 With special guest: Craig Collie… in conversation with Bill Kable The threat of invasion was very real to the Australian people in World War II. Within families decisions were made to kill wives and daughters rather than leave them to be raped and murdered by a ruthless invader. Our guest today is Craig Collie who has explored what was really going on in 1942. What were the leaders of Australia, Great Britain and the USA doing about the threat? How real was the threat from Japan anyway?   Podcast (mp3) 

Dads on the Air

On Our Doorstep

 With special guest: Mike Allsop… in conversation with Bill Kable Mike Allsop was worried that marriage would spell the end of the adventurous life he had been living. He also had experienced a difficult family upbringing himself. So when he met the love of his life he certainly did not rush into that long walk down the aisle. But these days he has the “full disaster” with his wife Wendy and three beautiful children. And there are lessons to be learned from Mike’s progress that we can all appreciate. Podcast (mp3) 

High Adventure

 With special guest: Jeff Apter… in conversation with Bill Kable Malcolm was a younger brother of George Young guitarist and songwriter with The Easybeats. Music was definitely in the family but in such a fickle industry could lightning strike twice after the enormous success of brother George? The Young family story starts in an economically deprived part of Scotland. Then seven of the eight members of the family became Ten Pound Poms and settled in a migrant hostel in Australia. One of the elder children continued to work as a musician in Europe. After years of playing guitar in his bedroom Malcolm joined a band and later agreed to let Angus in, recognising at that early stage the genius of his younger brother. It was his sister who came up with the name for the band and that was never changed. It is arguable that their choice of music style never changed either, always driving rock’n’roll. Podcast (mp3) 

Malcolm Young

 With special guest: Megan De Beyer… in conversation with Bill Kable Something many of us wonder about from time to time is what turns a boy into a man. With the title of Megan de Beyer’s new book being How to Raise a Man there was no hiding from this question and Megan dives straight in. And then there is the most common issue for parents raising young men - how to get more than a grunt in lieu of conversation. In these Covid restricted times as we are forced to spend more time at home this question become even more important. The best approach is to treat this time as a challenge rather than a threat and Megan has lots of suggestions on making this time productive. In brief Megan encourages us to look at ourselves more in this dynamic relationship rather than trying to fix something in our young men. Podcast (mp3) 

How to Raise a Man

 With special guest: Jai Hobbs… in conversation with Bill Kable Covid 19 is just one more hurdle for our young people coming out of school. They already have to face up to serious competition to progress in a chosen career. If they can get through University they face a HECS debt and what about the housing market. Our guest today Jai Hobbs decided to do something practical to help the young people get on top of all that. With his wife Marlies, Jai has written a manual called FLY which stands for financially literate youth. This is what he is striving for. Podcast (mp3) 

 With special guest: Voli K… in conversation with Bill Kable In the program today we speak to Voli K who recently distinguished himself by being a standout performer singing on the TV program The Voice. iTaukei is what the Fijian people call themselves and we have a picture in our minds of what this means. We may think of the Fijian Rugby team or other representative sportsmen who are built like trees and run like gazelles. We also think of their big smiles in black faces saying Bula a thousand times a day. Podcast (mp3) 

From Fiji to The Voice

 With special guest: Corey White… in conversation with Bill Kable Luckily for our guest today he always believed he was special. That belief was severely tested before too long. Corey White grew up knowing that his father was in jail and his mother was a heroin addict. Both parents disappeared from his early life and his life journey was about to become a roller-coaster with no guarantees. Corey is never one to sugar coat his experiences. He had to sell himself to totally unsuitable foster parent candidates in the hope they would take him in. Once in a family he was subjected to cruelty, dysfunction and in once case sexual abuse. At school he was bullied, it was all grim and he wasn’t even 10 years old. Podcast (mp3) 

The Prettiest Horse in the Glue Factory

 With special guest: Fiona McIntosh… in conversation with Bill Kable The beautiful cover of this book gives us a clue. This is a bubbly story thoroughly researched and elegantly told by our guest today Fiona McIntosh. Fiona’s new book The Champagne War takes us to the Champagne region of northern France during the First World War to tell us the story of individuals caught up in the conflict. Fiona tells us how she came to write the book through a chance meeting with a local winemaker in a village of the region. This gave her the inspiration. Podcast (mp3) 

The Champagne War

 With special guests: Ralph & Kathy Kelly… in conversation with Bill Kable There is widespread knowledge of the July 2012 attack on 18 year old Thomas Kelly in 2017. The sorrow felt by the community was compounded by the loss through suicide of Thomas’s brother Stuart four years later. Ralph and Kathy Kelly have experienced the unimaginable but as a measure of the innate qualities of them and their family they have, in the time since, made great strides in reducing the dangers on the streets of Sydney. Podcast (mp3) 

Too Soon, Too Late

 With special guest: Tara June Winch… in conversation with Bill Kable The Yield is a big book that in Paul Kelly’s words “sings up language, history, home, blood – all the important stuff” with its focus being on an area of some 500 acres in western New South Wales. This is a new novel by Indigenous author Tara June Winch that she has been working on for the last fourteen years. It tells of the experiences of the fictional Goondiwindi family based on the real history of Aboriginal people in Australia. The novel is set in Massacre Plains and one of the places is called Poisoned Waterhole Creek. These are real place names. The town in the story is somewhat ironically called Prosperous. Podcast (mp3) 

The Yield

 With special guest: William McInnes… in conversation with Bill Kable Christmas means……what? The answer is not so easy these days with there being so much commercialisation of the season. What we can say is that Christmas raises lots of emotions in all of us including nostalgia, loss, indulgence, funny presents but most of all family and love. Our guest today is the very well-known actor and author William McInnes who takes us into his own Christmases over the years in his new book Christmas Tales. William is able to illustrate those Christmas emotions and reactions during this most significant season in the year with lots of stories mostly funny but with a few that tear at your heart. Podcast (mp3) 

Christmas Tales

 With special guest: General Sir Peter Cosgrove… in conversation with Bill Kable It is a real privilege when we get to speak with Australia’s 26th Governor General. Sir Peter Cosgrove has had several lifetimes it appears as we look at his extensive action packed biography. And it is a measure of the man that not only does he retain an intimate knowledge of all his achievements but that he is so open and candid in looking back on them. Sir Peter’s career included fighting roles in Vietnam. It also included being the primary assistant to some of the most senior positions in the land. He was Aide de Camp for the Chief of Army and also to the Governor General Sir Paul Hasluck. He rose to attain those same positions himself as Chief of Army and later Governor General. Podcast (mp3) 

You Shouldn’t Have Joined ...

 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. Podcast (mp3) 

Trust

 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. Podcast (mp3) 

Breaker Morant

 With special guest: Michael Winnel… in conversation with Bill Kable Most people are surprised when this topic is raised. Is circumcision still being practised in Australia outside strict religious groups? The answer is unfortunately yes. And Medicare will still pay benefits for the procedure unlike for example Great Britain where the National Health stopped subsidising male circumcision in the 1940’s. The percentage of young boys who suffer this mutilation in Australia is down to about 10% but that still adds up to a lot of boys going under a knife with no anaesthetic for dubious reasons. Podcast (mp3) 

Foreskin Revolution

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Dads on the Air

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