Gretchen Miller | Homeground: Recent Episodes
Gretchen Miller | Homeground
Dr Gretchen Miller has been making audio documentaries and explorations of the human relationship with the natural world for over 20 years. This is a retrospective, ranging in location from the Tanami Desert to Cooper Creek, from the dreamscapes of climate anxiety and hope, to the intimacy of relationships with trees, and the way birds speak with us.
Gretchen works with academics and activists, experts and so-called ‘ordinary’ people, finding grace and beauty in their gentle, custodial care, their living, and their passing. She implies, but never bludgeons, the importance of the choices we make and the actions we take as individuals, communities, and democracies.
Gretchen continues to work as a podcast consultant towards communicating the most critical issues of our time: our environmental relationships, and climate crisis. Her doctoral research (UNSW) was in the contribution of podcasting to the field of environmental communication, and the essential elements required for custodial...
Centennial Park, Sydney, is 220 hectares of rolling grasslands, paperbark forests and of course the Grand Drive, which encircles the park. But how many know that Grand Drive was intended to showcase the virtues of the rich for the lower classes to observe and emulate? This history of one of Sydney's most significant recreation areas explores the moral and physical drivers for its development. Built to memorialise the centenary of colonisation, it was intended to uplift the common man with its sweeping vistas and educative plantings. But aside from its ideological purpose, in its 120 years of existence it has also seen its fair share of community battles, plans for Olympics sites, and downright filching – of land, and flora. Guests: Dr Catherine Evans, senior lecturer in Landscape Architecture, Faculty of the Build Environment at UNSW, Dr Paul Ashton Associate professor of Public History at the University of Technology, Sydney, Dr Neil Runcie, Former Professor of Economics at UNSW, Keith Jordan, Former local and secretary of the Save the Parks Campaign,Jean Jordan, Former local resident whose family association with Centennial Park dates back to Federation in 1901, Dr Ian HoskinsNorth Sydney Council Historian.
You never know what’s behind a closed door. What story you’ll find. And in this podcast, the story of an unusual life. Raised a Seventh Day Adventist Tansy Mayhew had to fight against religious upbringing to explore her passion and become a singer. The family home was full of love, but also violence - Tansy's mother had a hair trigger temper and plenty to get cross about, with a disabled son, three daughters, and a peripatetic life. Despite the restrictions of a religion strictly followed by her parents, Tansy moved away from home and upbringing to pursue a life of passion and art. And at the age of 30, with no formal musical education she became the singer she'd always dreamed of being. And then - an unexpected surprise. Tansy's life took a right hand turn when she became a single mother of Chanté who was both profoundly disabled and a vibrant spirit. This is their story.
In memory of Chanté Wambu.
When a long term relationship disintegrates, the former partners lose not just a lifelong friend, a home, or the kids. The sense of loss can erode your sense of identity and make your shared history too hard to bear. Grief packs a powerful punch. This program is the outcome of the Ariadne project—where you, the listener, contributed your short stories and anecdotes about divorce and separation. Heart rending and very moving, but also subtly nuanced and optimistic writing came in from all over the country. Through your fragments and memories—and using the 4,000-year-old mythic relationship of the Greek princess Ariadne and her lover Theseus as our guide—we explores the cycle of love and heartbreak human beings endure...and find it was ever thus. But also, it is possible to recover and return to the land of the living. Credits: Harmless - Cheryl Howard; The Weaver -Charles D’anastasi; To the Farthest Shores of Silence and Antigen - Doug Baird; Night after Night - Kali; The Dog -Masonik; Dirge - Abigail Lewis; No Sunny Greek Isle for Us - Teadear; Liberation - Sue Gillet; Ordovician Option - Keryn Kefous. Written and composed by Gretchen Miller. Guests Judith Maitland, Senior Honorary Research Fellow, Classics and Ancient History, University of Western Australia, Gaye Stockell Psychologist, Frances Quirk Associate Professor, School of Medicine and Dentistry and Department of Psychology, James Cook University, Matthew Bambling Senior lecturer, School of Medicine, University of Queensland, Marguerite Johnson Senior Lecturer (Classics), School of Humanities and Social Sciences, The University of Newcastle. Producer Gretchen Miller Sound Engineer Russell Stapleton.
'The mountain, Iwokrama': A sound portrait of the 360,000 hectares of biologically diverse and pristine Amazonian rainforest in Guyana, South America, managed in a unique way between international bodies and the indigenous Makushi Amerindians.
As Australia gears up for a summer of bush fires, it is not only property which is lost. Lovingly nurtured gardens, and great tracts of our forests, the trees and the birds, insects and animals they house are also consumed, and with the intensity of the fires they’re often burnt beyond regeneration. This program is a meditation on the human connection with trees, and is in part your response to a call out for your stories of trees you’ve loved. We found a multi- branched and leafy passion for trees in the 550 contributions, which came in from all directions all around the country - uploaded to our website, emailed, face-booked and good old fashioned snail mail. The relationship between trees and people goes right back to the forests of the first humans, and our ambivalent relationship with trees can be traced through to the here and now, via fairy tales, mythology, and science, as producer Gretchen Miller, and sound engineer Russell Stapleton found. The program today was written by Gretchen Miller, Jackie Jay, Ian Holland, John Bennett, Tini Cook, GC Smith, Jutta Pryor, Fiona Vaughan and Cameron Semmens. The striking 'war' music at the end of the program is by Michael Atherton from his Ankh cd. And thanks to Maureen Clifford and Jutta Pryor for all their support of trees contributors. more beautiful short stories of tree connections here: https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/earshot/features/trees/
The Siamese rosewood tree is now so valuable that two small pieces carried in a rucksack are worth $500. This kind of money means that armed criminal gangs up to a hundred strong have stripped the forests of Thailand bare of the rosewood. It has been dug out of the central reservations of roads, from temple courtyards and school playgrounds. Nearly all of it is destined for the Chinese rosewood ‘hongmu’ furniture market. There has been a middle-class craze for this traditional furniture since 2008 when centuries-old temples were restored in Beijing, using rosewood, for the Olympic Games. This is the story of what happens when the market concentrates on a single species and wipes it out in nine years; and of what happens to the local people who simply happen to live in the places that this tree used to grow.
