Conversations: Art & Passions

Gardening Australia's Hannah Moloney on the heartwarming and heartbreaking reasons humans continue to lovingly tend to their gardens — for healing, beauty and joy. For thousands of years, tending to a garden or a small...

The much-loved actor Sam Neill had an unusual path into acting. Raised in New Zealand as a shy boy with a stutter named Nigel, he was 30 when he got his big break (R) Sam, who has died at the age of 78, was an acclaimed...

Molly's niche career began over a decade ago when she entered a whistling competition on a whim and she now performs all over the world. Her music sits somewhere between birdsong and the soundtrack to a film noir. Born...

Dan Rankine (aka 'trials') was the only little Aboriginal boy living in his rural Welsh village when he woke up shaking from a nightmare. That's when he and his mother knew they needed to go home to Adelaide. Dan is now...

The former Canberra Raiders player on hiding his fantasy reading habits as a kid in Western Queensland, the joy of doing hard things, and how books brought him back from the brink. Warning: Discussion of suicide. Luke...

For 45 years, George Palmer harboured a secret. He spent every spare moment composing classical music, and then shoving his scores in his bottom drawer. Until one day, almost by pure chance, that music saw the light of...

The Danish-British author, broadcaster and comedian recalls her unusual early life with glee, including how she came to be holding the hand of Neil Armstrong’s assistant at NASA’s headquarters on July 20, 1969. (R)...

<p>Singer Lisa Simone is the only person in the world who can call Nina Simone 'mommy'. Lisa was the beneficiary of Nina's incredible talent and her affection, but she was also at the mercy of her mother's erratic...

<p>The Gen X actor on making peace with her absent father, the ghosts of her Hollywood past and nursing Anthony Kiedis through his drug addiction while she was still a teenager — a relationship she shudders at...

<p>When writer Hannah Kent first visited Iceland in 2003, she came across a gothic true story about Agnes Magnusdottir, the last woman hanged in Iceland. That story would change her life.</p><p>Hannah's arrival to the...

<p>The artist Loribelle Spirovski on her unusual childhood in the Philippines, meeting her father for the first time at 7 years old, and making her way as one of Australia's most exciting young painters.</p><p>Loribelle...

<p>Song propelled Morris Stuart from his early life shepherding sheep in British Guyana to an unlikely love story in London. In his retirement, he found himself shaping a choir of Central Australian Aboriginal women...

<p>When artist Vincent Fantauzzo was a boy he was a street-fighting petty criminal with dyslexia and a blazing talent for drawing. He escaped jail time, and grew up to become one of Australia's most well-known portrait...

<p>It took a catastrophic car accident for the singer and actress to leave a decorated career in architecture and focus on her artistic ambitions, including a tribute show to her friends Sinead O'Connor, and Shane...

<p>The musician reflects on the epic evolution of her singing from practical childhood speech therapy to sacred musical fluency.</p><p>Meg Washington was born in a musical home in Port Moresby, where her parents had met...