Trust

With special guest:

• Chris Hammer
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

Sometimes the world of fiction overlaps our day to day life. In speaking with our guest today Chris Hammer we find out that Chris is interested himself in how the characters in his new book Trust will deal with the real life problem of the Covid 19 crisis. As well as Covid there is reference in the book to the 2019/2020 bushfires that swept the nation in unprecedented fury.

One of the greatest charms in reading Chris Hammer’s best-selling books is that there is authenticity. For Australians that means familiarity with the settings on the coast and in rural areas for previous books. In Trust the setting is Sydney but not the postcard Sydney in the shadow of the Opera House and the Sydney Harbour Bridge. This is the real Sydney populated by real people. Overseas readers are also drawn to this picture of the real Australia and Chris is delighted that his work has been translated into other languages so people in other countries can learn about us.

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Breaker Morant

With special guest:

• Peter FitzSimons
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

“Shoot straight you bastards! Don’t make a mess of it.” These are the last words of Breaker Morant as he sat on a chair looking at the firing squad about to kill him.

These words are well known in Australia as one of the few relics from the first time troops from the Australian continent went into the battlefield in the Boer War. But after reading Peter FitzSimons’ new book titled Breaker Morant the inescapable conclusion is that there are a lot of unknowns in the story of the Breaker. Many of the things we thought we knew are actually fictions usually started by the Breaker himself.

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Heroes Next Door

With special guest:

• Samuel Johnson
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

Samuel Johnson is well known to Australian television audiences. He has won the Gold Logie for his performance in the miniseries Molly.

But to others in the Australian community he is the hero who has raised over $10 million for cancer research. In that connection Samuel rode his unicycle around Australia in a fund raising effort and in the process of cycling 15,000 kilometres broke a world record. Clearly this man knows a hero when he sees one.

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Remembrance Day 2020

With special guest:

• Dr Will Davies
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

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

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

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

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Dear Dad

With special guest:

• Samuel Johnson OAM
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

Samuel Johnson gave his contributors only one restriction when he contacted them about writing a letter to their Dad for a book he was editing. Their letters had to start with the words “Dear Dad …”. Faced with this task what would you say? Samuel himself is such a noteworthy character and he is candid about the relationship he had with his own father. Samuel wrote his own contribution as well as editing those from 85 other luminaries.

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