Selected Radio Documentaries
Selected Radio Works
Affairs of the Mind
A discomforting story exploring the nature of jealousy and the perimeters of infidelity. In an observational style we follow private investigator Steve Murray through a marital investigation and track his client's transition from doubt to certainty about the end of her marriage. Along the way we examine why Steve Murray himself is drawn to this line of work and what his client is really getting for her money. Dur: 48'00"
Awarded Best New Artist at Third Coast International Audio Awards, 2002
The Audition: Into the Victorian College of the Arts
A story about chasing dreams and ending up somewhere unexpected.
Trace the plight of aspiring musicians as they audition for The Victorian College of the Arts School of Music; a prestigious music performance school in Australia. Competition is fierce and the jangle of nerves is palpable. In cavernous performance spaces behind frenetic hallways where prospective students await their turn to enter closed doors - auditors make decisions that can change the course of somebody’s life.
As applicants share their dreams – auditors and VCA staff, all notable musicians themselves, reflect on the reality of a life of music and the difficult and often confronting realisations they have had to make. Dur: 51'30"
Speaking of Music: Is Music a Universal Language
One person’s language might sound jubli-jubli to another – but when it comes to music do we beat to a common evolutionary drum? Could music be the universal language - linking minds across cultures and ancestral time? And, which came first – music or language? Don your headphones and climb aboard for acoustic adventure. Does music lie at the heart (and brain) of what it means to be human? Dur: 29’28”
Making UP: Eleven Scenes from a Bangkok Hotel
“Some fictions trap us. Comfort us, yes, delude us. Bully us, or others, into shapes and voices. But other fictions free us.”
Dive into the mindscape of a non-fiction writer... holed-up in the liminal world of a shabby international hotel - you find yourself caught like a merman out of water in an existential meditation on sexual and textual identity and the act of making up.
He/She/you? are not alone. The vocal past and voiceless present bleed inwards along the edge of his frame of reference - challenging her insights, threatening to hijack his narrative and dismantling her monocultural comforts and his fiction of heterosexual coherence.
A lush and layered production that dances the fictional divide between essay and documentary forms. Dur: 47’00”
The Trouble with Rick
Rick knew there was something going wrong inside but couldn't work it out. Neither could his doctors. He heard things that other people couldn't.
...the constant thump of my heartbeat - blood gushing through my veins - creaky joints... and even the scrape of my eyelids - Rick
Walking into a noisy restaurant he felt inundated by a barrage of sound – so overwhelming it made him dizzy. Every conversation in the room shouted, the scrape of knives on the bottom of plates made his vision jump and he could hear pots being washed and the hum of the fridge out the back. Three years ago Rick discovered his symptoms were caused by superior canal dehiscence syndrome, a recently diagnosed condition that affects the inner ear.
A radiophonic exploration of how the world spoke to Rick. Dur: 5’00”
Emergency Part 1: 000 Ambulance
Most people have never called 000 for an ambulance. It's difficult to imagine the terror and panic of finding your best friend not breathing and not conscious or your partner having a cardiac arrest. It can be the most crucial time in someone's life and for a short period you are alone and in charge of the situation with nothing to help you but a voice on the end of a telephone.
000 is an intense and confronting program that takes us down the wires and across the airwaves of the Emergency Services Communications network. As we hear 000 call takers trying to calm callers and resuscitate patients over the phone, dispatchers on the other side of the room have already located the nearest ambulance and communicated the job over the radio. Callers are often still on the phone to 000 by the time the paramedics arrive.
The 000 call taker, Les Dougan, guides us through this world and explores its unique perspective on the city of Melbourne and the ceaseless chaos of life. Dur: 24’00”
Emergency Part 2: Toby Guthrie Coils the Spring
Now we wait, coil the spring; prepare to pounce when the buzzer goes off - we may get a job in a minute or we may get a job in five hours, I don't know. - Toby Guthrie
A day in the life portrait of Toby Guthrie, an ambulance paramedic working in Melbourne. The program follows the stops and starts of a regular 12-hour shift on the road. As Toby takes us through his day we explore what drove him to become a paramedic and why he thinks it's the best job in the world. When Toby puts on his paramedic uniform he feels able to do things and be someone he otherwise isn't. The uniform is also a ticket to the world where the other half lives - a confronting place of poignant stories and hard truths that challenge Toby's perspective on his own life and society. Dur: 47’00”
Emergency Part 3 | Trauma
TRAUMA is an observational snapshot of life at the Alfred Hospital's Trauma and Emergency Department in Melbourne, Australia. In a kaleidoscopic style Mark Fitzgerald the Director of Emergency Services, takes us into the heart of his department - a place where life-changing events occur with relentless regularity against a background of routine order. As staff and patients share their experiences of suddenly arriving at the hospital or coming home from it every day, the program explores what place the Big Questions have in an environment equipped to maintain the mechanics of life from one moment to the next. Dur: 28’30”
An Australian in Kabul
Jamie Terzi is a second generation Greek-Australian from Melbourne who works for a large aid organisation in Afghanistan. She is an ex-pat in a country where bomb threats and kidnapping warnings are a part of everyday life - along with having cooks, guards, cleaners and drivers. As a western woman living in an Islamic country, simply working out what to wear is a politically and culturally charged decision. Dur: 47’00”
Birds of a Feather
Two women from suburban Melbourne became radical activists fighting for the rights of battery hens. A story of conflicting roles and identities, the program is a study of passion - that ineffable source of meaning and life-purpose that motivates someone to fight for a cause. Engendered as easily by a personal sense of lack as it is by abundance, passion is seen as something that once roused can have a terrible life-force of its own. Recorded over six years, this intimate portrait explores how Patty and Deb found what it was they were looking for. Dur: 50’00”
Healing Tones: Is Music Therapeutic?
Music undoubtedly makes us feel good. But is it therapeutic? Does it have a place in healing the psychological, even physical, scars of illness? From the intimacy of a neonatal ward to the ravages of cancer treatment, enter the world of three Australian music therapists pushing the boundaries of medicine. Dur: 28’29”
