For most kids, tagging along with your dad to Friday beers at his best mate’s place might have been pretty boring – but not if, like Camille Wiseman, your dad’s best mate happened to be a prosthetist with a shed full of arms and legs amid cows, chickens and sheep. “A wonderland of spare human parts,” laughs Camille of her child’s-eye view of Peter Farrand’s workshop on his Broken Head farm.

While her dad was inadvertently imprinting a future in prosthetics, her art-loving mum was nurturing her creative side. Recognising Camille’s natural talent – no doubt inherited from her own mother, an accomplished abstract painter back in her hometown of New Orleans – she enrolled Camille in Sue Holm’s after-school art classes at the Scout Hall.

“Sue was just incredible,” Camille says. “She taught art classes that weren’t just a novelty. Even though we were only primary school kids, there were no colouring sheets or mindless activities – it was very much about understanding how different mediums work.”

While painting remained a constant, Camille’s priorities were more academic. After graduating from Byron High, she moved to Melbourne and completed a Bachelor of Biomedicine with a view to pursuing medicine. But something didn’t feel quite right. “It’s such a competitive and expensive degree, you want to be really sure about it,” she says.

A career as a prosthetist-orthotist (P&O) had always been in the mix – especially after her dad joined the managerial side of Peter’s business years earlier and, ironically, lost two of his own fingers in a circular saw incident at the Broken Head shed. But armed with the clinical experience gained during her biomedicine degree, she knew for certain it was the right fit.

Working at the intersection of healthcare, biomechanics, custom fabrication and rehabilitation, P&Os occupy one of the most multidisciplinary roles in allied health. It was exactly this breadth of practice that appealed to Camille: “It allowed me to still be a clinician working in hospitals and helping people, but I also got to use my hands and make stuff.”

Freshly minted from her two-year Master of Clinical Prosthetics and Orthotics, Camille moved to Wollongong to work for one of the larger clinics in NSW, joining the astonishingly small ranks of just 550 P&Os nationwide. In a country as vast as Australia, that can mean a substantial amount of time on the road servicing sprawling regional catchments.

During her two years in Wollongong, her paintings became increasingly preoccupied with water. “Not just the ocean,” she explains, “but rivers and clouds and the flow of water in every form.” The ‘blue humanities’ – an emerging interdisciplinary field exploring our relationship with water – resonated deeply, and fish began to feature prominently in her work, culminating in her first solo show in late 2024, ‘We Devour the Ocean’.

As well as using fish symbolically, Camille explains she simply likes the way they look. “They’re fun to paint,” she laughs. “You can do anything with them. I love to make up pretend fish. They come in all shapes and sizes, so they’re a very useful artistic element.”

When her partner Marcus was accepted into a program at the University of Trento in Northern Italy as part of his master’s in mechatronics engineering, Camille seized the opportunity to embark on her own European painting sabbatical. Taking 12 months off with the blessing of her employer, the pair arrived in the picturesque alpine city in early 2025.

Setting up a studio in their lounge room, Camille continued her solo practice and sought out atelier-style training – her first formal classes since afternoons at the Scout Hall with Sue. Over the course of the year, she attended three six-week intensives: figure painting in regional France, portrait painting in New York, and fresco painting in Florence.

“I feel like I learned more in those three courses than an entire life of trying to figure it out on my own,” she says. “I think there’s something to be said for being self-taught and working things out yourself, but sometimes it’s really lovely to have somebody point you in the right direction.”

Between intensives, life in Trento was idyllic, with Camille and Marcus becoming engaged, and Camille working on one of her largest and most challenging pieces to date, The Fish and the Caretaker. Rich in symbolism and steeped in the European tradition, the work distills Camille’s time in Italy onto the canvas, documenting her technical evolution in real time.

The work was recognised with two international prizes – coming second in the Emerging Artist Award in the 2025 Beautiful Bizarre Art Prize, and third in the TOSEE Art Competition. Its later inclusion in a group show in Milan brought an extraordinary year abroad to a fittingly wonderful close.

Hitting the ground running, within days of returning to Australia earlier this year, Camille exhibited her overseas work in a group surrealist show in Sydney. Asked if she would categorise herself as a surrealist, Camille reflects, “I would say I’m surreal-leaning – drawing on ideas of dreams, the subconscious, symbolism and allegory. I like work that has some sort of meaning.”

Before the show had even opened, Camille was back in her childhood bedroom in Bangalow and immediately reporting for work in Ballina – to none other than Peter Farrand, who long ago outgrew the shed at Broken Head to build a network of prosthetic clinics that recently merged with Spao Ottobock Care, conveniently encompassing Camille’s former clinic in Wollongong. 

Her dad’s there too – when he’s not somewhere on the road between Brisbane and Nowra helping run the newly expanded network.

Camille continues to put all the technical gains of the last year into practice, working towards her next solo show – albeit with smaller canvases at the moment. Between full-time work, recently becoming an aunty, ducking down to Melbourne to see Marcus as he finishes his degree, and planning their January wedding, life is a bit less Trento-paced for now.

She’s unsure where they’ll settle after Marcus graduates, given his equally niche but less transferable career in mechatronics. But with only one P&O for every 14,000 square kilometres of Australia, Camille’s happy to just go with the flow. Like a fish.

@camillekathryn

Ethereal. Fantastical. Spellbinding. While wandering through the Bangalow home and studio of artist Hilary Herrmann, I feel as though I have stepped into the very same enchanting world that her paintings inhabit. Eclectic artworks decorate the walls; finished canvases line the floors and sit on chairs; books of all kinds spill out of shelves; and paint-stained brushes, palette knives and tins cover the outdoor studio table, ready to be used. It’s as if, turning the corner, one of the whimsical characters Hilary paints might be floating through the lush garden or peacefully mixing paints on the verandah – and I would not be surprised.

