The Resilience Project

With special guest:

• Hugh van Cuylenburg
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

When Hugh van Cuylenburg went to India as a volunteer teacher he did not expect to be on the receiving end of the learning process. At first reluctant to even be in India he soon found that he was learning from his students how to develop the psychological foundation for success in all educational and physical pursuits.

Hugh’s trip finished up being full of surprises. He was surrounded by so much poverty yet there was also happiness and contentment. Working on his observations Hugh was able to develop The Resilience Project for application in Australia and backed up his approach with technical qualifications obtained by completing a Master’s Degree at University.

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Defying the Enemy Within

With special guest:

• Joe Williams
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

When his father presented his South Sydney first grade rugby league jersey to Joe Williams it was a special moment. When Joe went straight into the ranks of professional boxers without any need for an apprenticeship as an amateur it was another special moment. Off the sporting field Joe is an established speaker on the circuit in Australia and the USA. So what could possibly be wrong?

We learn in this fascinating discussion that behind all the achievements Joe was battling serious mental illness from a young age. There were inner voices crowding out his thoughts and trying to drag him down. Joe admits that these voices denied him the satisfaction of reaching his true sporting potential but he is now on a course that he sees as more important.

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Secret & Special

With special guest:

• Dr Will Davies
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

Will Davies has been on the program before, bringing us inside stories from The Great War.

Today we get to discuss Will’s new book Secret and Special. We hear about a boys’ own adventure story that started at a beautiful part of Sydney and which took our adventurers on a dangerous trip to Singapore harbour. They were on a night mission to put limpet mines on some ships in port. The unsuspecting Japanese occupiers of Singapore never knew what hit them.

The difference from most adventure stories is that this is all true and draws on the meticulous research of Dr Davies that we have come to expect.

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From the Ruck

With special guest:

• Gordon Bray AM
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

Our guest today is part of a select group of legends. Peter FitzSimons has described Gordon Bray as ‘more than a sporting icon’, Gordon is no less than ‘the soundtrack of our sporting lives’.

The Voice of Rugby joins us today after a career of over 50 years describing major sporting events on a variety of radio and TV stations. And yet despite being front and centre for all that time we do not know so much about Gordon himself.

Gordon tells us of his difficult upbringing after his father died when he was only 9 years old. As one of four children Gordon did his best to ease the burden for his mother who was left to provide for them with the significant assistance of Legacy. The story then is that Gordon made the most of every opportunity that came his way and he has some amazing stories to tell us now as he looks back on that fabled career.

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The Secret of Half-Arsed Parenting

With special guest:

• Dr Susie O’Brien
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

There is a toasted sandwich in the cover picture of her book and that leads our guest Dr Susie O’Brien to tell us that a toasted sandwich is a quite acceptable dinner alternative. This is the world of Susie O’Brien where parents can escape all that guilt about not being the best parent in the world and just start enjoying their children.

In Susie O’Brien’s new book The Secret of Half-Arsed Parenting we get an insight that is fun. It is also comforting to know that the conclusions are drawn from research all around the world. And most parents will find sections where they have to say to themselves ‘No doubt about it, that resembles me.’

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Malcolm Young

With special guest:

• Jeff Apter
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

Malcolm was a younger brother of George Young guitarist and songwriter with The Easybeats. Music was definitely in the family but in such a fickle industry could lightning strike twice after the enormous success of brother George?

The Young family story starts in an economically deprived part of Scotland. Then seven of the eight members of the family became Ten Pound Poms and settled in a migrant hostel in Australia. One of the elder children continued to work as a musician in Europe.

After years of playing guitar in his bedroom Malcolm joined a band and later agreed to let Angus in, recognising at that early stage the genius of his younger brother. It was his sister who came up with the name for the band and that was never changed. It is arguable that their choice of music style never changed either, always driving rock’n’roll.

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How to Raise a Man

With special guest:

• Megan De Beyer
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

Something many of us wonder about from time to time is what turns a boy into a man. With the title of Megan de Beyer’s new book being How to Raise a Man there was no hiding from this question and Megan dives straight in.

And then there is the most common issue for parents raising young men - how to get more than a grunt in lieu of conversation. In these Covid restricted times as we are forced to spend more time at home this question become even more important. The best approach is to treat this time as a challenge rather than a threat and Megan has lots of suggestions on making this time productive. In brief Megan encourages us to look at ourselves more in this dynamic relationship rather than trying to fix something in our young men.

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FLY

With special guest:

• Jai Hobbs
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

Covid 19 is just one more hurdle for our young people coming out of school. They already have to face up to serious competition to progress in a chosen career. If they can get through University they face a HECS debt and what about the housing market.

Our guest today Jai Hobbs decided to do something practical to help the young people get on top of all that. With his wife Marlies, Jai has written a manual called FLY which stands for financially literate youth. This is what he is striving for.

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From Fiji to The Voice

With special guest:

• Voli K
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

In the program today we speak to Voli K who recently distinguished himself by being a standout performer singing on the TV program The Voice.

iTaukei is what the Fijian people call themselves and we have a picture in our minds of what this means. We may think of the Fijian Rugby team or other representative sportsmen who are built like trees and run like gazelles. We also think of their big smiles in black faces saying Bula a thousand times a day.

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The Prettiest Horse in the Glue Factory

With special guest:

• Corey White
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

Luckily for our guest today he always believed he was special. That belief was severely tested before too long.

Corey White grew up knowing that his father was in jail and his mother was a heroin addict. Both parents disappeared from his early life and his life journey was about to become a roller-coaster with no guarantees.