Sea turtles are extraordinary. They can live up to 100 years, and Australia has six of the world's seven species. In their current form they have been around for over 120 million years, and are therefore perfectly adapted to their environment. But in Australia, that environment is changing quickly, and sea turtles are under threat. Not just by man-made impacts, including indiscriminate fishing practices, marine rubbish, boat traffic and land development, but by climate change too. Their feeding grounds on sea grass beds are also vitally affected by the increasing numbers of cyclones and big weather visiting the north of the country. But each year turtles ‘in recovery’ are the star attraction as turtle rescue volunteers, managers of turtle hospitals, university researchers and turtles in recovery meet in far north Queensland to share what they know. Producer Gretchen Miller joined turtles and volunteers alike and tried not to get bitten by the turtle love bug.
Gardens, flowers and the creative process—today we explore all three as we meet flower painter Christine Johnson, and follow the threads of inspiration leading to a new art exhibition entirely of Australian native flowers. Christine's work over the past decades has focussed on gardens and flowers—most recently massive oil paintings that blow up the size of the flower to fill the picture frame. Until recently one of her primary sources has been her childhood garden, filled with exotics - roses, camellias, and the like. But when she moved to Melbourne's Lower Plenty region, Christine moved closer to the bush, and was there to witness the profound effect of the 2009 bushfires on the native plants. Since then, smaller, less showy flowers have caught her gaze and also her intellectual curiosity—and today we explore the artist's various inspirations, whose tendrils curl all the way from French emperor Napoleon and his botany-mad wife Josephine, to the Australian landscape artists Hans Heysen and Arthur Streeton.
Two hundred and fifty kilometres north-west as the crow flies of the mining township of Mount Isa, on the border of the Northern Territory and Queensland, undulates the cool, green-tinged waters of the Lawn Hill Creek.2 Spring fed, and with 200 kilometres of savannah country to traverse before it reaches the mangroves of the Culf of Carpentaria, it forms an oasis on the edge of the sandstone Constance Range. There are thousands of square kilometres of impassable limestone country to the west, and the wide expanses of the black soil plains of the Gulf savannah to the east. This is where the Frenchman, Albert De L'estang built a botanic garden, communicating with botanists all over the world. But he had a secret. In fact, he had more than one.
This project formed part of my Master of Arts thesis from UTS, in 1999.
Two lovers stroll between pubs and meander down suburban city streets, dreaming of people and parties and of leaving it all behind and heading bush. One night their feet take them harbourside and what happens next changes their dreams for good.
Sydney Harbour is renowned the world over as a stunningly beautiful waterway. Its intricate and intimate coves, deep inlets and tiny beaches, headlands and islands are still lushly vegetated. Its period of industrial use was relatively short-lived, and industrial sites are now being reclaimed as reserves, or for residential development.
In this program we take five icons as a means to explore the Harbour's history as living, breathing entity, a waterway that people have always been closely engaged with.
Our five icons are: The Aboriginal whale rock carving at Balls Head. An untitled watercolour by Joseph Lycett from his Views in Australia book. Lavender Bay Henry Lawson's poem 'Sacrifice at Balls Head' *Blues Point Tower, designed by Harry Seidler.
A four part series for BBC World Service and ABC RN.
It’s Saturday morning in Pontianak in West Kalimantan in Indonesia, at a songbird competition. In every district across Indonesia you’ll find these, large and small. Here, there are sixty cages hung up above head height under the corrugated metal ceiling of an open-sided building.
It's hot here, right on the equator, and over a 100 young men are cheering and shouting, focused, on their birds, and on winning. It sounds like a boxing match with added birds singing at the tops of their voices.
This passion for birdsong has swept the country since it was encouraged in the 1970s by a government keen to build a new leisure activity for Indonesians. No one could have predicted how out of hand it could get. What was once a solitary and poetic pastime, having a songbird in your house or garden, has become an industry in which real money can be made by training a winning bird.
It’s known here as chirping mania and is one of the biggest threats to Indonesia’s forests which have gradually fallen silent as millions of birds every year are trapped and sold illegally. Can the forest survive without birds?
Guests:
Novia Sagita and Adam Miller, co-directors at Planet Indonesia Jonathan Beilby, Ade Imansyah, and Arfah Nasution, working at Cikananga Conservation Breeding Centre
My very first freelance piece, is a short take - 3 minutes long, part of the Earshot series commissioned by my (now) dear friend, Russell Stapleton (sound engineer extraordinaire). 1997, I think? When I was in my 20s, as I recall, I saw a car parked half way down the cliffs at Bronte beach. I can't tell the difference now between the memory I had and the story I told about it.
How I loved working with the sounds of the world then, and now. But then, it was all fresh. I still love this piece.
This piece was first written for performance at the Studio Theatre, Sydney Opera House, as part of a series of stories around the theme of dancing, called In Four Four. The series was produced and composed by me, and included writers Barbara Blackman and Brian Castro. This is my take on the theme, Undone is a contemporary take on the Greek myth which explains the creation of the seasons through the story of Persephone, daughter of the Earth Goddess, Demeter, who was kidnapped by Hades, King of the Underworld.
