Just like the smile plastered on Philippe Petit’s face in 1974, excitement dances in the bright wide eyes of this modern-day high-wire enthusiast. Self-taught filmmaker Seb Montaz captures the wild adventures of his friends tightrope walking between Parisian skyscrapers and jumping off the Norwegian fjords in his beautiful documentary I Believe I Can Fly (Flight of the Frenchies). Growing up in the French Alps, Seb took his childhood passion for winter sports and mountain climbing to the next level, qualifying as mountain guide and ski instructor. Then finding joy in photographing his clients, he strived to perfect his imagery, learning his incredibly vivid and inspiring filmmaking skills from the internet. The adrenaline rush from successfully traversing a flexible nylon line 1000 m above the ground is immeasurable, and it is this incredible achievement of mental and physical endurance – along with moments of fear, doubt, laughter, failure and strength – that he vividly captures in his documentary. Full of heart and character, I Believe I Can Fly connects audiences with Seb’s passionate circle of highlining and baselining pioneers, communicating how to find the strength to live your dreams.

A new year brings a fresh calendar of commitments and for Lucas Stibbard that calendar is coated in ink. The exciting part is that Lucas, 34, has earned the career indulgence of mostly making theatre he likes with people he likes. Lucas and his four talented comrades – Jonathon Oxlade, Matthew Ryan, Sarah Winter and wife Neridah Waters – are The Escapists, a Brisbane-based performance collective with a reputation nationally for championing a beautiful kaleidoscopic aesthetic. Together they mash genres and media in the pursuit of storytelling that is always fearless and often ridiculous.

As we speak, Lucas is preparing to kickstart rehearsals for The Escapists’ return season of their promenade adventure, Elephant Gun, as part of the World Theatre Festival at Brisbane Powerhouse on February 18–19. The Escapists will also embark on a national four-month tour of boy girl wall in June and spend the year working on a new play, Suburbia, as Metro Arts’ artists in residence. And Lucas is helping co-direct a new comedy variety show, The Funny Boys Project for Toowoomba’s Empire Theatre.

While all five Escapists work independently on various performance projects, the collective enables them to make theatre they believe in. “It’s about creative control and a shared aesthetic and likeness and dream as to what performance and theatre could be.” The common threads that bind their work are “theatricality, imagination and the joy of play”.

Lucas credits his parents, who met while involved in amateur theatre in Sydney in the seventies, for helping him find his feet in theatre. His childhood dream was to be an architect but after school he enrolled in a screen production degree at Queensland College of Art, which, in the end didn’t hold his interest. Fortunately, Lucas’ father had nudged him into community theatre during his teens, which inspired Lucas to audition for USQ’s drama program.

He graduated from USQ in 2000 and scored a role in Queensland Theatre Company’s (QTC) staging of Richard II. Lucas describes the opportunity as “lucky”, but clearly luck has little to do with QTC’s casting decisions. His impressive CV includes a long list of roles with QTC, Bell Shakespeare, Windmill Theatre and Brisbane Powerhouse as well as a mass of independent productions.

In 2007, Lucas decided it was high time he created his own work, beginning with The Attack of the Attacking Attackers. “And since then I’ve spent more time doing our stuff as The Escapists than I have with other people, which has been really lovely.”

Lucas says his greatest challenge is finding balance after a mammoth 2011. He openly describes last year as “immense and terrible and beautiful and horrible,” as boy girl wall went from a little show he’d dreamt up with his group to selling out every night of two seasons at La Boite. “Suddenly everyone in Australian theatre was coming to see this little show. And the pressure of all of that actually broke me in the end,” he says.

Lucas explains exhaustion set in and he was forced to end the season early. The irony was he’d spent his career striving to secure new work yet when new opportunities came knocking his body demanded he stop. “I was just saying yes to everything and trying to keep it going and I think in the end that momentum rolled over me as well,” Lucas observes. “So I’m trying to find the balance between actually living that success and momentum and the joy of that, and not getting to the point where it becomes of detriment to me.”

He always remains motivated despite the troughs because he says of acting: “It’s an addiction … And on top of that there is the thing that unfortunately I’m not sure what else I’m qualified to do.”

Asked what he still wants to achieve with his work, Lucas remarks: “I think the things everyone wants from their work. I want it to be recognised. I want to be appreciated. I want to be happy and have fun doing it. I want to be working with my friends and the people whom I respect and I want that work to be seen by people.” His dream is to run a theatre company as an artistic director.

