Streets of Your Town

Streets of Your Town: Carol Taylor’s Fashion for Disability

Have you ever stopped to contemplate how difficult it is to find appropriate clothing, if you have a disability? And not just functional clothing, but fashionable, beautiful, and fun clothing. Imagine being at the top of your career, leading your own legal practice, but unable to find appropriate professional clothing to wear. This is the dilemma that faces solicitor Carol Taylor regularly. A car accident in 2001 left Carol Taylor a quadriplegic, paralysed from the chest down, and unable to move her fingers.
Since those difficult days, Carol has become a mother, and returned to work becoming principal of Taylor Law and Conveyancing. And now she adds artist and fashion designer to her achievements. Carol’s works are now on display in the exhibition Agency by Design: Expressive Design for Disability at artisan in Brisbane until July 13 2019. Her dream now is to create designs for beautiful garments that can be made into patterns, for people with a disability around the world to wear.

Streets of Your Town

Streets of Your Town: MooGoo’s Craig Jones

Get an audio insight into an entrepreneur’s mind in this episode of Streets of Your Town featuring Craig Jones, the founder of Australian skincare brand MooGoo. He started making MooGoo cream in a saucepan in a tiny two bedroom apartment, and now runs a company producing more than 40 all natural skin care products all made in Australia, exporting to seven countries around the world, and employing around 100 people.

Streets of Your Town

Streets of Your Town: The Dangerous Hopper Ant

It’s been described by Sir David Attenborough as one of the world’s most dangerous ants. And it’s prolific, found in colonies throughout Australia, resulting in an estimated two hospital emergency admissions a week in Adelaide alone. The native hopper ant, also knows as the jack jumper, may be small but it packs a painful sting in its tail, so much so that for a significant number of people, it causes anaphylactic shock and even death. Yet two esteemed researchers tell us on this episode of Streets of Your Town that the hopper ant problem is not receiving the funding needed to properly respond to the growing number of allergic reactions.

Streets of Your Town

Streets of Your Town: Brendon Donohue

Imagine not being able to see, and catching the train to work. Then someone grabs your hand and drags you on the train, leaving you unsure of where you are and even if you are safe. This has happened to Brendon Donohue more than once on his way to his job as a compliance officer in central Brisbane. Brendon spends his spare time lobbying for fair access to public facilities for all people, regardless of their disability or otherwise. In this episode of Streets of Your Town, I meet Brendon at one of his favourite pubs, near his home at South Brisbane.

Streets of Your Town

Streets of Your Town: Kathryn Stott and the Australian Festival of Chamber Music

Townsville in lush North Queensland is not necessarily known as a hub of classical music from around the world, but it will soon be transformed. This is Artistic Director Kathryn Stott’s second Australian Festival of Chamber Music, and she tells me on this episode of Streets of Your Town how this time she’s scored a number of coups. This includes five world premieres, five Australian premieres and 40 of the best chamber musicians on the planet playing compositions from the 13th century to the present day, over ten days of a balmy North Queensland winter, in July and August. And proving her commitment to emerging artists of the genre, one of those world premieres is from Brisbane born and now London based composer Connor D’Netto, who has also been chosen as the Composer-in-Residence.

Streets of Your Town

Streets of Your Town: Las Cafeteras

Las Cafeteras is all about fusion. Based in LA, this eclectic band mixes Afro-Mexican, hip-hop, folk and first nations musical styles into a frenetic celebration that pulls people to their feet. Band member Hector Flores sees their music as a metaphor for how the world should be. He wears his Mexican heritage proudly, calling for more understanding and tolerance through music and food, spreading his message of social justice across musical and physical borders. In this episode of Streets of Your Town podcast, I speak to Hector straight after the band’s electric performance at Adelaide’s world music festival, WOMADelaide.

Streets of Your Town

Streets of Your Town: Dangerous Town

Dangerous Song is a unique performance that combines the human voice with modern electronics, age-old instruments, and the calls of endangered animals to create an intriguing and moving musical piece like nothing I’ve seen before. In this episode of Streets of Your Town you’ll meet the creative team behind this moving piece, as they prepare for the WOMADelaide world music festival and hopefully a tour around the country soon after. Interwoven throughout the performance are refrains of distinctive Mongolian throat singing and the haunting sounds of the Mongolian horse head fiddle.