Demeter's grief at the loss of her daughter turns the earth barren and people begin to starve. Eventually Zeus intervenes and orders Persephone's return to Demeter - if she has not eaten since her descent into Hades. But Persephone has eaten - three pomegranate seeds - so a compromise is reached, where the girl is shared between the two gods. Hence, spring is when Demeter prepares for Persephone's return, summer is her time on the surface, autumn as she prepares to go back to Hades, and winter, for her time below. But how does Persephone feel about this transaction? In this contemporary telling, Persephone is coming of age, despite her mother's attempt to keep her in childhood. Persephone loves to dance, when her mother thinks she is sleeping. She dreams up a lover who carries her away, to the nightclub world of Undone, where the sensuality of movement is not out of place.
Written, composed and produced by: Gretchen Miller Sound engineers: Phillip Ulman, Russell Stapleton, Angus Kingston. Music performed and improvised by: Sandy Evans (saxophones), Alister Spence (piano), Brett Hirst (double bass) and Phillip South (percussion) Thanks to the Australia Council New Media Arts Fund and the Sydney Opera House for funding the development and performance of the original live production at the Opera House Studio.
This is the second and final part of our history of the culture of water, using the path of Coopers Creek from the headwaters of the Thomson to its end at Lake Eyre, as our route through a watery obsession. Last week we looked at the mythology of the inland sea, the predilections of the explorers and we took a trip down the Cooper itself, meeting some of the pastoralists there. We finished with the birth of a new industry - hydro engineering, and the enthusiasm of 19th century artists and writers for altering river flow.
The deserts, however, remained deserts. In today's program we'll see how Australians attempted to use water to transform them into productive environments, for food and for settlement, and how we employed moral arguments to make water a political tool.
Alfred Deakin, the Chaffey Brothers, Ion Idriess and JC Bradfield all had grand schemes for making the deserts bloom - and in its own way, the cotton industry that's burgeoned since the 1960s has tried to do the same thing. So join us for another trip down Coopers Creek, following the combined history of rivers and irrigation.
This short story explores one of those life moments when just a few seconds in time catapults you into another space entirely.
Steve lives on his own in the suburbs. Though often surrounded by people, he is always on the outer. When he returns home from work late at night he finds himself helping another loner in a way he would never have expected.
'Steve' is part of the City Nights project. Written by Gretchen Miller. Electric bass written and performed by Dave Harding
We're winding our way today along two kinds of river: the real river and its environment and people, the Daly River in the Northern Territory; and the imagined or remembered river as contributed by ABC RN listeners to the (now defunct) citizen storytelling site, Pool. Rich and full-flowing, the Daly River has for over a century been a kind of fantasy river for the visionaries of the south, as a potential food bowl for the nation. But as we discover, the Daly is not for damming. Nor is it much for irrigating or clearing, and contemporary policy is ensuring this river will remain pristine for generations to come. And alongside our exploration of the Daly we hear your stories, of rivers lost and rivers remembered, reminding us of other less healthy waterways. Guests Biddy Lindsay Yingguny Malak Malak traditional owner whose country is around the Daly River Crossing area. Mark Kennard Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, Australian Rivers Institute, Griffith University Harold Sinclair Daly River resident Gary Higgins CLP candidate, Gary also runs the Mango Farm at Daly River Crossing Stuart Blanche Coordinator of the Environment Centre of the Northern Territory Chris Makepeace CEO Amateur Fisherman's Association, Northern Territory (AFANT) Rob Lindsay Co-ordinator of the Malak Malak land management group. Joye Maddison Co-ordinator for the Wangamaty (Lower Daly) Landcare Group Brad Pusey Senior Research Fellow, Australian Rivers Institute, Griffith University Peter Kyne Fish ecologist, Charles Darwin University
Gretchen Miller happened on an old and musty book in the ABC library several years ago, and so began a long fascination to discover Ion L. Idriess. When Ion L. Idriess rose to the challenge of his mining mates at Lightning Ridge and submitted an article to the Bulletin magazine in 1910, no-one knew his playful paragraphs about life on the opal fields would spark off a career as one of Australia's best-selling penmen of Australiana and 'derring do'. Indeed, today's writers would salivate at the three million copies of over 50-odd titles that he sold. But you're either a great fan - or you've never heard of Idriess. Tim recalls the interview: 'He was a little man, wearing a knitted woollen beanie. It was winter. Young men were jumping off the cliff nearby (was it Collaroy? Northern Beaches anyway) with those para-glider wings, and soaring with the updraft. He said with some passion: "Did you see them flying? Gee I'd love to be able to do that!"' Producer Gretchen Miller Technical production Russell Stapleton, John Jacobs. Guests Ion L. Idriess, writer Beverley Eley, biographer Readings Rhys Muldoon, Sharona Coutts Original music composed by Gretchen Miller Performers Dave Ellis - double bass Jay Miller - double bass Mitch Grainger - harmonica
It was with this dreamscape I entered the ABC, as artist in residence at the Audio Arts unit. I had six, blissful months to create an audio arts piece - writing, recording, composing. Inland is in four, elementally themed parts. In 2000 it was performed live at the Studio Theatre, The Sydney Opera House.
