ROME Naples GREECE
Messina
Athens Santorini
Mykonos Rhodes Chania
Speak to an experienced adviser to design your personalised cruise holiday.
travelassociates.com |
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*Travel restrictions & conditions apply. Valid for sale until 26 Feb 20, unless sold out prior. Prices are per person, twin share and subject to availability. Price based on departure from Melbourne, Prices from other cities may vary. Onboard credit is per cabin & is not transferrable, not redeemable for cash & cannot be used in the medical centre or casino. Beverage Package applies to the first 2 guests in the stateroom when aged 18 years or over (21 years on some international voyages). Flight Centre Travel Group Limited (ABN 25 003 377 188) trading as Travel Associates. ATAS Accreditation No. A10412. TA19215
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Stunning scenery, historic sites and a vibrant food and wine scene put Georgia high up on the list of destinations to visit in 2020.
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edged between the Greater Caucasus mountain range to the north, where Europe’s highest peaks make a border with Russia, and the Lesser Caucasus to the south, separating Georgia from Turkey and Armenia, lies Tbilisi, its colourful and cosmopolitan capital. The valley between the two ranges has been an ancient silk route through history, and just over a decade ago, a short-lived war with Russia turned it into a no-go zone. Since then it has embraced tourism in a big way and tour companies are putting it and neighbouring Armenia on their itineraries. The cobbled old Tbilisi town is a great place to get a feel for the place, while the cable car from Rike Park up to the Narikala Fortress gives an exhilarating overview of the city. Tbilisi was built on top of thermal springs and the bathhouses are a popular attraction. Some 20km to the north the exquisite 6th Century Jvari Monastery has stunning views
over the Mtkvari and Aragvi rivers, and Svetitskhoveli Cathedral. Other top attractions include the ancient cave cities at Vardzia, 140km south-west of Tbilisi, and Uplistsikhe, near Gori, the birthplace of Joseph Stalin. To sample beach resort life on the Black Sea, head for Batumi near the Turkish border. It’s the Caucasus mountains, however, that steal the show, offering nature and adventure lovers splendid hikes, white-water rafting and skiing. Georgia has a notable claim to fame: it’s the world’s oldest wine producer. Three years ago 8000-year-old pottery fragments with traces of wine were found south of Tbilisi. Foodies have a lot to savour too: Georgian gastronomy is a mix of local, Greek, Turkish, Persian and Mediterranean flavours. Favourite dishes include khinkali (spicy meat dumplings), khachapuri (bread stuffed with cheese and often with an egg on top) and churchkhela – colourful strings of nuts dipped in a flour and grape juice paste. Find more information at georgia.travel.
A taste of local life One of the joys of travel to lesser known destinations is the warm welcome of the locals, many of whom have had little chance to travel and relish the chance to mingle with international visitors. Connections with the locals are high on the agenda of one of Trafalgar’s new trips for 2020, Georgia and Armenia Uncovered. The 11-day tour features Trafalgar’s signature ‘Be My Guest’ experiences whereby travellers visit local homes to enjoy regional food and wines, learn about local life, in the process helping sustain the communities. In Kakabeti in eastern Georgia, for example, guests are treated to lunch and a churchkhela making class. Trafalgar’s Georgia and Armenia Uncovered tours from Tbilisi to Yerevan are priced from $3075.62 per person and run April to October, 2020. The itinerary includes visits to UNESCO World Heritage monasteries and cave towns in both countries. See Trafalgar.com for details.
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Spotlight on
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The famous Geirangerfjord. Below: Hanseatic houses line the waterfront.
