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Posts by Jane O'Connell

Double Delight

Jane O'Connell

Posted on January 9, 2018

    With its striking red door and sky-blue weatherboards, the picturesque cottage on one of Bowral’s central streets could easily be mistaken for yet another charming Highlands home, but there is more to this warm and welcoming property than first meets the eye. The Hidden Door Cottage and Villa, as the name suggests, offers two separate buildings with distinctly different accommodation options – quaint and cosy at the front, and sleek and stylish tucked away at the back of the block.   In warmer months, the leafy green canopy stretching along Bundaroo Street is so spectacular and distracting some guests (and I am one) drive straight past the cottage and have to double-back. The location couldn’t be more convenient, within walking distance to…

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Much ado about the brew

Jane O'Connell

Posted on January 9, 2018

  It is often said that necessity is the mother of invention, so when Jacob Newman, at the age of eighteen, was too young to buy beer in his home state of Texas, he simply created his own brew. Years later, that teenage entrepreneurial spirit travelled across the Pacific Ocean and emerged as Eden Brewery. If Newman has his way, Eden Brewery is just the first of many independent brewers to carve out a new type of tasting trail in the Southern Highlands. Despite an early start in the beer trade, Jacob worked as a paramedic in Dallas before moving to Townsville, then Papua New Guinea (where he met Eden co-founder and now-wife Deb) as a missionary and medic for local communities. After seven…

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What lies ahead

Jane O'Connell

Posted on April 14, 2017

Thirty years ago I landed a journalism cadetship of sorts doing research and admin for the star newsreader – a woman who was one of my earliest mentors and heroes. I was the greenest reporter in the television newsroom and not in the environmental sense. Within a year or two, the guard changed and a new crew of journalists sauntered in, full of attitude, many of them women. On a gender basis in terms of ratio it is still one of the most diverse workplaces I’ve experienced. Yes there were issues but they were up front and in your face, not hidden and insidious as many corporate workplaces can be. A group of us became great workmates. We were all in our early twenties;…

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Being published – why timing and titles matter.

Jane O'Connell

Posted on March 6, 2017

Despite a long career working in media, when I first returned to full time writing my portfolio of published articles was rather slim. As a television journalist I’ve written, produced and reported on hundreds of news, current affairs and lifestyle stories for broadcast, but writing for print was never high on my priority list. Last year when I started my Master of Arts in Creative Writing, I began exploring new writing styles and at the prompt of my tutor, submitted one of my personal essays for publication. I had a list of Australian literary journals I’d hoped would accept my work and at the top of the list was Meanjin Quarterly, one Australia’s most prestigious publications, with Jonathan Green in the Editor’s seat. I created an…

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The art of being less empty

Jane O'Connell

Posted on January 1, 2017

This may sound a little bah-humbuggy but the clichéd, vacuous claptrap masquerading as life-changing advice that people are so fond of posting online does my head in. Seriously. Social media has spawned an epidemic of saccharine sayings that are shared and reshared ad nauseum, and some of it is nauseating. So when Rupi Kaur’s ode to the New Year popped up on my news feed today I knew it was time (what better day than January 1) to untether myself from rubbish thinking and properly explore quality alternatives. I admit I came late to poetry, other than the mandatory high school poets such as Samuel T. Coleridge (In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure-dome decree) and the great T.S. Eliot (Let us go…

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Difficult Men

Jane O'Connell

Posted on December 29, 2016

An email popped into my inbox today with the subject line The Difficult Men’s Club. It was from a long time friend and included a photograph from her recent family Christmas celebration. In the picture was her partner, her brother-in-law, one of her sons, her ex-husband and her father. Only one of the men is smiling. I must admit, my first reaction was to laugh at the sight of all those men she needs to manage. The three most difficult (father, partner, ex-husband) are in the foreground sitting around a low table with several bowls of peeled and unpeeled king prawns, crumpled serviettes and an assortment of beers. I know all three of them and like each one for his unique charm, though I was a little intimidated…

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A Christmas Luau

Jane O'Connell

Posted on July 25, 2016

The wooden hand formed in the famous Hawaiian hang loose sign sits on the formica bench in my parents’ apartment, between the kitchen and the dining room. “Hang loose!” Dad would always say when the going got tough.  Hawaii is part of my father’s DNA.  A holiday at the Royal Hawaiian on Waikiki decades earlier sealed his undying love for the islands, his go-to attire is the Hawaiian shirt.  So it made total sense to theme our family Christmas this year Hawaii. The lead up to December 25 was not typical.  It would be my first Christmas at home since leaving Australia eight years earlier.  Now reluctantly back in Sydney and desperately missing the crisp London air, the sparkly Christmas markets and of course the mulled…

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Blog Posts

  • A Christmas Luau
  • The Family Dinner
  • I come from the Land Down Under
  • Don’t mention the ‘B’ word
  • Hey that’s my coat!
  • A is for Ageist

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