The words of wisdom he lives by are usually “get on with it,” but he likes a quote by one of his heroes, American writer Michael Chabon. It reads: Every work of art is one half of a secret handshake. “It’s a beautiful quote,” Lucas says. “And a great way of looking at what we do and who we are”.

interview by
Frances Frangenheim

Her mind began to wander through career alternatives. Then, one night during a fortuitous session surfing the internet, she stumbled across the concept of the letterpress. “It was years ago, before letterpress had become popular – I didn’t even know what it was,” Alischa recalls. “Instantly I was just in awe of it, because graphic design originally comes from letterpress printing. It’s like what we do as designers but taking it back a century.”

The more she researched letterpress, the more she fell in love with it. At the same time, the more she worked in her corporate job, the more she felt increasingly burnt out and creatively stifled. As if compelled by the hand of fate, she began to keep her eye out for an old printing press she could acquire, talking to people from old museums and printing presses to see if they could help. But it was to no avail – most had been condemned to become scrap metal years ago.

Things finally began to fall into place after three years of searching, when Alischa got a call from a gentleman in Canberra who had heard of her quest to find an old letterpress. “He had an old 1893 letterpress sitting in his shed,” Alischa says, reliving her glee. “It had just been sitting there for about 20 years, going rusty. So we went down there with an old ute and picked it up – it was about 800 kg – and took it back to Sydney.”

But while she now had the press she had been seeking so dearly, she realised that she had no idea what to do with it. “It was so daunting,” Alischa laughs. “How do you make this thing that’s 120 years old actually work?” In 2007, around that same time, Alischa’s husband Hayden, a pilot for Virgin, received word that he was being transferred to Brisbane. Alischa seized the opportunity to start a new chapter in her life.

The couple found a house just a few blocks away from the beach at Scarborough and set about renovating it into their new abode. The letterpress sat quietly downstairs, continuing the solitude it had been keeping for the past two decades. Meanwhile, Alischa started teaching graphic design full time at Shillington College and continued for the next 12 months while she delved deeper into her research into letterpress printing.

By a stroke of fate, she encountered an old letterpress printer nearing his eighties, named Bob. “He was so excited that I wanted to learn about printing,” she reflects fondly. “He had all this knowledge, but he was going to die without anyone to pass it on to.”

Bob gladly took Alischa under his wing as a quasi-apprentice, passing on to her all that he knew about the art of letterpress. “I’d go and help him two days a week and on the weekend, and he would teach me little bits and pieces,” she says. “It was almost as if I was going through the apprenticeship that he had almost 60 years earlier. He taught me everything he knew over the course of a couple of years.”

Alischa soon reduced her teaching to part-time and leaped into her new career, beginning mostly with wedding invitations and then branching out into stationery, cards and other paperie. In late 2008, she came across another letterpress to add to her mechanical menagerie – a 1973 Heidelberg T Platen, which she affectionately named ‘Herbie’ (joining her original press, ‘Charlie’) – which she purchased from an old printer in Ipswich. The two ‘boys’ were then joined in 2011 by ‘Helga’, a 1972 Heidelberg T Platen, to complete the letterpress family. Charlie, powered by foot treadle, usually takes care of smaller print runs, while the more sprightly Herbie and Helga are in charge
of the larger printing tasks.

In addition to the three letterpresses, Alischa also calls upon the assistance of her studio manager, Ruby Tuesday – a Nova Scotia duck-tolling retriever with a lustrous copper coat and angelic eyes – whose primary responsibility is greeting couriers. Several part-time assistants and Alischa’s husband Hayden also lend a hand to ensure the home-based business runs efficiently.

Asked where her love for such large, lumbering machines comes from, Alischa admits to a childhood fascination with her father’s earth-moving machines and the smell of oil and grease that would emanate from his workshop. Also citing her mother’s unrequited creative streak as an influence, Alischa reveals that as a child everyone always told her that she would one day become an artist. “But I can’t draw to save myself,” she giggles. “I think I’m more creative than artistic. I used to make hair clips and sell them at school and I soon realised that I could produce things that other people couldn’t be bothered to, or didn’t know how to.”

Reflecting on her career to this point, Alischa admits that being an entrepreneur in charge of her own fate is far more work than the life of a corporate art director – but she wouldn’t change it for a moment. “It’s all-consuming and it’s such a different life,” she says. “I wake up and start work and people come in to help me. But then they all go home and I work all through the night and then go to bed. And then it all starts again the next day and never really stops. I’m always talking about work and it doesn’t disappear, but that’s what makes it work in the end. I absolutely love it and if I had a choice to be sitting watching TV or to be sitting making something, I’d always choose the latter.”