sk any fjord fan where the best are to be found in the world, and the answer will inevitably be Norway. For sheer quantity (well over 1000) and beauty, they can’t be beaten. The starting point for many cruises is the historic port of Bergen and most companies will include a day or two there on their itineraries, but any extra days you can add will be well rewarded. The first thing any tourist should do is head to the UNESCO World Heritage waterfront to see the city’s Instagram stars – a row of colourful wooden Hanseatic houses – the world’s only surviving cluster from the days when the Hanseatic League dominated the Baltic sea trade (circa 1100 to 1450). The Hanseatic Museum and SchØtstuene tells the story. There are two other museums that should be on your to-do list. For art, the pick of the four Kode museums is Kode 3 – it has a great collection of works by Edvard Munch and other notable artists. Further afield is the Edvard Grieg Museum Troldhaugen, part of the hillside villa where the composer lived for the last two
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decades of his life and is buried. If you can time your stay to coincide with a lunchtime concert at the nearby concert hall, Troldsalen, all the better. Bergen is nicknamed ‘the City of Seven Mountains’. Take the funicular railway up to one, Mount FlØyen, for a spectacular bird’s eye view and then enjoy the walk downhill back to the city. From Bergen there are very pleasant day trips into the interior, where you can explore some of the narrower extremities of fjords that the bigger cruise ships tend not to venture into. The local rail, bus and ferry systems are efficient and relatively cheap. The most popular excursion is by train to Vossevangen, then bus to Gudvangen to catch the ferry (there are five a day in summer) to Flåm at the end of the Aurlandsfjord (a branch of the vast Sognefjord). The boat ride takes two hours one way and is a beautiful way to absorb the serene surroundings and sample village life. Alternatively, if you’re looking for a route less travelled, there’s another spectacular adventure starting from Vossevangen. A short, breathtaking
bus ride takes you to Kvanndal on Hardangerfjord, where you can catch a ferry to Utne, a quaint village with lovely views. Viking Cruises has 15-day Into the Midnight Sun cruises from Bergen to Greenwich, London, or vice versa, including visits to Geirangerfjord, Honningsvåg in the Arctic Circle, the Shetland and Orkney Islands and Edinburgh. Fares start from $9995 per person twin share. Book before March 31, 2020 to access Viking’s Companion Fly Free offer. Visit vikingcruises.com.au.
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Bergen is the gateway to Norway’s majestic fjords, writes Sven Gebele.
with Singapore Airlines or Qatar Airways when you book your dream Europe & Britain 2020 holiday.
CALL 1800 002 007 OR VISIT YOUR TRAVEL AGENT.
* The air ofer $799 return per person is valid when booked in conjunction with selected 2020 Trafalgar trip departures to Europe & Britain with a duration of 11 days or more, or on selected trips when combined to create a total duration of 11 days or more. Air ofer is not combinable with the Early Payment Discount or any other promotional ofer. Includes flying Economy return with either Singapore or Qatar airways available for new bookings created from 15 January to 27 February 2020 economy fares for Qatar Airways & Singapore Airlines until sold out. Airfares are valid for travel to Europe for travel between 1 March 2020 30 November 2020 excluding 20 June to 7 July on Qatar Airways. Please call to book flight inclusive trips. The airfare cannot be sold in isolation & is subject to availability. Ofer does not apply to Autumn; Winter & Spring departures or indicatively priced departures. Ofer does not apply to select packages including Oberammergau, trips to Greece; Turkey; Israel; Jordan; Egypt & Special Group Itineraries. For full terms and conditions visit trafalgar.com.
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A WEEK IN JAPAN
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Shanghai | Chongqing | Chengdu | Xian | Beijing
Tokyo | Hakone | Mt Fuji | Kyoto | Nara | Osaka
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14 DAY FULLY INCLUSIVE TOUR
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NOW FROM $4,280pp TWIN SHARE
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Visit wendywutours.com.au/fyfree, call us on 1300 177 506 or visit your local travel agent Opening Hours: Mon-Fri: 8am-7pm l Sat: 9am-4pm
Valid for sale to 31 Mar 2020 unless sold out prior on selected fight-inclusive group tours departing selected Australian cities. New bookings only. Not combinable with any other offer except loyalty discount. Based on twin-share. Single supplements apply (except solo tours). Advertised prices include savings. All services are subject to availability. Based on special economy class fares, surcharges may apply once airfare is sold out. Airline fuel surcharge (where applicable) included and subject to change. Due to airline schedules, domestic connection to international fights, or extra nights’ accommodation may be required at additional expense. $300pp non-refundable deposit payable within 3 days. Second non-refundable payment of $1,000pp due within 3 weeks. Visit wendywutours.com.au for full terms and conditions. ATAS A10517.