Streets of Your Town Streets of Your Town

Streets of Your Town: Luka Bloom

It’s a strange thing indeed to connect with a country on the other side of the world to where you grew up, so much so that you feel the same sadness when leaving it as you do when you leave home. But this is the experience of Luka Bloom, the great Irish songman who for more than 40 years has put his passion for social justice to music, and given voice to those who aren’t often heard or recognised. His songs have touched a chord in Australia, so much so that he has now toured the country more than a dozen times. In this episode of Streets of Your Town, Luka Bloom tells us about the euphoric joy he feels seeing a Fremantle sunset, and feeling the appreciation of his Australian fans, wherever he goes.

Streets of Your Town

Streets of Your Town: Cathy Gatley and the Turtles of Mon Repos

On a tiny stretch of sand, near the southern most tip of the largest living thing on earth The Great Barrier Reef, is Mon Repos. Less than two kilometres long, this beach is a critical landing point for endangered loggerhead turtles from throughout the Pacific. And Cathy Gatley is the ranger in charge (of this conservation park), ensuring that this patch of turtle paradise remains their haven. In this episode of Streets of Your Town, Cathy tells us how she balances the needs of the endangered loggerhead turtles and the lucky few people who get to the beach to see this wild event.

Streets of Your Town

Streets of Your Town: Imtiaz Ali

Imagine for a moment, the fear you would feel if you had to leave the only home you’d known, and all of your family, at just 15 years old because your life hangs in the balance.This was the harsh reality that faced Pakistani refugee Imtiaz Ali. It has taken seven years, including a journey across the seas in treacherous waters, and many months spent in detention centres unsure of his future, for Imtiaz Ali to finally become an Australian citizen. In this episode of Streets of Your Town, Imtiaz tells us how his life experiences have shown him that nothing is impossible.

Streets of Your Town

Streets of Your Town: Rob Layton

Go behind the scenes of the glitz and glamour of the Gold Coast and find yourself immersed in the ocean alongside Rob Layton in this episode. Regardless of the weather, you can find Rob at Burleigh Beach on the southern end of the Gold Coast, surfing and taking photos as the sun rises for another day. And he’s also wanting to spread the word on how that phone in your pocket is capable of much more than just taking good selfies.

Streets of Your Town

Streets of Your Town: Chasing Smoke

Today, we take you behind the scenes of the evocative and triumphant performance of Chasing Smoke by Casus Circus. Casus Circus is Australia’s only Indigenous contemporary circus ensemble, and is about to go on tour around Australia and take Chasing Smoke to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. I was lucky enough to speak to the visionary director of Casus Circus and Chasing Smoke, Natano Fa’anana.

Streets of Your Town

Streets of Your Town: Kagi Kowa

Today, we head to Brisbane’s westside, to meet artist and social entrepreneur, Kagi Kowa. She tells us about her journey from Sudan to Forest Lake, and how that journey of self-discovery continues to this day, years after she first came to Australia’s shores.

Streets of Your Town

Streets of Your Town: Amanda and Dulcie

Today, we head to the unheralded jewel of South Australia to the Clare Valley. It’s here at a Country Womens Association function, that an ancient bus and an energy powerhouse collide, when we meet Amanda Blair, wandering around her charity vintage clothing bus, Dulcie’s Shop of Real Opportunity, which has raised more than a hundred thousand dollars for South Australia’s homeless.

Streets of Your Town

Streets of Your Town: Julia Price

In this episode, we have a wander with one of Tassie’s favourite adopted daughters, former wicketkeeper of the Australian Women’s Cricket Team, Julia Price. We find out what took the Queenslander so far south she shivered through her first days in her new home, and how she was invited to join the greats of the game as a life member of the Marylebone Cricket Club at Lords.

Streets of Your Town

Streets of Your Town: Kurt Phelan

In this episode we go to one of Brisbane’s funkiest inner city laneways, Fish Lane, to eat Vietnamese with talented Aussie actor Kurt Phelan. We hear how since playing Johnny in the Australian production of Dirty Dancing, he is now living the transcontinental life between Brisbane and New York.

Streets of Your Town Streets of Your Town

Streets of Your Town Stories of Survival: Leigh Winsor

In this special edition of SOYT, we go to the Sherwood Neighbourhood Centre, to meet Leigh Winsor. It was only a few short years ago on January 11th 2011, that he found himself at the Sherwood Community Centre with little more than the shirt on his back. He was one of thousands of people caught in the floods that swept through Brisbane and Ipswich. This is his story of survival.

Streets of Your Town