Inland, is a dream of place in four sections. Immersion tells the story of the stowaway convict, who dreams of piping water through a mountain range, Flight tells of a woman whose fantasies of flight are also dreams of death, in Stonean alcoholic opal miner finds unexpected love underground, and Heat is situated at the Maralinga bomb site, whose beauty can be found in the naming of each of its artefacts. Inland was created during an ABC Australia Council New Media Arts residency in 1999. During the residency Gretchen made several recording trips to Lightening Ridge, through the tunnels of the Snowy Mountains Hydro Electric Scheme, and flying in a glider, using contact microphones to make uncommon recordings not often heard on the radio. She also revisited recordings from previous trips to the Birdsville track, the Gulf of Carpenteria and the Coongie lakes in Corner Country. Inland features the voices of Aboriginal elder and Maralinga witness the late Yami Lester, pilot the late Nancy Bird Walton, opal dealer the late Greg Sherman and aviatrix Sally McCosker. Readings are by Sherre Delys, Virginia Baxter, Yves Stenning and Gretchen Miller, and the music featured is by Daryl Pratt on percussion, Peter Jenkins on clarinets and Dave Ellis on double bass.
This program contains the voices of Aboriginal people now deceased.
This residency project was assisted by the Australia Council.
The first of two programs that explore the cultural history of rivers and irrigation in Australia. Rivers, irrigation, farming and the environment have not had an easy relationship for much of the period of European settlement. From the myth of the Inland Sea to the highly scientific approach to large-scale irrigation, rivers have offered the answer to our dreams of prosperity and development. But what rivers we have. Often dry, sometimes flooding extensively, they defy European desire for order and regularity. Since settlement Australians have wanted to alter not just the course of rivers but in so doing, fight against the very climate itself. There is one last major 'wild', river in eastern Australia, and it is named not a river but a creek. The 1,300 kilometres of the lazily winding Coopers Creek starts with the Thomson River up near Hughenden in North Western Queensland, and ends at Lake Eyre in South Australia. Aboriginal Australians used it as a livelihood and trading route. And it was where the explorers Burke and Wills starved to death amongst its bountiful plenty, and where the cattle kings lived out their dreams on the backs of the fattest cattle in the world. The Cooper flows through lands so flat that if not the Creek itself, its mate, the Strezlecki, will flow backwards. Like all the rivers that flow to Lake Eyre, the Cooper does not take a particular path but moves crabways across the land according to the amount of water it holds. The Cooper is also significant because it is the last river not to have its flow heavily modified by water harvesting or irrigation. So it is along the Cooper, with its myths and histories, old and new that we meander in these two programs, exploring the hold water has on our bodies and our souls.
On Into the Music today we’re taking as our starting point a time of day—twilight. As day turns to night our thoughts turn to the larger issues than our daily lives. We hear the news and think about global conflict, about the quickly changing environment, about individual violences that beggar belief. Earlier this year the second Dark music festival in Hobart, also celebrated those liminal, in-between planetary shifts—particularly the solstice, when the Earth turns around on itself and begins the transition from winter to summer, from long nights to long days. The festival drew large crowds to Australia’s southernmost point, to take in a winter feast each night, with performances at midnight and dance parties til dawn. Inspired by the themes, Gretchen Miller talks with some of the performers in the festival—Diamanda Galas and Nick Tsiavos—on death and mourning. She speaks to academic Andrew Shenton about the soaring music of the world's most popular contemporary classical composer, Arvo Pärt, and she also speaks to composer and sound artist Annea Lockwood whose recordings of rivers document an ever changing environment, and immerse us in sound. We’ll hear compositions in music and in environmental sound, which help us meditate on things beyond the mundane, and connect us to the fate of the planet, and humankind.
In the early 1700s the Dutch ship Concordia was wrecked off the Western Australian coast. For more than a century, the rumour has circulated that survivors of the wreck of the Concordia made their way overland through the desert and established a settlement, probably in Palm Valley, near what is now known as Hermansburg in Central Australia. As the story has it, eighty men and ten women found their way into the valley, and the community finally grew to some 300. The colony's existence was 'documented' in two newspaper reports published in England in the early 1830s, and there were other articles, including a paper in a Dutch scientific journal; and yet no hard evidence for the existence of the colony has ever been found. Despite the lack of physical evidence, a small number of academics and explorers - including Les Hiddens of 'Bush Tucker Man' fame - are determined to prove the colony existed. 'Scratch' is not simply the investigation of a historical myth, but is also an exploration of the desire that sustains belief in the existence of the lost colony in the face of all the arguments to the contrary. What keeps an idea alive in the minds of the believers? What is the distinction between belief and evidence? 'Scratch' is a mix of real-life interviews and poetic speculation. Writer, producer, composer: Gretchen Miller. Sound engineer: Russell Stapleton
The country of the two dogs is traditionally known as Paruku, and it lies on the edge of the Tanami Desert, in Western Australia. In the tracks of the two dogs takes us, with writer and artist, Kim Mahood, to Paruku, to explore the powerful history and post-settlement stories of the lake, and the families who care for it.
The legends of the isolated NSW gold mining settlement, Hill End, loom large. 370,000 ounces were found in a quarter mile area, over two short years. Hill End is unique for the records which remain of its gold hey day. Hundreds of photographs by Beaufoy Merlin document the rush of the 1870s, while the town itself has a number of well restored buildings remaining. But while the gold rushes capture the popular imagination, what of the community which has lasted 150 years through tough times and good? This program also looks beyond the gold history, at the families who stayed, generation after generation, and still call the village home.