Travel
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GETTY IMAGES. OTHER IMAGES SUPPLIED AND USED WITH PERMISSION.
ANT ARC TIC A EE
ntarctica doesn’t come easy. Two days by ship across the Drake Passage, an ocean so vast it seems to exist in perpetuity. There’s not a soul out here except for the albatrosses, dipping and swaying above the ocean’s draught. The voyage of the mind is more confounding. In two days my world has been turned upside down: temperateness has been replaced by frigidity, and we visitors have been relegated to mere bit-players in an evolutionary play. This sense of insignificance is reinforced by the scale of the continent: icebergs gliding by like ice-bound apartment blocks; snowsmeared mountains piercing a deceptively blue sky; an infinite stillness. But the silence is swiftly shattered. Approaching landfall in a Zodiac boat, we’re assailed by the collective call of Antarctica’s most prolific residents, Gentoo, Adélie and chinstrap penguins.
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Belying their tiny stature, torrents of squawking, babbling and screeching spill from their beaks. The clamour continues even as the penguins slide down icy hillsides on their stomachs, vigilantly guard their eggs as skuas try to snatch them, and waddle to the water’s edge before diving in. It’s springtime, and the penguins have returned to their colonies’ nesting sites to incubate their eggs. In around a month’s time the cacophony will swell when the chicks hatch and begin to loudly solicit their parents’ attention. “The chick that begs the best gets fed the most,” says expedition leader Dr Peter Carey. “That’s the chick that’s going to survive.” Biding their time for the hatching season, leopard seals lurk beneath ledges of ice. Sea lions blink before falling back to sleep on beds of volcanic beach. A crab-eater seal slides along bright sea ice and slips into a fissure; so clear is the water I can see bleached whale bones on the seabed.
There’s no sign of the whalers who once plundered these waters, just the remains of their huts, frozen in time. Human presence is confined now to this ship as it slices through shattered sheet ice, to tight groups trekking across fast ice. Immaculate though it is, we can sense our impact in the receding glaciers and melting ice. “The polar areas are the canaries in the coal mine,” says naturalist Adam Cropp. “Huge volumes of ice that have been here for 15,000 years have melted.” Much as our fingerprints can’t be truly wiped from Antarctica, its testament will remain forever etched on my soul. The only continent we can never inhabit, it’s a place that allows us to contemplate our own transience, and comprehend the perfection of a habitat that’s been left to its own devices. To organise your trip to Antarctica, contact one of Travel Associates’ Bucket List Specialists at travelassociates.com.
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As far as cruising goes, few regions can match the Caribbean for the sheer variety of destinations and experiences on offer, writes Marilyn Jones.
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waying palm trees, sugary white-sand beaches and turquoise seas frame every Caribbean experience. Add to this the unique personality of each island and tropical weather year-round and you have the perfect destination for natural beauty, relaxation and cultural discovery. One of the best ways to experience the Caribbean is on a cruise. There are more than 7000 islands in the Caribbean, which is bordered by the United States, Mexico, Central America and South America in the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico. Some islands are lush, with rainforests and mountain trails, while others have desert climates. Cruise ships stop at about 40 islands including The Bahamas. Some islands have several ports. Homeports where ships depart for the Caribbean include New York City; New Orleans, Louisiana; Galveston, Texas; Charleston, South Carolina; Baltimore, Maryland; Miami, Tampa and Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
Convenience of sailing
The beauty of cruising is the ability to visit several islands, each with its own
Caribbean cruise must-dos include swimming in Belize (right), exploring Curaçao (top right) and diving from Cozumel (below right).
unique character. I have rumbled along Aruba’s desert roadways in a four-wheel drive truck, rescued baby turtles on a sun-kissed beach in Cozumel, Mexico, snorkelled in Belize, explored caves in The Bahamas and learned about pirates in St Thomas. The longer the cruise, the more islands you experience. A seven-day Western Caribbean itinerary from Galveston, for example, takes passengers to Jamaica, Grand Cayman and Cozumel. An eight-day Eastern Caribbean tour includes Key West and three stops in The Bahamas. Personally I enjoy learning about island history including the indigenous population, European domination and current political ties. For example, the ABC islands – Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao – located just north of Venezuela are governed by the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Aruba is known for its beaches and
Bonaire is popular with divers. Curaçao is the largest and wealthiest island of the three. In many cases tourism is the largest industry on an island. Locals are always friendly and appreciative, and merchants, restaurateurs and guides speak excellent English. American dollars and credit cards are accepted for services and purchases. Often a day or two goes by in between ports of call. Cruise ships offer everything from swimming pools, water parks and basketball courts to casinos and shopping. There is also a wide variety of organised activities including dance lessons, karaoke, trivia contests, evening entertainment and comedy clubs.