With an utterly distinct visual style and an expansive imagination, Hilary uses her brush to build whimsical worlds that transport the viewer into a surreal reality and invite them to dream, play and reflect. I had the pleasure of asking Hilary about her art, creative process and influences as she worked on her latest piece.

How would you describe your artistic style and the meaning behind your work?

I paint narratives of spooky little white figures that float through the sky. I think they are emotional landscapes, where you can enter into the world and bring in your own stories. [My work] is very ephemeral and enigmatic, and I like that other people find their own story within it.

They’re about the everyday. It’s about hope, it’s about trust, and also about the menace that approach our worlds. A lot of my work is just about hope and kindness. We don’t know what’s around any corner, or who we will be, and what will happen to us.

It’s about whatever enters my world. If it’s music or poetry, birds in my bird bath, my dog, a bunch of flowers, reading, from the news… whatever I can appropriate from others, I will take. I think the intimacy of being at home, home life and domesticity is really important. Rituals and routines make us sane. So, it’s about the everyday and finding beauty in it to protect ourselves and feel safe.

Crowns seem to be a motif in your work. Can you explain the significance and symbolism behind this creative choice?

You don’t want to be dismissed as a human. We all need to be appreciated, and I think the gold crowns represent that we’ve all got something to offer and are all a bit special. The crowns represent that we all just need to be part of the world and allowed.

The idea has developed and they don’t feel dressed without a crown now. I think everyone needs a little crown to feel like they exist in the world. We shouldn’t be diminished – we should be part of the world.

Not the show pony, not the most important person in the room, just that people acknowledge us. Just to make us feel a wee bit important. 

Now, even when they don’t need one, I still put it on because they don’t feel dressed without it. 

Where do you find inspiration, and what influences you creatively? 

Everywhere. It’s walking along the road and seeing the colour of a leaf. Every day I walk on the beach, and the horizons remind me of Rothko. I admire that work. This morning the clouds looked like Turner’s paintings – absolutely beautiful. 

I look at art books every day. I am always flicking through and being inspired by so many other people in the world. I just find things that amuse me or disgust me and they become part of the story that I want to communicate to others and myself. 

I really like Clarice Beckett, Idris Murphy, Rembrandt, Cy Twombly, Chagall… there are hundreds of people I’m inspired by – a multitude of people. It’s lovely going into galleries, because I live regionally. When I go to Sydney and Melbourne or to Europe, you see what exists out there. Art is a communication. Either of beauty or of politics, story, or talent. It’s just communication. 

Take us into your creative process. 

There are some people that “grid up” and they’ve got an image of what they want to do from when they begin, and they’ve got the skills to do that. Whereas I don’t have those skills, so I’ve always got to find an aesthetic to make things work on a different level. 

I start with a feeling, a word, or an emotion. As soon as I make the first mark, I have faith in just responding to what happens. I think it’s about just reaching an aesthetic for me at the end. 

This painting that I’m working on now, I really like it at this point. It’s interesting. I don’t know where it’s going but I like the beginning of it…until I don’t! 

So it’s about risk for me. A lot of people don’t have that ability to take risks. You have to let go of stuff to make it work. 

I like the intelligence of paint. I really like that you spend time, and it’s communicating, and you’re working out all the time where it’s going, what to do with it, how to finish it, and when it’s finished. There are just a lot of conversations. 

What has your artistic journey been like? Have you always created art? 

I used to do a lot more cartoons and sort of funny little drawings. The skills had never been there technically, but it has always been something I’ve played with since I was in my 20s, I guess. 

I have always played – even when I worked and wasn’t producing work to put in galleries. I had textas, pencils, paints. But it wasn’t until I was probably 40, when my daughter was at school and I had more time, and I decided if I actually wanted to put my art into the world then I had to actually do it all the time. 

It’s a discipline. You have to do it. You can’t talk about it, you actually have to do it. Things develop because you make mistakes and you learn…hopefully. 

Find Hilary’s work at Ninbella (Bangalow), AK Bellinger Gallery (Inverell), Grainger Gallery (Fyshwick), and OTOMYS (Prahran). @hilaryherrmann 

Dad is local filmmaker Mark Lewis, a 40-year industry veteran who is acclaimed for his witty, off-the-wall documentaries, most famously his 1988 study of cane toads that highlighted the more cuddly qualities of the reviled amphibian.

His daughter is Los Angeles-based Molly Lewis, perhaps the world’s most famous whistler, a winner of international competitions, who has performed alongside musicians from Dr Dre to Jackson Browne, and is a recording artist in her own right. She opened for Beck on his recent American tour, collaborated with Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt on the Barbie soundtrack, whistling Billie Eilish’s What Was I Made For?, and fronts lavish gala dinners for the likes of Hermes, Chanel and Gucci. In 2017, by special request, she whistled Danny Boy and Just a Closer Walk with Thee for Harry Dean Stanton as he lay on his deathbed.

Mark is a member of the judging panel for the festival’s inaugural Green Frame Nature Documentary Award – Australia’s first prize dedicated exclusively to environmentally aware films; Molly will play a more visible part, both onscreen, in the opening night film, Whistle, and in a live demonstration of her spellbinding skills.
Watching, or rather, hearing her perform – evoking the haunting soundtracks in the spaghetti westerns of Ennio Morricone – will alone be worth the price of a ticket.

The presence of the two at the festival was purely coincidental, taking even director Christian Pazzaglia by surprise – and delighting him.

“I’m a big believer in this kind of serendipity,” he says. “I love it when things like this happen. It’s a beautiful thing.”

Mark is a Northern Rivers local of more than 30 years standing, and three-time Emmy winner. Many of his myriad documentary films are about nature: his first, Cane Toads: An Unnatural History, was nominated for a BAFTA Film Award for Best Short Film and was for years one of Australia’s top grossing documentaries. It established his international reputation and ushered in a rich and productive career, but its success has also been something of a burden.