The community is abuzz. A new song has been received by the elder, Marjorie Bilbil, and everyone's talking about it. The ghost of a much beloved didjeridu player gave it to her in a dream, just a few days ago. It's the first new song for Cox Peninsula community Belyuen in several years. Rare for a woman to receive a song, rare for her to sing it, I sit on the dusty concrete veranda at her camp, and she performs for my microphone. The Ghost Songs is about a revolutionary new approach to the collection of traditional Aboriginal music.
The digital and the spiritual are the two systems of transmission here, travelling side by side. The electronic way ensures the passing on of songs to those not yet born, songs that might otherwise disappear with their singers – from digital recorder and microphone they go to remote community hard-drives and are copied onto cd, onto an mp3 player on a piece of string around an old lady's neck, onto cassette. It's all part of the National Recording Project. The days of anthropologists taking recordings away to Canberra, where they might as well be lost to the community forever, are now gone.
But of course there's a much older way of passing music down... deeply spiritual, seemingly ephemeral yet powerfully enduring – the giving of songs by ghosts, through dreams, to the living people. It's no coincidence that in Belyuen the word used for a recording is the same as the word used for a song-giving spirit. Maruy.
In July this year, Radio Eye producer Gretchen Miller visited two small Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory. They're linked by their music, culture, history, and by their country around the Daly River.
Gretchen joined musicologists Allan Marrett and Linda Barwick at Wadeye, or Port Keats as it's locally known, about 200 km southwest of Darwin. Sometimes heard about on the news in the context of gang riots and unrest, Wadeye in this program is a very different community which, together with Belyuen on the Cox Peninsula, is focusing on a special music project. The National Recording Project is organic in origin, made up of many smaller research programs, each capturing thousands of traditional indigenous songs as they're being composed and performed, each with detailed notes on who performed, what it was about, and more. The project is modestly revolutionary in the history of ethnomusicology, anthropology. What's different here is that performers, and language experts from the communities, are recognised as co-researchers alongside the university based musicologists, linguists and anthropologists. Instead of the music being recorded onto tapes and taken away to vast archives in the southern cities, it's recorded digitally and is stored on solar powered local computers in remote communities. New music, as well as the old recordings made by Strehlow, Stanner, Elkin, are being given back and passed around to families and relatives of the song men. Already music thought gone for good is being revived in the communities and there is tremendous potential to support and maintain and enhance a living practice. And through the story of Marjorie Bilbil's new song, we get an intimate insight into the vital role of music for one particular family.
My very first long form feature. 1997!
Take a trip over the Great Divide into the heart of Australia.
Written, composed and produced by Gretchen Miller.
In December, as this intense summer got into full swing, most of the country dried out. Drought held tight in western Queensland, Perth swooned through a series of record breaking heatwaves, and then the south-east and west caught fire with powerful implications for human life, livestock, native animals, plants, and our landscape.
In the Hot Summer Land project RN Earshot and ABC Open teamed up to ask our audience—you—to paint us a word picture of how your landscape changed over the three months of summer.
You posted over 200 evocative stories from around the country. Some of these were chosen to be part of a three part series, tracking the impact of summer as we lived it. In part two we use some of these stories to show how fire attacked the southern part of the country, and how the bush and the community responded.
Stories in this program are from: David Barton - First fire of the season, Polly Musgrove - October garden. Guests: Captain Steve Warrington, Deputy Chief Officer of the Victorian Country Fire Authority; Professor David Lindenmayer, Professor, The Fenner School of Environment and Society, Australian National University Dr Andrew Watkins Supervisor, Climate Prediction Services at the Bureau of Meteorology, Captain Leigh Pilkington Deputy Group Captain for the Gosford district of the NSW Fire Brigade, Professor David Bowman Professor of Environmental Change, at the University of Tasmania.
Nobody knows just how many dogs there are in Newtown, a small, high density, inner city suburb of Sydney. But there are a lot - around one thousand dogs are registered by the two local councils, and after that, it's anyone's guess many more are living untagged and unrestrained.
Street Stories goes walkies on a dog day afternoon, where pooch is absolutely everybody's best friend and dog tales are both tall and true. (Another early one: 2003)
Intense fires, drought, rain in unexpected places, and temperature records smashed—this El Niño summer in Australia both lived up to expectations, and surpassed them. In the Hot Summer Land project RN Earshot and ABC Open teamed up to ask our audience—you—to paint us a word picture of how your landscape changed over the three months of summer. You posted over 200 evocative stories from around the country. Some of these were chosen to be part of a three part series, tracking the impact of summer as we lived it. In part one of our series, Hot Summer Land, we travel back in time to the beginning of the season, and hear your stories of fear and anticipation at the start of the antipodean El Niño.
Stories in this program are from:
Natalie Lincoln - Anticipation Polly Musgrove - October garden Mary Mageau - From our back verandah Viki Cramer - No change coming
In December, as this intense summer got into full swing, most of the country dried out. Drought held tight in western Queensland, Perth swooned through a series of record breaking heatwaves, and then the south-east and west caught fire with powerful implications for human life, livestock, native animals, plants, and our landscape.
In the Hot Summer Land project RN Earshot and ABC Open teamed up to ask our audience—you—to paint us a word picture of how your landscape changed over the three months of summer.
You posted over 200 evocative stories from around the country. Some of these were chosen to be part of a three part series, tracking the impact of summer as we lived it.
In part two we use some of these stories to show how fire attacked the southern part of the country, and how the bush and the community responded.
Stories in this program are from:
David Barton - First fire of the season
Polly Musgrove - October garden
Guests Captain Steve Warrington Deputy Chief Officer of the Victorian Country Fire Authority
Professor David Lindenmayer Professor, The Fenner School of Environment and Society, Australian National University
Dr Andrew Watkins Supervisor, Climate Prediction Services at the Bureau of Meteorology
Captain Leigh Pilkington Deputy Group Captain for the Gosford district of the NSW Fire Brigade.