Travel Cruising with kids
Fun on the frontier
In recent years, cruise lines have pulled out all the stops for young travellers. Disney, Carnival and Norwegian cruise lines are all known for great kids’ activities. Carnival offers Camp Ocean geared towards children two to 11, Circle C is designed for ages 12 to 14, and Club 02 for ages 15 to 17. Each group has its own space from play areas to high-tech teen lounges. Dr. Seuss’ Cat in the Hat and Sam I Am are also on board.
Once you venture beyond the cluster of historic cities on North America’s east coast – Washington DC, Montreal, New York City, Boston – you enter a land of forests (best seen in resplendent autumn colours), lakes, streams and waterfalls. The coast of states such as Connecticut, Maine and New Hampshire offers a mix of quaint fishing villages, isolated coves and resort towns. Popular cruising ports include New York, Boston, Newport on Rhode Island, Bar Harbor in Maine, Halifax in Nova Scotia, Charlottetown on Prince Edward Island, and the ‘other Sydney’ – the Canadian one on Cape Breton Island. North America’s only walled city, Quebec City, is the most picturesque spot to dip into FrenchCanadian culture. Spend time strolling through its cobbled old town and venture into its most striking building, the enormous Le Chateau Frontenac hotel. Toronto in Canada and Buffalo in New York state are the airport gateways to the Niagara Falls, which straddle the border. The Canadian side has the better views but there is a pedestrian bridge between the two countries, enabling you admire both sides. Tourism operators are starting to offer packages incorporating Niagara Falls and cruises on some or all of the region’s great lakes – Michigan, Superior, Erie, Huron and Ontario – hopping off one craft and transferring by minibus to another craft on another lake where necessary. The big names of land and ocean travel such as APT, Trafalgar, Princess Cruises and Cunard, all operate in the region, and cruises south of New England to Florida and the Caribbean are popular add-ons. The visa arrangements for Canada and the US can be complicated, but experienced travel agents can provide guidance. For more information, visit travelassociates.com.
GETTY IMAGES.
When to take a cruise
Many people avoid the Caribbean during hurricane season – June 1 through November 30, with a peak activity period from late August through September. But if a tropical storm or hurricane forms in the Atlantic, ship captains change their course to stay out of danger’s way. In 2012 when Hurricane Sandy was still a tropical storm, the captain of the ship I was sailing on changed the ports of call, avoiding Jamaica and Grand Cayman by substituting Key West and Costa Maya. The itinerary changed and passengers were kept safe. Caribbean cruises are offered yearround. The most popular cruise lines include Carnival Cruise Line, Disney Cruise Line, Holland America Line, Oceania Cruises, Norwegian Cruise Line, Royal Caribbean International, Seabourn Cruise Line, Silversea Cruises, Celebrity Cruises, Princess Cruises and Viking Cruises. They all regularly offer discounts and sales. If you’re looking for an inviting, culturally rich, fun adventure, look no further. The Caribbean is a great destination. For more information on Caribbean cruises, visit travelassociates.com.
Shore excursions As varied as the Caribbean islands are, so are the shore excursions. Here are some tips to get the most of offshore days. First, consider the homeport part of your holiday. Fly into New York or Miami and spend a few days before embarking on your cruise. When I sailed from Charleston I toured the Ashley River plantations, took a carriage tour past historic homes and gardens, and bought local treasures at Charleston City Market. On the islands, just about anything you can think of that would be fun and interesting is offered. In Grand Cayman, this variety includes stingray and turtle encounters, snuba diving (a combination snorkel and diving experience), food tours and helicopter tours. Often tours cover history and stops for lunch and shopping.