Displaying the irony and understatement that characterises his films, Mark says: “Unfortunately, ‘Cane Toads’ is now my middle name.” He has made many films since then, he reports, but it’s the toads everyone remembers.

Despite his output, he is uncomfortable with the description ‘documentary filmmaker’: “You know, my documentaries are fairly different. Nature films have tended to be very conventional, and mine are not conventional in any respect, including the fact that they’re mostly about the human-animal connection.
A few of them are from the point of view of the animal.”

Cane Toads used cameras that were mostly on the ground, looking up at the human interview subjects, and straight on at the toad, giving the species a lot of respect. Yet, despite supposedly being about cane toads, it is really about people, including plenty who admire and even love the animal; their stories are endearing and at times hilarious.

High-brow commentator Elizabeth Farrelly said the film’s approach revealed a filmmaker who loved Australianness “but could also, without slapstick or condescension, take the piss”.

The opening night film, Whistle, made by Aussie Christopher Nelius, shares the same uniquely Australian flavour, both funny and generous spirited.

Christian says when he saw the film last year he thought it would be perfect for opening night at the Bangalow festival, “because I wanted something uplifting, something light.

“I think we’re all quite stressed out these days, and to be honest, people don’t want to see more of it.
“We want to start on a high note, and to close on one,” (with Gaucho Gaucho, a romantic celebration of the cowboys and girls of the pampas).

Whistle is in the vein of Best in Show, documenting an eccentric group of international whistlers, Molly Lewis among them, as they descend on Hollywood to compete in the Masters of Musical Whistling, the world’s most prestigious whistling competition.

Molly is now perhaps the most successful among them. Mark says proudly of his daughter, “she’s a genre of one. Extraordinarily successful. She’s a professional whistler, and maybe the only one”.

Molly’s ability is all her own, Mark says: “I can’t whistle to save myself, I’ve got two left feet, can’t dance, can’t sing, can’t play any instruments. But she was the opposite.” At a very young age she was astonishing dinner guests with her ability. 

Christian has an idea to have a whistling competition during the festival, and have Bangalow residents whistling for days during and after the event. Naturally, Molly would be the judge: a panel of one. 

The Green Frame Award has been a couple of years in the making, Christian says – and was inspired by the fact that Bangalow has proved “a good home” for environmental and nature films over the festival’s history. 

“And we just wanted to go a step further, not only in terms of showing them or giving a bit of money to a winner, but really as a method of getting more people to make these kind of films. Nature docs, environmental films, are really magical in the way that they empower viewers; they bring you closer to nature and you feel emphatically motivated to do something about these issues. The award gives them a spotlight.” 

Next year he wants to double the impact, with a three-day industry forum, where “filmmakers, producers, philanthropists, government bodies, everyone, can come and help grow the genre” and help put Bangalow on the national map. 

“We’re so lucky around here, that in the hills and on the coast there’s so many amazing filmmakers, photographers, producers that are already producing some of the best work we make in Australia, but there’s no connection. We don’t know they’re there. So this is a way also to bring everything together.” 

One of these amazing artists he also learned about serendipitously, through chatting to a friend who happened to mention his brother was Jono Allen. 

“Jono Allen! who just won the biggest prize in the world for nature photography (the 2026 World Nature Photographer of the Year Gold Prize and Grand Jury Prize). I couldn’t believe it. And he lives in Byron!” Jono is now on the Green Frame jury alongside filmmaker Molly Reynolds (My Name is Gulpilil), long-time Sir David Attenborough collaborator Chadden Hunter, and screen academic Anne Chesher. 

In choosing the five nature films, Christian says he wanted to give a sense of how diverse both nature and the style of making nature documentaries can be. 

As a judge, Mark will be looking closely at how the filmmakers use all the different elements at their disposal: the soundtrack, the music, the direction, the camera work. And, of course, an approach that shuns conventionality. 

bangalowfilmfestival.com.au 

Joan Leeds may have only operated the Bangalow Post Office for a short time, but she left her mark on the village. Known for her risqué banter, quick wit and easy friendliness, she was never one for bland small talk across the counter. Customers queueing to collect packages – large and small – were just as likely to receive a cheeky aside as efficient service.

Now Joan has taken that natural comic instinct and put it to the test, recently completing Mandy Nolan’s Cranky Women comedy course – a workshop designed to help women of a certain age find their voice, shape their stories and say the things they have been ruminating on and raging about for years.

Joan saw a Facebook post looking for “cranky women” interested in comedy. “I wrote back, ‘I’m 69. I’ve got bloody lots to say.’”

And with that, she was in.

The first workshop took place at the Drill Hall Theatre in Mullumbimby. More than a dozen women arrived, most of them strangers, from different backgrounds and different decades of life experience. But they shared a sense that something inside them was ready to be voiced.

“It turned into comedy therapy, to be really honest,” Joan says.

Before anyone worked on punchlines, Mandy’s comedy students were invited to loosen up physically. “We had to do silly dances,” she says. “I have no rhythm at all so you can imagine how well that worked for me.” The laughter began there, awkward and freeing.

Then the mood shifted.

Each woman was asked to stand before the group and speak about the one thing that was truly upsetting or worrying her. That was when the hearts began to crack open and the emotions seeped out. Or in some cases, flooded.

What followed was raw and confronting. Some women spoke about grief, others about illness, family strain or isolation. One confessed she was afraid she would not be able to stop crying – and then proceeded to bawl her eyes out.

“The courage of those women was just incredible. There were so many hugs,” says Joan.

For Joan, who has never been shy of conversation, the exercise was unexpectedly powerful. “It wasn’t what I thought I was signing myself up for,” she says. “But once you make yourself vulnerable like that, you’ve got nothing to lose.”