Professor David Bowman Professor of Environmental Change, at the University of Tasmania
In the final program of the series, we use the infamous Australian heat as a shimmering prism through which to view our culture. From the fire songs of the western desert Arrernte people to the forest fires that cleared the coastal landscape; from first settlement fears of emasculating heat to a celebration of the invigorating and virile warmth appropriate to the incubation of a new nation; heat has played a vital role in the creation of the Australian psyche.
A series in four parts:
In this second program, scientists – and artists – discover the desert as a place worth studying and exploring, in and of itself. When did the desert change from being considered a place of little aesthetic value, to a place that spoke volumes to artists and writers? The two world wars triggered both creative Australians and scientists to want to find out more. We also hear from a fascinating collection of desert-dwellers about the unique experiences and histories that shaped their lives in the centre of the continent over the past 80 years.
A four part series.
This first program in the series takes us from the changing deserts of deep time and their human inhabitants, through Aboriginal relationships with landscape, to the first days of the cattle kings. Along this timeline we also explore the powerful effect of the Judeo-Christian tradition in formulating western approaches to the landscape. On the one hand, there was a drive to develop the harsh landscape, as not to do so would be against God; on the other, there was a deep spiritual ambivalence about the desert – as a place of trial and punishment, but also healing and redemption. We also see the practical parallels and confluences between westerners and Indigenous desert-dwellers as they work out ways to negotiate the management of land, water and spirituality.
The sound of the digeridu, or Yidaki as its known in North East Arnhemland, has been adopted as a symbolic part of Australian culture. This Encounter travels from Darwin to North East Arnhem Land to attend the 10th Garma Festival of Traditional Culture.
The Presbyterian Australian Inland Mission played a significant role in the nation building that went on at the turn of the 20th century. An ambitious health, communication and support network for remote desert dwelling Australians, it was deliberately non-evangelical. Founded by the Right Reverend John Flynn, the AIM gave birth to the Royal Flying Doctor Service and the School of the Air. The Flying Doctors are 80 years old this year, and the AIM is now 96, and a $30 million operation, albeit with a name change; the Uniting Church in Australia's Frontier Services.
Made for Encounter, on ABC RN.
Australia's bird populations are under threat, as even such iconic and common birds as the Kookaburra are diminishing in numbers. The Birdland project (2014) asked Radio National listeners to tell us what birds really mean to them. Responses ranged from audio to text, and images. The best contributions are a part of and have informed the direction of the radio documentary. The result is a special exploration of what birds mean to Australians... and how we'd feel if they were gone. As well as the radio broadcast, Birdland also became a slideshow, at Federation Square, Melbourne. Music on the show by Gretchen Miller, Russell Stapleton, Boyd, Stephen Adams, Bree Van Reyk, Alex Anderson, Rose Lang, Sean Scott, Al Kash, Terry Plunkett and Ashley Holmes. Poems and writing by Anne M Carson, Catherine Evans, Judy Fander, Maya Ward, Willow, Marian Waller, Carolyn Leach Paholski, Rebecca Newman, Belinda Hansen and Barbara Henery. Guests: Jane Ulman,Broadcaster and sound recordist,Turner, Birds Australia volunteer, Ian Patterson, coordinator, Birds Australia Capertee Valley replanting project, Michael Shiels, Supervisor at the Australian fauna precinct at Taronga Zoo. Dr Joan Bentrupperbaumer, Lecturer, School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, James Cook University, Alison Clouston, Visual artist, Boyd, composer and performer. Sound engineer Russell Stapleton.
The Australian Landcape series is in four parts. In Big Sky stories we take an aerial journey and find that the sky provides a rich palate through which to explore our history. We move from the Indigenous dreaming beings that roamed freely between heaven and earth to the radio waves and satellites that invisibly bring us the communication technologies we depend on today. Post-settlement, we find that it's war that has driven much of the history of Australia's sky. We flit from the first woman pilot, Nancy Bird Walton, and the activities of women pilots during World War II, to photographer Frank Hurley, whose first photographs were taken from the cockpit of a World War I fighter. We hear how military technology influenced the development of the Royal Flying Doctor Service and our ability to predict the coming of cyclones. We also explore how artists and writers have documented the Australian skies.
The joy of playing with a pre-school child is the joy of make-believe. A teacup becomes a telephone; a rocking horse morphs into a dragon; the table and chairs construct a castle. 'How?' 'Why?' and 'What?' are the child's most frequent questions and their imagination is often the place where they find the answers. But does the young imagination play a more substantial role in a child's cognitive development? Does it give us tools for real world analysis well into adulthood? On All in the Mind this week Gretchen Miller explores the power of imaginative little minds.
It’s a small, solitary, nocturnal, armour-plated, ant- eating mammal.
It’s the most trafficked animal on earth. It’s highly prized for it’s poor-quality meat, which will cost you $350US a kilo in a Hanoi restaurant, and the powdered residue of it’s roasted scales (that armour plating.) Why?
Pangolin are sold (always illegally) by weight. Their perfect protection against all predators except man is to curl up in a tight impenetrable ball. Lions and tigers simply cannot prise them open. A man just picks them up and carries them off in a plastic bag. Then water is injected beneath the scales, and a mixture of water and cornstarch or stones is force-fed into their stomachs. Having increased their value by as much as a third, bloated and dying, they are transported by the ton and sold alive both locally and to the huge market in China.