Her greatest challenge, she reveals, is realising that she can’t do everything herself. “It’s a really hard thing to learn,” she says candidly. “When I first started I was pretty much doing everything myself and I couldn’t. I soon realised that, in order to make it successful, I had to let go and let other people help me.”

But the whimsical designs of Bespoke Letterpress, Alischa emphasises, will always come from her own hand. “I just couldn’t let someone else design for me,” she says passionately. “Because that’s the part that I love the most.”

Having just turned 30, what she is most proud of is the fact that she has chased her dream and caught it. “I had to be willing to make no money for the first few years and really just be brave,” she says. “At the time, I don’t think I thought about it too much – I just knew I wanted it and I loved it and believed it could work. If I was going to inject everything I had into it, how could it not work?”

And therein lies Alischa’s wisdom to the world. “Be brave and follow your own path,” she advises. “Believe in yourself – you’ll get a better result by going where you want to go rather than following in someone else’s footsteps.”

interview & photography by
Mikki Brammer

Growing up in Sweden, my childhood dream was … just to get out of there. I always knew I would become an entrepreneur and run my own business, more as a statement of freedom than financial reward. It was always important for me to be able to determine my own destiny.

I couldn’t picture myself … working in an organisation or having a boss, and even today I still find that it’s more important to do things I like rather than always maximising business opportunities or profit. It’s very easy to be all focused on Excel spreadsheets and then you die.

I think everyone struggles to … find that correct balance between business success and personal success. It’s a delicate balance to be able not to neglect either side of it.

Hotels became my passion … a little bit by default. I was investing in real estate in Spain, and Mallorca, being an island, was the only area I could really define. At the time, Palma had gone through some rough times and was about to rebound, so I decided to buy property there.

I was inspired by … the lifestyle of South Beach in Miami and the hotels there and I’d always wanted to have my own brand, but I’d never been in that type of business to be able to do so.

A hotel I’ve always loved is … the Delano in Miami. It’s become a classic because it was done so well. I think it’s really the grand piece of lifestyle hotels.

Having been travelling extensively … in the ten years prior to opening Puro, I’d developed a knowledge of lifestyle hotels. That kind of evolved into me opening up Puro and believing I should make a go of a Miami-style hotel concept in Spain. At the time, only more traditional hotel concepts existed there, so when we opened it was kind of groundbreaking. Since then, Palma has become a great destination and the city has really turned around.

The great thing about Palma is … that it’s a great spot in the Mediterranean. It has developed in a really nice way and is, in a way, becoming the Hawaii of Europe. It’s a great meeting point with a nice offering of restaurants and hotels very close to Western Europe – especially compared to somewhere like the Greek Islands. Palma is only an hour and 20 minutes away from Zurich, two hours from Berlin and London, and so on. It’s very close to everything. It’s also a little bit of a neutral spot in the sense that many European nationalities meet there.

Puro was actually once an old 14th-century palace … that was owned previously by Richard Branson. He bought properties in Mallorca after he sold Virgin, but he didn’t do anything with this particular old building that had been abandoned, more or less, since the 1950s.

It was in terrible shape … and he agreed to sell it. The location was great and I ended up buying several properties in the same area.

As soon as Puro opened … we immediately had a very good crowd – the type of crowd that we really wanted. The people we attract to Puro are well-travelled, usually around 30–55, who are interested in people in general and also curious about lifestyle hotels.

The problem was … we didn’t have a suitable beach to send our guests to, because everything nearby was in a very touristic, plastic chair kind of environment. That’s when we came up with the idea of Purobeach – a lifestyle concept with food, drinks, a lounge, terrace, pool and treatments, in Palma Bay – which we opened a year after the hotel in 2005.

My motorcycle trip … was actually done in stages. I was cruising around West Africa and the Sahara and basically took off and drove around Morocco, Mauritania, Nigeria, Mali and Senegal, but kept the bike there. I would come and go and continue the journey riding around.

The lesson I learned … which is the lesson of all travel, is that the worse your experience gets, the more rewarding the travel will be. You always remember the moments when you are really deep in shit, whether it’s breaking down in the middle of the night in the desert or something else. You always manage those situations and they become the highlights of your travel – in the end you wouldn’t want to be without them.