Only after that emotional clearing, and the shaking off of the rusted-on armour of survival, broken hearts and broken dreams, could the laughter begin.

In smaller groups, each participant shared an embarrassing story, a mortifying anecdote or cringe-worthy gaff. Later, someone else in the group had to retell it on stage – embellishment and poetic licence essential.

“It was hilarious,” Joan says. “The way people could take your story and make it sound like it happened to them. Make something that was already awkward even more unbearable and hysterical.” On stage, humiliation transformed into shared laughter.

Joan’s own story involved a sudden and unfortunate gastrointestinal incident in the freezer aisle of a supermarket. Her improvised escape strategy – involving a reusable shopping bag and a swift exit – became, in the retelling, comedy gold.

Yet the course was not only about confession. It was about craft.

“I didn’t know how to write comedy,” says the naturally funny Joan. “I usually just feed off what’s in front of me. That’s just me. But Mandy taught us about the structure, the set-up. It’s a skill.”

Participants were coached in microphone technique, projection, where to stand and how to use their hands. They learned how to look at an audience without staring down a single person in terror. They workshopped their material one-on-one, refining wording and sharpening jokes.

Joan’s final routine drew heavily on her time at the Post Office, particularly her frustration with customers glued to their smartphones.

“I used to say, ‘I don’t need another app!’ but you bloody do,” she says. “If you want to know where your parcel is, you need the app.”

A cheeky reference to actor Liam Hemsworth and an imagined “big package” at the counter – polished with Nolan’s guidance – added another layer of bawdy humour, very much in keeping with the wit locals remember.

On the night of the final performance, Mandy MCed, warming the room and stepping in between performers to keep the flow of the evening.

“It was a high,” Joan says. “I’m up there doing my thing and people are laughing. I’m like, this is great.”

What moved her most, however, was watching the transformation of the other women.

“There were women with absolutely zero confidence,” she says. “From ‘I can’t stop crying’ to standing up there and making ceiling mould funny. Every one of them landed well. It was bloody brilliant.”

For Joan, the course was cathartic in ways she did not anticipate. It was not just about being cranky. It was about being heard.

At 69, she is not winding down. She is cranking things up. Whether she returns to the stage remains to be seen. Life, as always, is moving – in more ways than one.

Cranky that you missed it?

The next Cranky Women’s Comedy course runs on Sunday 17 May, 9am-3pm at Coorabell Hall with a performance at the hall on Friday 22 May.

The course cost is $150 for the full day, and funds raised at the Comedy Show performance will help support the SHIFT project.

mandynolan.com.au

Header image Cranky Women’s Comedy’s first graduates  Photo Lyn McCarthy – Niche Pictures

When Australian composer, performer and writer Eddie Perfect – the Tony-nominated creator of Broadway’s Beetlejuice the Musical and King Kong – chooses to redevelop a work with a regional company, you take notice. When he then hands that company the keys to premiere the newly reimagined production, you realise you are witnessing something big.

And 19-28 March, BTC will present Vivid White at Brunswick Picture House, a newly imagined work that evolved from an intimate and interactive workshop process with Eddie Perfect himself.

For Bangalow’s Joel Cooper (who plays celebrity architect Evan Prescott and co-produced the development phase) – the journey has been extraordinary.

“It has been incredible on so many levels,” he says. “For the company to be working so intimately and closely with Eddie – someone of his esteem – has just been so amazing.”

The relationship began with BTC’s production of Eddie’s play The Beast, directed by BTC co-founder and fellow Bangalow resident Anouska Gammon. That bold, left-field work struck a chord with Northern Rivers audiences and went on to earn multiple awards and widespread recognition, cementing BTC’s reputation for ambitious, intelligent theatre.

“The Beast really translated well for our local audiences,” Joel says. “They are receiving new theatre in a really open way, and that’s exciting.”

That openness planted a seed.

Eddie first wrote a version of Vivid White for Melbourne Theatre Company in 2017 but had always felt passionate about reworking and revisiting the piece, giving it more time in the creative development space. “The stars aligned when he saw that BTC was performing The Beast and he called Anouska and offered BTC the opportunity to be the vessel of redevelopment of the work.

A small cast assembled for a workshop process that was anything but routine. Eddie arrived with new material, rewrites and songs still taking shape. The work was a living, breathing, pulsing project that fused enthusiasm and experience in an organic and compelling way.

“He was writing songs in the space with us,” Joel says. “The outcome was to complete the show and see some new ideas and new character arcs and how they would land within the context of the work. We were just blown away.”

Importantly, the workshop was not a guarantee of performance rights. “It was never like, let’s workshop this and then you can do it,” Joel explains. “There were still a lot of questions around the show, and the future of the piece remained in Eddie’s hands.”

But the BTC held quiet hopes that they would be entrusted to light up the piece on stage for its debut.

Months later, after Eddie had stepped into the title role of Beetlejuice in Australia, BTC reached out again.

“There was a moment where we, as a theatre company, said ‘We really want to do this. We think we can tackle this,’” Joel says. Anouska spoke to Eddie and “And he said, let’s do it. Let’s take it to season.”

For a volunteer-driven regional company, that trust speaks volumes – and reflects the strength of leadership within BTC. Under Anouska’s direction, the company has consistently embraced challenging, contemporary work while nurturing a deep well of local talent.

“We’re all volunteers pouring our heart and soul into it. To be recognised at that level and for Eddie to trust us in that process was phenomenal,” Joel says.

Even now, the shape of the show is transmuting. Songs have shifted. The ending has been transfigured more than once.

“The piece is alive,” Joel says. “Eddie and Anouska and the creative team are back and forth every week. ‘How did this land? How is this song working?’ We’ve just flipped the ending again and now have this fabulous, hilarious ending song that was never in the iteration of the show.”

For BTC, this process has tapped into a collaborative flow-state fuelled by creative resonance.