Corey is never one to sugar coat his experiences. He had to sell himself to totally unsuitable foster parent candidates in the hope they would take him in. Once in a family he was subjected to cruelty, dysfunction and in once case sexual abuse. At school he was bullied, it was all grim and he wasn’t even 10 years old.

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The Champagne War

With special guest:

• Fiona McIntosh
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

The beautiful cover of this book gives us a clue. This is a bubbly story thoroughly researched and elegantly told by our guest today Fiona McIntosh. Fiona’s new book The Champagne War takes us to the Champagne region of northern France during the First World War to tell us the story of individuals caught up in the conflict.

Fiona tells us how she came to write the book through a chance meeting with a local winemaker in a village of the region. This gave her the inspiration.

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Too Soon, Too Late

With special guests:

• Ralph & Kathy Kelly
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

There is widespread knowledge of the July 2012 attack on 18 year old Thomas Kelly in 2017. The sorrow felt by the community was compounded by the loss through suicide of Thomas’s brother Stuart four years later.

Ralph and Kathy Kelly have experienced the unimaginable but as a measure of the innate qualities of them and their family they have, in the time since, made great strides in reducing the dangers on the streets of Sydney.

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You Shouldn’t Have Joined ...

With special guest:

• General Sir Peter Cosgrove
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

It is a real privilege when we get to speak with Australia’s 26^th Governor General.

Sir Peter Cosgrove has had several lifetimes it appears as we look at his extensive action packed biography. And it is a measure of the man that not only does he retain an intimate knowledge of all his achievements but that he is so open and candid in looking back on them.

Sir Peter’s career included fighting roles in Vietnam. It also included being the primary assistant to some of the most senior positions in the land. He was Aide de Camp for the Chief of Army and also to the Governor General Sir Paul Hasluck. He rose to attain those same positions himself as Chief of Army and later Governor General.

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Breaker Morant

With special guest:

• Peter FitzSimons
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

“Shoot straight you bastards! Don’t make a mess of it.” These are the last words of Breaker Morant as he sat on a chair looking at the firing squad about to kill him.

These words are well known in Australia as one of the few relics from the first time troops from the Australian continent went into the battlefield in the Boer War. But after reading Peter FitzSimons’ new book titled Breaker Morant the inescapable conclusion is that there are a lot of unknowns in the story of the Breaker. Many of the things we thought we knew are actually fictions usually started by the Breaker himself.

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Remembrance Day 2020

With special guest:

• Dr Will Davies
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

In a very unusual year for commemorations of any sort we have the opportunity to speak with historian Dr Will Davies on the 102^nd anniversary of peace being declared at the end of the First World War.

Will is always great to speak to because he knows the human side of that conflict and tells the real stories behind the history to bring it alive.

We start by going back to March 1918 when the outcome of the war was far from certain. The Germans had launched a spring offensive which they hoped would lead to victory. However the Allied forces prevailed and a big part of that was the heroic action taken by the Australian diggers. Any Australian visitor to the battlefields of France even today will still feel the gratitude of the French people for having the Australians on their side.

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Anxious Kids

With special guest:

• Michael Grose
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

Michael Grose and his co-author Dr Jodi Richardson are often asked when making parenting presentations if there is an epidemic of anxiety among our young people. If you were asked the same question you might immediately say yes but before he answers that question for us in today’s program, we ask our guest what it is exactly that we are talking about. Is anxiety the same as depression? Is anxiety built into us? When does it become harmful? What can we do about it?

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Friday on My Mind

With special guest:

• Jeff Apter
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

George Young made his name internationally by writing with his best mate Harry Vanda a song we can all sing along to more than 50 years after its release. So it was a natural choice as the title of Jeff Apter’s new book Friday on My Mind: the life of George Young.

George managed to get a ticket to The Beatles Sydney performance in 1964. He decided right then that he was going to be in music as a career but it was not going to be a straightforward ride as we learn in Jeff’s book.

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An Awesome Ride: Through a father’s eyes

With special guest:

• Cameron Miller
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

In 2012 Shaun Miller made a YouTube video in his bedroom called MY FINAL GOODBYE. In this video Shaun managed in only 2 minutes and 54 seconds to get out some important messages before it was too late.

Shaun was only 17 years of age but he knew that he had at most a few weeks to live because of his heart condition. He said that he had no regrets and that we should live life to the fullest. We should express our love to the people around us. Importantly he said to make sure that his dad Cameron was OK.

Overnight there were 30,000 hits and a week later that number had gone to over 1 million. Now it is over 7 million. Clearly this is an extraordinary person.

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The Commando Way

With special guest:

• Bram Connolly
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

When Bram Connolly started writing his book The Commando Way: a Special Forces commander’s lessons for life, leadership and success he was thinking that he was an average type of man. The working title of the book was The Risk of Being Average.

However Bram soon realised that he is not your average man in the street in 21^st Century Australia, just as anyone who hears his story will also very quickly realise. Bram is talking about jumping out of planes into enemy territory, being surrounded by people with weapons who wanted to kill him and at the same time inspiring a group of soldiers to put their life on the line to do their job. Clearly we are talking about a leader of men.

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Raising Boys in the Twenty-first Century

With special guest:

• Steve Biddulph AM
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

It was hard enough to raise boys in the 20^th Century. What are the new challenges facing parents who want to raise their sons to be the open-hearted, kind and strong men they can be?

Our guest today has revised and updated his classic parenting book released in 1997, a book that is found in over three million homes around the world. There is a lot of new information and surprising research for Steve to draw on in his new book Raising Boys in the Twenty-first Century. There is a new understanding of hormonal changes as boys turn into men, changes that mean the age from 6 to 14 is when fathers count the most.

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