Travelling by yourself … is also a great way to learn things. You realise in the end that it’s a small world and people are the same – in their core – wherever you are.

I think that in the future … boutique hotels will become more casual and less quirky. At least, I hope so. I feel that the trend will become more focused on comfort than design. I think people are a little bit tired of those properties that, in the end, just become complicated
for the sake of design.

The next place I’m hoping to create something is in … Porto Montenegro in Bay of Kotor to open a Purobeach this summer. It’s a fantastic area and we’re really trying to bring back the era of Sophia Loren and Tito in the 1950s.

I’m inspired by … people who choose their own path in life. People who break out of a preset mould or choose to walk in a different direction and follow their instincts or intuition, whatever what that may be.

When I look at my life today … the greatest challenge I’ve had to overcome has been being able to prioritise my personal life. To choose not to enter into new businesses all the time and finding that balance. It’s very easy to get stuck in the business side of things all the time because you’re very enthusiastic about it, but then you forget yourself in the middle of it.

That said … finding that balance is also what I would say is my greatest achievement.

I find peace in life … being in Switzerland, where I live – that’s kind of my mountain hideout. I live in Verbier, which is a really nice ski area close to the Italian-French border. There’s a lot of snow here at the moment and so it’s really nice. I spend most of the winter in Verbier.

If I had one piece of wisdom to give to the world … I would go for somewhat of a cliche but I still like it: Follow your intuition and choose your own path.

interview by
Mikki Brammer

image courtesy of
Design Hotels
www.designhotels.com

Tim Fleming’s Flatland exists as an imaginary world, a utopia of sorts. It gives Tim, 40, the freedom to ponder wacky design solutions and new ways of living. “Flatland is a method for me to explore creative avenues within my control,” he explains of Flatland OK, the design business he launched in 2003. “I’m doing all the things I’m really interested in. I’m interested in making objects and illustration. And I’m really interested in satire, critical consumption and provoking people to think about what they want to do with their lives. That was kind of what I was interested in a few years ago and I guess it’s taken me a few years to distil some of those ideas in a more refined kind of way.”

He populates Flatland with miniature objects he makes and sells in limited edition, such as the OK Hand, the Pine Tree and the Rain and Cloud. Many of the objects have a mirror element to them to prompt their owners to take a long hard look at themselves – in a playful way of course.

Tim also makes characters who live in Flatland, including The Founder, a megalomaniac self-help guru who “puffs on cigars and hatches secret plans”, and Miss Flatland who is “happy and always waving”. His latest product is the Vague Timekeeper, described as “more a ticking object than an actual time piece”.

He has no idea who his customer is but you can bet there are avid collectors who snap up his design objects and create their own imaginary lands on their
desks, bookshelves and bedside tables. The products are sold on Tim’s website and at niche stores Pieces of Eight, Craft Victoria and Safari Living in Melbourne.

Exploring all forms of creativity, he also authors, illustrates and self-publishes comic zines that are set in Flatland. Last year he created a 68-page booklet, entitled Everything You Need, in association with the Ian Potter Museum at the University of Melbourne. Tim describes it as a “mock self-help/design manual and general lampooning guide,” full of peculiar design propositions (like the 100 km/ph mobile hand car wash) that might just work.

After spending six years diligently developing his signature aesthetic and working to miniature scale, Tim has relished the opportunity since 2009 to supersize his products through various commissions and exhibitions. He regards his first large-scale commission as one of his greatest career achievements where he was invited to create his hand mirrors to giant scale for Sydney’s 2009 Saturday in Design exhibition. “That was a fantastic opportunity,” he says. “And it was the beginning of getting some other gigs.”

The following year, Australian lighting company Euroluce approached Tim to design a major art piece for its Sydney showroom. “It was a dream gig,” Tim says. “They had spoken to architects and didn’t have any ideas they were attracted to so they asked me to come up with an idea – I came up with a booklet of ideas.” Euroluce chose his ‘The Walk’ proposal, a freestanding escalator on wheels built out of steel and timber that reaches 4 m high and 12 m long and leads to nowhere.

Tim finds the experience of working with corporates satisfying yet also one of his greatest challenges. “I was suddenly dealing with managing directors of large companies and that sort of stuff was a shift in my career. I was working by myself in my little studio and then I was getting flown around and getting paid quite well and it was a really different kind of thing I had to adjust to.” He admits he is still learning the art of negotiating but is becoming more confident as he realises that, as an artist with a unique aesthetic, he has the power to work on his own terms.