“Bangalow Theatre Company has never had to work like this – being so agile and having the writer be such an active part of the whole production timeline.”

The play follows two university friends who have taken vastly different paths: Evan Prescott (played by Joel), now a television celebrity architect, and his former peer, who has wound up working in community housing. The tension erupts at a house auction, and much tension pivots on the extreme collision between renters and buyers – particularly poignant in the midst of a housing crisis.

“It’s very topical,” Joel says. “It leans into the issue of housing and will make people feel uncomfortable – not in a negative way, but in a holding-a-mirror-up-to-society way.”

His character, Evan, walks that fault line.

“Evan has had to succeed in the world as it is, not in the world as it should be,” says Joel quoting a line from the play.

“He’s constantly in turmoil between two worlds,” Joel says. “He’s got the success, the money, the richness, but he’s watching the world he knew crumble away.”

At its heart, Vivid White is a satire about property, ambition and the Australian dream. The title itself references the Dulux paint colour – a nod to renovation culture and aspirational aesthetics that is so synonymous with our postcode.

Like Perfect’s earlier works, the show tackles big ideas through satire and comedy rather than didacticism.

“It’s these big topics all painted in the stroke of satire and comedy,” Joel says. “We hope the audience leaves feeling inspired and challenged, but they’ve also had an absolutely raucous night at the theatre.”

For theatre lovers in the Northern Rivers, this production is more than a season announcement. It is evidence of the calibre of talent working quietly – and now not so quietly – in our region.

To workshop a major musical with a Broadway-calibre Australian artist is rare. To premiere the finished work is extraordinary.

For Bangalow Theatre Company, it is both a milestone and a statement: regional theatre can be fearless, sophisticated and significant.

And for those of us lucky enough to sit in the audience, it promises to be a blindingly good night out.

Sally Schofield

Vivid White

19 – 28 March Brunswick Picture House
brunswickpicturehouse.com
Presented by Bangalow Theatre Company and Brunswick Picture House

The evolution of Pearces Creek Hall into a “must play” venue in recent years is an extraordinary development, a resurrection largely due to the efforts of local resident Simon Winfield. The softly-spokenEnglishman doesn’t stand out as someone who has resolved to “go harder” in life – but that is exactly what he has chosen to do: dedicate himself to turning the tiny heritage hall into a vibrant, and sustainable, cultural hub.

Since 2019, Simon has raised funds, booked performers, MC’d shows and, as café loungers in Bangalow’s high street can testify, posted concert fliers wherever there’s a space.

He’s a ball of calm, can-do energy, committed not only to the hall but also to its natural and social environment. The hall’s presentations come mainly in the form of roots music – folk, country, bluegrass – but it is also building a solid track record as a centre for the dissemination of progressive ideas, everything from regen agriculture to the use of sound as a tool for healing.

An increasing awareness about health and longevity helped to concentrate Simon’s mind further, he says, “because you realise you don’t know what your life expectancy is, right? I’m not saying that negatively; it’s just a reminder that you’re not going to live forever, and a stimulus to live more fully.”

Born in England, Simon lived in Africa and Europe for his first 14 years, then went to boarding school in Britain, followed by a career in finance in London and New York. When he and his wife, Jen, and their three young children travelled the world in 2003 they came across Byron Shire. The memory stayed with them and four years later they came back.

They rented homes in Bexhill, then Clunes and Bangalow before settling in Pearces Creek. The children attended Bangalow PS and Byron High, and both parents got involved – “the usual things, like the P&C, the school canteen stuff,” Simon says.

“What I loved about the schools in this area was that you could get involved; it’s encouraged, and it’s part of your contribution, and a great way to meet people. The volunteer aspect of this country is incredible in whatever form it might take, whether you’re looking after Heritage House or, you know, working on the local paper.”

Volunteering seems part of his DNA: he has also signed up to help at the Writers Festival for the past eight years.

Their Pearces Creek home sits on 30 acres and as the “the house and child person” with a wife busy with full-time studies, Simon was keen to learn about how to best manage the land. “I hadn’t a clue about anything,” he says, so he set about finding out, at numerous field days, agricultural studies at SCU and Wollongbar TAFE and an “absolutely fascinating” trip to (Natural Sequence Farming movement founder) Peter Andrews’ place near Canberra.

Simon credits his commitment to reviving the hall to his interest in land management. He understood that as someone who was “basically an immigrant who’s worked in an office for 25 years” – he couldn’t lean over the fence and say to the third or fifth generation farmer ‘have you thought about doing it this way?’

“So we invited Brian Wehlberg, the holistic management and regenerative ag educator, to the hall to do a talk, and it was very well attended.” Since then, they have hosted 16 talks, with artists, foragers, farmers, nearly all of them connected with the land and environment, attended by about 1000 people altogether.

While his hopes of creating a viable alternative farm have not been realised (“because I haven’t put in the physical labour”) their property has seen a huge increase in biodiversity, and the hall has similarly thrived.

By 2019, the hall was in decline: there was no money in the kitty and the committee was looking for new people and new ideas. Simon felt the community needed a hall and had an obligation to make it viable.

They ran a raffle and raised $3000, applied for government grants, held craft markets and, when a speaker dropped out, invited Immortal Soils’ Bob Horan and Selena Murray to stage one of their large-scale botanical art installations, which opened up the possibilities for the space.

Musical events followed, and the confidence felt by the team of enthusiastic volunteers to stage such acts grew – as did the hall’s reputation among performers as a terrific venue. Musicians, it seems, love to play there: it’s intimate, a haven apart from the busy world. “They also love being welcomed; and so does the audience. They love the food, and having a cup of tea and a piece of homemade cake.”

Above all, it’s a true listening space, where the music is the focus, and the audiences are attentive, appreciative. World-class bluegrass band Midnight Chicken declined the offer of moving the benches out for the second half, so people could dance. “They go, ‘no, we don’t want dancing. We want listening audiences’.”

