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 …
Much ado about the brew
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. …
What lies ahead
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 …
Getting published – why timing and titles matter.
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 …
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The art of being less empty
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 …
Difficult Men
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 …
A Christmas Luau
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 …
The Collision
A perfect storm looms on an otherwise ordinary night in suburbia, a place of cul-de-sacs and project homes, a Holden Kingwood in the driveway. Our house draws no attention to itself; just another red brick house in a tree-lined street. Yellow light warms the windows from the inside out. Like most families we have rules, …
Radical re-entry
In 2016 I returned to full-time study. Come to think of it, it was the first time I'd studied full time since leaving school. I studied my BA Comms part time while working the overnight shift in Channel Ten's newsroom. It is a luxury I can (almost) justify to take time out from my career …
First day of school
Cole cocks his leg and aims a stream of wee at the red brick wall. It leaves a dark, dribbly stain. I can see what he’s doing from the back step of our Forestville house where I wait while mum gets the camera ready. I’m with Mark and Kelly and we’re all in our school …
Jane O'Connell 