He started his design venture in 2003 after graduating with a degree in photography and honours in sculpture from RMIT University, and a degree in fine arts from Monash University. He was inspired to launch his own venture because he craved creative control but also because he didn’t think any design studio would hire him. “I didn’t have that skill set,” he admits. “I came from an arts background. I don’t think I was even savvy with computers when I started.”

He can’t remember his childhood dream but recalls an early event that symbolises his approach to the world. “I remember when I was in Grade 3 taking a pencil sharpener from the class out into the playground and sharpening twigs. I kind of liked the idea of shifting the usage of things.”

Tim also recalls being acutely aware from a young age that he would have to face the consequences of his actions. “It’s like, say if I became an accountant, I would have to go into an office. And that wasn’t going to cut it for me … I really wanted to do something I found engaging.”

Asked why he cares about what he does, Tim explains he wants to be his best. “It makes a difference to me when other people do things well. I appreciate it. And I want to apply that to my life, to be as good as I can be. That’s good for everyone.” Many in the design industry appreciate his brilliance, with his work curated in various exhibitions including last year’s Mis-design exhibition at the Ian Potter Museum of Art and numerous Saturday in Design events, as well as the 2011 Ketel One Commission project and exhibition where Tim scooped first prize.

While Tim admits he often considers giving in when times are tough, he says quitting isn’t an option. “You get to a point where there’s nothing else that you could do,” Tim says as the reason he remains motivated. “It’s too late. To be honest, you have to believe in yourself. I really believe in it. I think if you have that motivation, you know you’re just not going to fail. I just wouldn’t let it happen.”

The future is looking bright because there is still much Tim wants to achieve with Flatland. “I’m starting to animate some of the characters and look into writing dialogue and scripts for the characters and developing them a lot more.” His dream is to make a box set of his zines.

Asked if he considers himself a success, Tim proffers a cautious “Yes,” explaining that his personal measure is all about contentment. “I was walking down the street the other day and I was thinking: ‘I’m really happy within myself. And I love what I do. And I’m very content.’ … Having said that, a couple of weeks ago it might have been a different story. That’s kind of part of life – the peaks and troughs. But it’s really important to recognise when things are going well.”

interview by
Frances Frangenheim

Image via Invisible Children.

A dream unfulfilled, as disappointing as it may be, often simply means that there’s an even wilder dream just waiting to come true. Throughout her childhood, Janelle McCulloch dreamed of becoming an interior designer or architect, regularly letting her boundless creativity loose on her parents’ living room. So when the time came to choose the educational journey she would embark upon to take her through her next stage of life, it was only natural that she settled on architecture. But while her passion was unflappable, her maths skills were less than so, and her foray into the design of the built environment was not to be. While her heart may have been broken, retrospect would soon teach her that particular twist in fate was the beginning of a brilliant career.

Prior to that fateful event, Janelle lived somewhat of a nomadic childhood, moving around country Victoria with her parents who were teachers. Inveterate travellers, her mum and dad instilled a fierce wanderlust in their children from the moment they took their first steps. Roadtrips were the travel method of choice and at age three Janelle was already embarking on an extensive journey around Australia, followed by a similar one across the USA at age eight.

“I grew up in a suitcase in a sense,” Janelle laughs of her upbringing. “We’d been very fortunate because Mum and Dad are such avid travellers and they took us overseas on several trips. But living in the country all of
my childhood, I think I just got to an age where I just wanted to be in the city. As soon as I was 16, I jumped on a plane and went to Denmark as a student with Rotary.”

It was when she returned from Europe, and finished high school that Janelle faced the task of redefining her dreams, having had to make the detour from her planned architecture studies. She decided to move to Sydney, where she landed a job as the assistant to a famous, and somewhat notorious, magazine editor. “She’d just fired two other secretaries and two other ones had been put in hospital for nervous breakdowns,” Janelle recalls. “But I survived it for a year and it was such an extraordinary experience, thrown in with the glamour of Sydney and its media and designers.”

Inspired by the experience, she soon returned to university to study media and communications, which enabled her to return to her childhood dream. “I ended up specialising in design and architecture, so I kind of came around the back door,” Janelle says brightly. “I don’t regret going into media rather than architecture; it ended up being a good thing that I didn’t get into the degree!”