The hall best suits acoustic acts, with complex harmonies and a close connection with the audience: “We ask all our musicians to play at least one song with no electronic sound, and ideally down off the stage,” Simon says.

At the first gig in 2026, bluegrass quartet Charley Castle and the Boys in the Well did just that, closing their show with a four-part a cappella rendition of Goodnight Irene that had some in the audience reaching for their hankies.

Local musicians are encouraged too. Hootenanny Highway, Will Hearn and Tara-Lee Byrne have recently used the hall for rehearsals, recording and performances.

Honey and Silk play on the first Saturday of this month, and another country duo, Wicker Suite, appear the following weekend – part of a tour in which they’re just playing country halls. Interspersed with the music there is a launch of Ian Kirkland’s book Booyong and Pearces Creek District – Part of the Big Scrub and cellist and sonic alchemist Tara-Lee is returning with her CELLOFINITY – a cello sound bath, where participants lie on the floor to soak up the chakra-healing reverberation of the music.

To an audience member, it feels as if the hall’s growing success is not only due to Simon’s enthusiasm as a promoter but also to his passion for such concepts, and for this kind of music.

“There is a selfish side to it,” he admits. “The musicians I book are a reflection of my tastes. But I don’t want it to be just my taste. And the same with the talks. I want to have a product that people can take somewhere else or use. There’s no point in me doing it if it can’t … if it doesn’t have a life after me.”

Dusk is set in the late 18th century, in the very early days of first settlement in Tasmania. The main protagonists are twins Iris and Floyd, and they are the offspring of a couple of love-struck convicts who have chosen to lead a dangerous life on the run.

The reader meets the twins in their adulthood, where they are living a precarious life of hardship and near starvation. The pair are down in the lowlands when they hear about a bounty being offered for the capture of a puma, which is running amok in the Tasmanian highlands, killing sheep and shepherds alike. The local settlers have put up a hefty bounty to be rid of the menace, but most attempts have been unsuccessful and have resulted in the death of each bounty hunter.

Historically, there doesn’t appear to be any evidence of pumas being introduced into Tasmania but the premise in this book is that they’ve been brought in to deal with other predators of the sheep. Naturally enough, this ill-considered plan fails because pumas like to eat sheep too!

Iris and Floyd are attached at the hip, essentially because of Floyd’s past injuries, which have left him with a lifetime of pain. They are uncertain as to whether they are going to proceed with the search for the puma on account of the danger but, when Iris meets a man called Patrick Lees, their fates are sealed on the journey that they will undertake.

This story is very different to Arnott’s Limberlost. I look forward to reading what Arnott comes up with next – an emerging author worth watching.

He is a two-time winner of The Age Book of the Year, and at the time of writing, Dusk was a co-winner of the $100,000 ARA Historical Novel Prize along with Tasma Walton’s I Am Nannertgarrook.

Presented by the Historical Novel Society Australasia (HNSA) at a ceremony at The Sydney Mint in October, the awards recognise

“the outstanding literary talents of novelists who illuminate stories of the past, providing a window into our present and the future”.

Angelo Loukakis, chair of the adult judging panel, said, “Robbie Arnott boldly builds on the historical fact of white Australia’s destructive exploitation of the land and lifeforms in an earlier time – to imagine and present us with a skilfully narrated, symbolic as well as grounded tale of the role of personal ambition and private gain in this continent’s fate.”

He writes in a solid lyrical manner which is a joy to read. His novels are not action-packed thrillers, but the stories never fail to attract your attention.

4.2 stars on Good Reads

Those country inclinations, including a robust sense of community, are still very much alive in Anouska, but she has lived up to her exotic name, accumulating decades of experience in Australia and overseas as a dancer, singer, writer, choreographer, theatre director and teacher. Ten years ago, she channelled that experience into co-founding the Bangalow Theatre Company (BTC), and becoming its president and artistic director.

Margaret Curtis, BTC’s musical director during those 10 years, says Anouska’s boundless optimism, paired with her creative brilliance, have made her a true dynamo in the Bangalow community. “I continue to be amazed by her remarkable talent for selecting productions that are not only crowd-pleasers but also thought-provoking and deeply relevant,” Margaret says.

The company’s work has become legendary across the region – and beyond – and it now has a momentum that is both exhilarating and exhausting for Anouska and her team of hardworking volunteers. Even before the curtain had fallen on its last hit, the musical Come From Away, BTC was organising the next – Vivid White, which opens in March at the Brunswick Picture House.

A key factor in deciding upon this stage play was its writer, Eddie Perfect. A few years ago, Anouska directed another of his works, The Beast, and its darkly comedic story of several tree-changing couples’ search for an idyllic rural life going horribly wrong “landed beautifully” with local audiences, she says.

Similar digs at the aspirational class are a feature of Vivid White, a satirical musical about property-owning Australians that’s based on a personal experience Perfect had of house hunting in Melbourne. Among its targets are the national obsession with property, real estate pretension, interior designers, and the trend of knocking down beautiful old homes to build something soulless and, invariably, white.

There’s also a deeper undercurrent – about the growing divide between those who own a home and those who rent. It’s dystopian, and features an oversized octopus, one of an army of cephalopods working in conjunction with realtors to take over the world, a world in which renters are ‘disappeared’. “It’s full on,” Anouska says, slightly concerned it may ruffle some feathers in the local gentry. “Like, it really goes there. But it’s comedy; it’s a musical, after all.”

Anouska will direct, a role she has often filled since she and Adrienne Megan Lester founded BTC in 2015. It started with a huge launch party in the A&I Hall and when some guests offered to sign up “we just went, right, ‘what’s our first production?’,” she says, and decided on The Drowsy Chaperone, a witty musical that parodies the genre.