We talk to the people rescuing and trying to heal injured pangolin before releasing them (secretly) back into the wild; to traditional medical practitioners, vets and villagers. And we ask why does it matter if the pangolin becomes extinct, as it surely will, in Asia.
Guests: Thai Ngyuen, director, Save Vietnam's Wildlife; Maddie Rusman, technical advisor, Save Vietnam's Wildlife; Lan Ho, communications officer, Save Vietnam's Wildlife; Din Van Than, keeper, Cuc Phuong National Park; Madelon Willemson, director TRAFFIC, Vietnam; Qui Duc, journalist.
Produced with Neil Trevithick. Sound Engineer: Judy Rapley
September 2017.
Passion, despair, violence, romance, mystery, revelation — as twilight falls in the city our emotions and our imaginations are heightened. Powerful unseen currents run through the city — your city, a distant city, an imagined city. We're swept along into the crucible and what happens next holds our memories captive.
The City at night is an evocative, mythic, magical place. A perfect place to make true tales tall–and tall tales true. When we called for your stories, your poetry, your images, your sounds for the City Nights project, we had no idea of the complexity – and the simplicity – and the sheer generosity of the uploads we would receive. The City Nights project on Pool and 360 was devised and produced by Gretchen Miller.
Texts adaptation, music composition, sound design, slideshow design - Gretchen Miller. Sound and vision engineering - Russell Stapleton. Music recording - Phil McKellar. Additional recordings - Judy Rapley. Stories include: Creatures of the Night by Alison Gibson. Street of the Candlesticks by Rijn Collins. Ice skating by Felicity Castagna. From Freo by Kevin Gillam. Gabrielle/Ophelia by Lindy Collins. The Hands by Les Wicks. Miss Pardy Hears a Noise on the Roof by Jacqui Dent. Friday Night from by Gabrielle Brydon. Unremarkable by Amelia Schmitz.
January 2011.
There is a region of forest in South East Asia that remains more or less intact. Perversely it's been protected from logging, poaching and development by seven decades of civil conflict. The local Karen people live in refugee camps just inside Thailand but also remain in their thousands in the Myanmar forest living as they have always done while fighting for an independent homeland. A recent peace deal means that for the first time it may be possible for logging to begin, dams to be built, open cast gold mining to expand, roads and a deep water port to be built. The Karen are trying to create a vast ‘peace park’ to preserve their astonishing natural habitat from these same forces that have destroyed so much forest in the previous countries we have visited in this four-part series. ABC RN Earshot and the BBC World Service head into the Myanmar forest to a training camp for Karen forest rangers who will police the forest if such a park can be created. This is a place alive with all of the flora and fauna that have usually disappeared. It is so noisy and vibrant with life that a Silent Forest is only a bad dream. Is this the final moment before a storm of exploitation and destruction makes that bad dream a reality? Or can something different and new be created by the Karen? After 68 years of civil war everything hangs in the balance. We talk with Karen villagers, forest rangers and the people helping the Karen create their policy for managing the forest, and most important of all we walk beneath the canopy and hear at last, the way the forest should sound. Guests: Clare Campbell, director, Wildlife Asia. Paul Sein Twa, Director of KESAN (Karen Environmental and Social Action Network). Saw Mabu Jaratpratprueang, Land and forest resource management coordinator, KESAN. Sulak Sivaraksa, Siamese intellectual and founder of the International Network of Engaged Buddhists. Sawbusay, SawGaysay, Sawtahtoo - elders of the village of Paw Ka Doh. Sound engineer: Judy Rapley. October 2017.
The retelling of a certain myth, a myth without a specific time or place, is also the vehicle for an exploration of the ancient sport, and art, of archery. In The Arrow and the Bow we find ourselves in a forest, watching as a man and his dogs go hunting. But we are also watching a woman, who is floating in a pool of water. What happens when he raises his bow to shoot a deer and instead finds himself firing at a goddess?We also hear from an archery teacher, women archers from a historical reenactment society, and two philosophers discussing the Zen of archery, and Zeno’s arrow. Viola Natasha Rumiz. Sound engineer David Bates. Written and composed by Gretchen Miller. First broadcast April 2000
At 1,200 kilometres from tip to toe, the Great Barrier Reef looms large in the Australian imagination and sense of national identity and pride. For now, as a world heritage-listed area, it's narrowly avoided being listed as 'endangered', by UNESCO. But with fifty percent of its coral cover dead, it remains on a knife edge of survival. As a marker of the severity of what’s coming to us, the eyes of the world remain on it.August 2015.
The Reef is a natural marvel and a multibillion dollar tourism resource—but it’s also a shipping lane, the site of several coal ports, a giant funnel for farming runoff, and a cyclone-prone area. This century it's seen five category 5 cyclones pass over it, compared to none the century before.
Now that previous major threats like pollution runoff and overdevelopment are eclipsed by climate change and extreme weather, can our efforts to improve our footprint there have any effect at all?
We head to far north Queensland to join a DFAT gathering of concerned reef experts from around the world, as they share their stories and consider the environmental impacts on both landscape and human psychology.
Guests: Dr Paul Marshall, Marine biologist, adjunct associate professor with the Centre for Biodiversity and Conservation Science at the University of Queensland and Director of Reef Ecologic. Dr Adam Smith, Marine biologist, freediver, and director of Reef Ecologic. Samantha Kwan, Marine Conservation Officer for the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment in Samoa. Andrea Donaldson Manager, Ecosystems Management Branch in the National Environment and Planning Agency (NEPA) in the Ministry of Water, Land, Environment and Climate Change, Jamaica. Christine O'Sullivan Lecturer in Environmental Studies at the University of Technology, Jamaica (UTech). Michelle Kalamandeen Protected Areas Coordinator at the Guyana Marine Turtle Conservation Society. Roland Baldeo Former fisheries officer, coordinator of the Marine Protected Area program in Grenada. Nicole Harman Great Barrier Reef regions marine animal strandings coordinator for the Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service. Scott Firth Marine biologist, crown of thorns control program, Association for Marine Tourism Operators
Sound engineer: Judy Rapley.
