Published articles
The Australian - Weekend Review 'This (gifted) life’ Feb 6, 2010
"There was a terrible silence, no birds, and no animals, just smoking ruins where houses had stood, with twisted steel curled over ash and bedsprings. Chimneys rose out of the rubble. Cars littered the roadsides, some on embankments, some in head on collisions, locked together in a fatal embrace". Read more
The Australian - Weekend Review 'Starry starry nights. A voyage of magical musical interludes Feb 20, 2016
"We are talking cricket with an Indian crew member in the Cascades dining room on Radiance of the Seas. I tell a story of my father, a country cricket club captain, who goes to the crease amid applause, struts and pats the wicket, then is out for a duck. Hence the comment, “Every day is not Sunday.” . Read more
The Age - Saturday Extra ‘Wash day’ Jan 2001
Italy 1973 - "The family had a washing machine, but they only used it for sheets, towels and tablecloths. Everything else was washed by hand outside under a fig tree, watched with interest by a donkey. Europe was calling me, but I was doing the washing".
Overland Magazine ‘LSD at Newhaven Psychiatric’ No.172 Sept 2003
"At Newhaven Psychiatric Hospital I became part of a worldwide experimentation with LSD, seen as the great new hope of psychotherapy...One Saturday a month, for six months, I submitted to the drug in an attempt to understand and change myself. At the end of my 'therapy' the psychiatrist said "You're all right, but you're married to psychopath". Read more
Italian Historical Society Journal ‘Italian Internees in Victoria and the Murchison Ossario’ Vol.14 No.2 Jul/Dec 2006
"Camp 13 at Murchison became home to 4000 POW’s, mainly Italians and Germans. Many Italian POW’s had been fighting for ten years under Mussolini in Ethiopia and Spain before they were captured and sent to Australia. They arrived here starved and frustrated, delighted to find that food was plentiful, and that they were treated well by the guards". Read more
'Italian Washing’ Vol.14 No.1 Jan/Jun 2006
The Senior Traveller ‘Desert dunes hot spot for adventure’ Feb 2008
"In silent awe we watch a scene straight from creation; first man sees the first light. A vista without human footprints is revealed, in dunes stretching to infinity. The darkness sweeps back revealing peaks and valleys in glorious reds and blacks, shadowed in deepest purple, under a duck-egg blue morning sky. As the sun gathers radiance and strength, the colours cycle through reds, ochres, and yellows". Read more
‘A slow weekend in Mildura’ Aug 2008
"My grandmother...coped without electricity or even a radio in her early years there and endured fierce dust storms that coated everything in the house in red dust. During the disgusting mice plagues, the mice ran through the hessian walls of the house, and even slept in the old iron cot, seeking warmth from a sleeping baby." Read more
Zest for Life Magazine ‘Upstairs downunder’ Vol.1 No. 11 Feb/Mar 2004
‘What’s sauce for the goose’ Vol.1 No.2 Apr/May 2004
'Max’s wartime odyssey’ Vol.1 No. 5 Aug. 2004
'Cinderellas no more: a history of the Italian/Australian Women’s Association' - Sense of place (excerpt, Sydney 2000)
Mietta’s Eating and Drinking in Australia - Restaurant reviews 2000-2001
Multicultural Libraries ‘Are libraries better than husbands?’ Vol. 20 No. 2 2000
The Age: Obituaries Margaret Ballhause: nurse, conservationist, historian 1921 -2004
The Age: Obituaries Virginia Ferguson , teacher, writer and mentor 1940 - 2017
Eldorado and District Star: A tribute to Ivy Stewart 1924 - 2020