The immediate challenge was to find male actors, including some with tap dancing, roller-skating and singing skills. The niche casting meant auditions were prolonged and the rehearsal schedule unusually brief.

“It was crazy. The whole production was very quick, but it felt alive. I felt I had found the energy and buzz that, moving back here from Sydney, I was kind of missing,” she says.

It filled a deeper personal need too, one instilled by her dad’s lifetime of community volunteering; the drive to be part of something meaningful and inclusive. Watching “40-year-old men with no experience suddenly singing a solo and tap dancing across the stage” brought her real joy.

Her parents were still living on the farm near Kingscliff at the time. It was the best place to grow up, she says, and she wanted a similar upbringing for her kids.

Her own schooling was at Duranbah Public School, where the community ethos was strong. “If someone had a birthday, the whole school would be there.” She started dance classes and piano at about eight, then acting and drama, then singing, “and it just snowballed”.

At Kingscliff High School, her enchantment with performing deepened: she did well in her HSC dance and music exams, and “lent into” choreography from then on. “I absolutely loved it. You couldn’t get me out of the dance studio. Recess, lunchtime, I was there.”

Afterwards she gained a double degree in dance and drama education, and a diploma at Brent Street Performing Arts, then it was agency work and travel overseas to perform. Back home she sang and recorded with a pop group and learned how to make films. “This is like 25 years ago, in Kings Cross,” she says. “Such a fun time.”

Her work with BTC takes up 70% of her work time, and is unpaid. “This is my love job,” she says, though she never imagined that her life would involve so much volunteering.

Her ‘day jobs’ include teaching at several schools, and privately, as well as choreography workshops up and down the coast, and at state festivals, along with running the BANG! Academy of Performing Arts, and much more. It sounds exhausting, and she admits to feeling the fatigue at times.

A “pumping adrenal gland” helps carry her through – and something less corporeal: “I can see the benefits within the community of what I’m trying to do. I do a lot of improvisation in my classes, and just that playfulness, that spontaneity, I find so magical. Seeing people ignite and laugh is kind of magic.”

The optimism Margaret Curtis notes manifests itself as an irrepressible energy, and a deeply rooted belief in the power of the performing arts to help people, especially the young, to be “grounded”, to boost their capacity for critical thinking, and to develop a sense of self.

“Human to human connection, sensing that realness and witnessing it as an audience member or performing, sharing that moment. There’s nothing better.” She radiates a can-do positivity, even when sharing her concerns that BTC’s volunteer team is smaller than it once was, the mean-spiritedness she has faced from arts bureaucrats (and occasionally fellow theatre groups), and the fact that the company has no real home.

The Gammon’s carport is filled with costumes from previous productions, and the BTC board meets monthly around the family’s dining table, so Anouska and husband Will’s three children, aged 20, 17 and 12, have also been heavily involved in the theatre world. The younger two were rehearsing Charlie and the Chocolate Factory at Emmanuel Anglican College in Ballina last month, which Anouska, naturally, was directing. It meant more work but she can’t help herself: “Oh, but that’s just fun; it’s really fun.”

The rewards cannot be measured in material terms.

Anouska recalls a moment when she was watching the various BTC teams on Come From Away fine-tune the production after three or four shows: “Everyone was pretty exhausted but on stage, the director was giving feedback; the musical director was giving notes to the band, who were practising with the cast. And we had the set people fixing up sets, the technicians adjusting the sound and light and cues, the costume people sewing things. I’d never seen anything like it, these highly skilled people, that dynamic, and I sat down and I kind of welled up in tears.”

The feeling that overcame her was one of “worth”, she says.

“Just realising that everyone was there because they love it. It’s not about a monetary transaction. It’s higher than that, even though it’s harder to get there. And this is the thing: the grind, the resourcefulness of that grind and the fatigue behind that grind, is worth it in the end.”

Digby Hildreth

Despite his comparatively late start, once the passion for the instrument was ignited, Malik began to practise with a “ferocious enthusiasm” says his mother, Ambyr, and in a very short time he has come a long way, creating a serious future for himself.

Malik Traki Johnston (or Malik Sofian, his middle name and Insta identity) is not a typical 17-year-old, and his development as a pianist has not been conventional. For a start, growing up, he didn’t have much interest in music, and was even confused about why other kids liked it at all: “I’d see them listening to various genres like metal or rock or rap music, and I just never liked it to any degree. And I thought myself rather strange for that.”

The only music he could relate to was in films, such as ‘The Imperial March’ in Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, “so I guess that was a sign I’m more aligned to dramatic classical music”, he says.

He listens to more music now and has multiple playlists featuring many different genres. Classical is the foundation, then jazz, from early 20th century through to Charlie Parker.

His favourite jazz pianist is Oscar Peterson, for his virtuosity. “He’s incredible. His fingers are just so nimble and he can create a thunderstorm of sound.” That word again.

Another unusual feature of Malik’s development was how his ability to play outstripped his theoretical understanding, as Ambyr explains: “Many gifted kids learn from when they’re two or three or four; they learn to play and learn music at the same time. But Malik became quite advanced in his playing before he ever learned how to read music.”

When Malik met his first teacher, Bangalow’s Linda Armstrong, a little over four years ago, “he didn’t even want to look at the music”, she says. “We were starting from scratch, the very basics.”

But Malik knew what he wanted to play, and he has a “fantastic ear”, she says. “He can listen to the music and then hear if he’s doing it right. He picked it up so quickly. And he has an amazing memory.”

“The hardest piece I’ve ever played, I learned by ear,” Malik says. The piece, Liszt’s ‘La Campanella’, requires an astoundingly brisk allegretto tempo and is famously difficult.