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Our ship’s coming in
When is the best time to book a cruise holiday? Book as soon as the cruise itineraries are released (up to 24 months in advance). The earlier you book the more likely you are to secure exactly what you want – such as preferred dining times and cabin location. This can be important if travelling with a group and cabins close together are required or travelling with children and you want interconnecting cabins. If you leave it to the last minute you can end up with accommodation no one else wants (i.e. no balcony or under the nightclub), or run the risk of the ship being sold out. How do you know what cruise line is best for you? Work with a cruise specialist travel adviser to book your cruise holiday. Doing it yourself online will only give you answers to the questions you ask. It’s what you don’t know that is key. Having a great conversation around your needs and expectations (i.e. price point, destination experiences, travel party, reason for trip, what your non-negotiable points are) is key to getting it right. What regions are best seen by cruising? The world is 70 per cent water, so many places are best seen by ship. There’s an itinerary, ocean or river, to suit everyone. Alaska comes to mind as it’s easier to get around by the Alaskan Marine highway, which is a ferry servicing the Alaskan coast and islands, by expedition, or cruise ships. European rivers were traditionally the ‘marine highway’ sailing through large cities, small towns and villages transporting goods.
The South American country has emerged from its troubled past. Trafalgar’s new 13-day Colombia Rediscovered tour makes for an exotic escape, including the Caribbean charms of Cartagena and Santa Marta. Visit Trafalgar.com for details.
What type of people enjoy cruising? Cruising is an affordable holiday option for people with varied requirements and expectations. When considering a cruise be honest with your cruise adviser as to what you like and don’t like. The more you share with your cruise adviser, the better chance your cruise will deliver the experience you seek. It’s a great option for couples, solo travellers, friends, groups and families, including multigenerational groups. There’s a cruise to suit everyone’s tastes, style and budget.
Egypt and Jordan If the pyramids, the Great Sphinx and Petra are on your bucket list, 2020 is a great time to visit. The Red Sea corals are thriving despite rising global temperatures, and resorts beckon. Ask a Bucket List Holiday Specialist at travelassociates.com.
Japan Hosting the 2020 Olympic Games, Japan is set to be popular this year. Why not add China, Korea or Russia? Princess Cruises has 7 to 9 day Japan-focused cruises that also feature Shanghai, Busan and Korsakov. Details at princess.com.
Why do you love cruising? From the moment you step on board, you’re on holiday. You unpack once whilst the ship transports you to new locations, and there’s a huge selection of dining options. You can meet new people, or have the opportunity for quiet time. You can do as much or as little as you want. Turn off the mobile phone – particularly at sea!
Africa It’s no surprise Africa is a hot spot for 2020 and October is a great time to visit. The annual wildebeest, zebra and gazelle migration should be in full swing, and predators will be prowling. Grab the binoculars and contact travelassociates. com for your African adventure.
What was your most memorable trip? I’ve cruised on vessels as small as 36 guests and as large as 5000 and each experience is different. From shopping with chefs in St Maxime to transferring from a zodiac into a kayak in the middle of Misty Fjord without getting wet, and experiencing Russia by river. Tell us about Travel Associates. Our advisers have years of experience and a passion for travel, creating itineraries for all wants and needs. Travel Associates Cruise Boutique has the most experienced cruise advisers in Australia. We work with partners on cruises specifically designed for us, as well as having access to the newest ships and other benefits. Travel Associates Cruise Boutiques provide the counsel and service no other travel group can match. In 2019, Travel Associates was announced as the Travel Agency of the Year for more than 30 employees by The Travel Awards.
Chile PHOTOGRAPHY THIS PAGE AND FLIP COVER: GETTY IMAGES.
Janette Wall, a cruising fan and specialist with Travel Associates, offers her tips to land the best cruise deals.
Colombia
Often overlooked for Brazil and Peru, Chile is coming into its own as a popular location for visitors, with the country’s landscape drawing awe. Visit Chile as part of Viking’s 18-day South America and the Chilean Fjords cruises. Visit vikingcruises.com.au.
Northern Territory Our very own red centre is a must-visit, and Kakadu National Park is the perfect location to take in the majesty of the region. The team at travelassociates.com can help you book the ultimate NT escape.
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