August 2015.
Poet and photographer John Bennett gets up most mornings well before dawn, and takes himself down to his local estuary. This time, about half an hour before light, reveals exquisite colours, with every morning different from the last. He calls this time 'Eos' - Eos being the Greek goddess who opened the gates for the sun, Helios, to ride his chariot through and bring daybreak. John says that rising in time to see eos is an opportunity to reacquaint ourselves with the traditional elements of earth, water, air and light. Before we start worrying about our finances, work, family. Before we pick up technology and connect ourselves with the digital world, eos allows us to just 'be', in the natural world, much as our ancestors were.
In this conversation with Gretchen Miller, John walks us through his local forest reserve, Jagun, through which a creek runs, before it reaches the sea.
They talk of the birds, trees and landscape which his poetry obsessively documents, about how to be a 'decent man', and how to pay attention when you're chronically distracted by the many fascinating things the world can bring.
Music in this program was Hodie Response 1, by Nick Tsiavos, who likes to play at the other end of the day - after dusk and into the night.
Sound Engineer: Russell Stapleton.
February 2016
Finding hope and taking positive action can be a challenging thing to do, when it comes to climate change. In this two part series we're looking at how climate and environmental scientists, studying everything from the Great Barrier Reef to the impact of heatwaves, manage the ‘burden of knowledge’. How do they emotionally experience the science around global warming? In part 2 we ask where scientists, writers, philosophers and science educators find their optimism, and ways in which to take action - even if it’s as a way to counter their despair. And we visit a very unusual dinner party, where, taking a leaf out of the plastic manufacturer Tupperware's book, a group called Climate for Change hopes to spread the conversation amongst millions of Australians.
Guests: Katerina Gaita, Climate educator and director of Climate for Change. Dr Glenn Albrecht, Philosopher. Professor John 'Charlie' Veron Marine biologist, coral scientist, former Chief Scientist of the Australian Institute of Marine Science. Dr Sara Arthur, Environmental Consultant, specialising in waste management and contaminated land. James Bradley, author. Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, biologist and climate scientist specialising in coral reefs, in particular bleaching due to global warming and climate change. Dr Susie Burke, Senior psychologist at the Public Interest Team at the Australian Psychological Society.
November 2016
Scientists let us know all the facts and figures about climate change. They know just how quickly the icebergs are melting, and almost to the day when the Great Barrier Reef will be dead. If you don't fully grasp the wide-ranging and complex facts, it can feel like 'too much'. And though humans are excellent at responding quickly to immediate threats, consequences that will occur a few years down the track can be harder to come to grips with. Many of us turn away, with more immediate concerns taking priority. But some people can't turn away, and this two-part series examines the personal impact on those on the frontline of climate change. We ask scientists young and old, plus activists, philosophers and psychologists, 'how do you feel, about global warming?' Their responses will move you.
Guests Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, a biologist and climate scientist specialising in coral reefs, in particular bleaching due to global warming and climate change. Professor John 'Charlie' Veron: Marine biologist, coral scientist, former Chief Scientist of the Australian Institute of Marine Science. Dr Sara Arthur Environmental Consultant, specialising in waste management and contaminated land. Dr Susie Burke, Senior psychologist at the Public Interest Team at the Australian Psychological Society. Dr Glenn Albrecht, Philosopher, Dr Andrew King. Dr Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick, Senior research associate and 2014 DECRA awardee in the Climate Change Research Centre at UNSW.
November 2016
While Australian flora and fauna were illustrated and painted from the very start of the colony, this decorative art is the first time they were celebrated by Europeans as matter of Australian pride - preceding the famous Heidelberg school by 50 years.
And this was the first time tools of the trade had been represented in jewellery, as far as we know. Here are the most ordinary things: the tin bucket, the iron spade, the handle of a winch, made in miniature out of one of the most desirable substances on the planet.
And an exhibition at Ballarat's Museum of Australian Democracy at Eureka brings many of these pieces, and their stories, to light.
Featuring Cash Brown, then curator of the Museum of Australian Democracy.
Follow a duffel bag of poetry, carried by cargo ship up the coast of Australia, to Thursday Island ... Don't look inside. And when you finally set foot on the sand, open the bag and find... Sea Things.
The ocean has long been a subject for poetry and poetic musings. In Sea Things we journey up the coast in the company of two duffel bags, transported by ship and collecting poems for the Red Room Company's project.
On the journey all sorts of people are met - some write poetry on paper and others just live it but all are tied to the sea.
Guests: Brett Thomas, Ships master, Temple Bay, Lockhardt River, far north Queensland; Kerry Ashwin, poet; Delma Bon, Crayfisherman, Thursday Island; Marty Bugg, First officer, Trinity Bay MV, Sea Swift company; The children of Tagai state college and Our Lady of the Sacred Heart School; Graeme Miles; Poet and lecturer in the school of history and classics; Johanna Featherstone, Red Room Company director; Kelly Osmond, Ships officer and former barramundi fisher; Dave Jordan, Former Royal Australian Navy commander; Alan Gould, Poet and writer; Frank David, Thursday Island cultural officer.
Sound engineer: Russell Stapleton.