But when he knew that he wanted music to be his life, he caught up with the theory, and in 2023 learnt to read music in nine months; in 2024 he was awarded the Licentiate Diploma of Music Performance (LMus) with honours from St Cecilia – signifying a high level of musical performance, achieved through rigorous practical and theoretical assessments.

Some of this commitment was due to the influence of his second teacher, Mark Hooper, in Brisbane, who insists his students study the sheet music: “What is the music telling you?” he asks them. “That’s the best connection you have to what was in the composer’s mind.”

Malik says: “It’s a privilege to be able to be in a position where you can express the music, absolutely. That makes you a real musician, in a way. As Mark says: ‘An amateur uses the music to express their feelings, and a professional uses their feelings to express the music’.”

To pursue his interest in jazz, Malik studies with Nick Campbell at the Lismore Conservatorium, where he had a scholarship for two years, the first through the Con itself, the second through the Harmony Fund, established by local identity (and music lover) Vicky Brooke.

Along with determination and a phenomenal memory, Malik possesses another distinctive quality, Linda says. “If he loves a piece of music and wants to learn it, he researches it – learns how old the composer was when they wrote it, and if they’d had their heart broken, and so on, and he wants to play with the same feeling the composer had when it was written, which I see as a very adult concept.”

Malik began homeschooling with Ambyr in 2022, after a few unsettled years of high school. He attended several over the years but, as he told The Piano presenter, Amanda Keller, “I did not fit in at school. A lot of people probably thought I was weird, but I see myself as a very shy kid, and self-critical”.

Homeschooling allowed him to prioritise the piano over other studies but he has returned to high school, at Cape Byron Steiner, to do his HSC. He plans on enrolling for a Bachelor of Music Performance next year, ideally in Melbourne, and is looking forward to the cold and the grey: it’s that romantic temperament emerging again – the drama of stormy skies.

But there is another side to this tendency too: “With Liszt, like the other Romantics, there’s the very virtuosic thing, all the drama and the showmanship, which I’ve always loved, and then the contrast – a very delicate, gentle side, which a lot of people maybe didn’t see in him when he was alive. There’s an emotional quality about it, reflective,” he says.

It could almost be a description of himself: with his wild hair and velvet jackets he looks, and plays, like a romantic hero, blowing listeners away with his bravura performances. But behind this is a sensitive and vulnerable young man, someone for whom, as he revealed in The Piano, music signifies hope. Succeeding with the piano has taught him that he can tackle difficulties in other areas of his life, he said.

Malik says The Piano was a great experience, especially meeting other pianists and piano enthusiasts, and it was likely a big confidence booster too, judging by the reception he received: the Beethoven piece is “one of the most deceptively difficult pieces in the repertoire and especially for someone with three-and-a-half years of piano playing”, said international star Andrea Lam.

“Unbelievably impressive”, was Harry Connick Jnr’s verdict of the performance.

The experience also proved cathartic: “Before the piano I was very angry,” he tells Amanda Keller. “Now I can channel my emotions through the music, the good and the bad. The piano is joy, kindness, struggle, hope, strength and despair. You can really tell a story through the music, and make people understand.”

The Brunswick Heads concert was just the latest in a series of successful appearances: At the invitation of White Rabbit Gallery owner Judith Neilson, he performed an hour-long recital at a venue called The Church, in Alexandria, eight pieces altogether.

He also played at the Bangalow Chamber Music Festival, and had lessons with one of the Festival’s stars – the terrifyingly gifted Konstantin Shamray at a piano intensive in Armidale.

“Last year Konstantin played, out of the blue, ‘La Valse’ by Ravel, and almost blew the ceiling off,” Malik recalls. “It was insane. The sound he creates is just like what I said about Oscar Petersen in the thunderstorm. Just like that, but on drugs.

“That is my ultimate mood. I want to replicate that. I want to give my audience that kind of transcendent experience.”

Sonya Voumard

As a young journalist I read In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, a powerfully descriptive telling of the 1959 brutal murders of a farming family in Kansas. The book was regarded by many as the first non-fiction novel, a concept I found fascinating and inspiring. While I now see that In Cold Blood was deeply flawed, it sparked my interest in the idea of long-form literary journalism’s possibilities. This inspiration was further fuelled by the writings of Helen Garner, initially Monkey Grip, which, while fiction, was transparently written based on true events. Exploring and testing the intersection of life-writing and journalism would become and remain my passion and purpose as a writer.

Sonya will talk about her latest book, Tremor, on Saturday afternoon on the Coolamon stage.

Naima Brown

I’ve always found this to be one of the most difficult questions to answer…it’s like choosing a favourite child. I think I’ve been
just as impacted by the books that were read to me as a child (Goodnight Moon, Where the Wild Things Are) as I’ve been by the literature I’ve read as an adult. Ultimately it comes down to a writer’s ability to transport the reader somewhere that changes them emotionally, that leaves a mark. If I had to highlight one author it would be Barbara Kingsolver. I’ve grown up alongside her work. I remember reading Poisonwood Bible as a teenager, and Demon Copperhead just last year in my 40s: to have an author whose work has been a constant presence in my own life, and where I can track her own evolution as a writer, has been deeply inspiring and reassuring.

Naima appears three times during the festival, interviewing other novelists, and also presenting her own latest novel, Mother Tongue.

Kayte Nunn

The book that lives in my memory, resurfacing at regular intervals, is Joyce’s Dubliners. Its interconnected stories and deft characterisation have continued to resonate with me over the years since I first read it. Its exploration of inner lives and social tensions, its circular themes of isolation, paralysis and the desire to escape to a better reality have so much to offer the reader and thinker. But above all, it is Joyce’s purposeful, layered approach to the narrative that resonates with me as a writer. I love that the stories may be interpreted in a multiplicity of ways and remain intriguing decades later.

Kayte will discuss her most recent novel, The Palazzo, on Friday afternoon’s Murder Mysteries session on the Coolamon stage.