In the decade that followed, her media career took her around the world and she worked as a journalist and magazine editor in both Australia and the UK. She also sojourned to Paris for a time in an attempt to soothe a broken heart – and instead commenced an ardent love affair with the city itself.

When she reached her early thirties, having spent the past 10 years working in media, the dream most present in Janelle’s mind was to pen her first book. Her idea was to create a small coffee table book that profiled hidden beach hideaways around Australia. Armed with an unrelenting passion for her idea, she began pitching her book to publishers, hoping that someone would share her enthusiasm. “No publishers would listen to me – even though I’d had ten years of magazine experience by then,” Janelle admits. “It’s very hard to get your foot in the door as a journalist or author, but you just have to grit your teeth and be tenacious.”

Determined to chase her dream, Janelle persisted, finally finding a publisher who was willing to listen to her pitch. ”She said to me on a Friday morning: ‘I’m going on the first holiday that I’ve had for ten years on Monday; if you can be here today, you’ve got ten minutes with me,’” Janelle recalls. “So I got on a plane that day and flew to see her for ten minutes and pitched my idea.”

Proving that your life path can change in an instant, Janelle’s passion and willingness to seize opportunity triumphed. She walked out with a two-book deal, including her first-ever title, Slow Coasting: Australia’s Most Beautiful Seaside Hideaways.

Combining her passion for design, architecture and travel with her talent for writing – and an endless thirst for inspiration – Janelle has since published 18 books, including 15 architecture, interior design, travel and gardening books, two travel memoirs and a novel. Her latest offering is a soul-stirring insider’s guide to the city she fell head-over-heels for all those years ago. Paris: A guide to the city’s creative heart opens a door to the enchanting yet lesser-known side of the French capital, taking readers on a sumptuous visual journey through each arrondissement and its secrets.

Janelle’s inspiration for the book came from her penchant for trying to inspire others. “The book came about because I’d been to Paris so many times and I’d written two other bestsellers about the city, so people kept asking me about where they should go,” Janelle explains. “It’s really important to share your experiences with people, so I thought it would be great to put it into a book as a kind of illustrated guide to the most creative places in Paris. It’s almost like a visually rich collage of the city.”

Asked what made her fall in love with Paris, Janelle reveals that it was its coquettish ability to never reveal itself completely. “Every time I go to Paris, I think I’ve seen it all and then I always discover something new that becomes my favourite part of the city,” she smiles. “That’s the beauty and hidden treasure of Paris.”

Most of the book’s charming photography is by Janelle’s own hand but, despite her success, she is loath to call herself a photographer. “I consider myself as someone who clicks and hopes the picture turns out!” she laughs. “But you don’t need to be a good photographer; you just need to be passionate about the places that you see, because the photos will take themselves. When you’re travelling and taking photographs, you have to remember what you’re looking at in your mind and your heart. Don’t just view life through a lens – put the camera down and take in where you are and appreciate it.”

Though she still travels up to six months of the year for work, Janelle’s dream now is to convert the old country home (and its three libraries) she owns on the outskirts of Melbourne into a creative retreat, called The Old Library House, for those in search of inspiration. She has also recently launched a blog, A Library of Design, where she shares her daily inspirations and tales from her adventures over the years.

Janelle’s advice for young writers, – or anyone chasing their dream – stems from her own journey in life. “Just take the first step – don’t think of what you have to do,” she says. “It’s really important to live the life that you’ve imagined for yourself. And if it doesn’t happen for you straight away, don’t worry. If you really want to live a certain life, you can.”

INTERVIEW BY
MIKKI BRAMMER
PHOTOGRAPHY BY
CHRIS MIDDLETON
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My parents are from Singapore, but I was actually born in … Ireland and I spent a large chunk of my life there. We moved back to Singapore soon after I was born but then I returned to Ireland for school. It was interesting because it was during the eighties and there weren’t many Chinese kids in Ireland at that time!

As a child, I always thought I would be … a doctor, because my parents were both doctors. But somewhere along the way I realised that it really wasn’t for me. I actually applied to medical school, but three weeks before I was supposed to go I realised that it really wasn’t what I wanted to do. So I applied to law school instead.

I went from being a corporate lawyer to a boutique hotelier because … it was during the last recession and I was getting a little bit bored. I had started as a lawyer during the last Asian crisis and that wasn’t really a good time to be starting because all I was doing at that time was bankruptcy work. It was really depressing for a young lawyer.

I said to myself … this is really not what I signed up for. At the time, there were a lot of depressed properties for sale and there was a particular property in Chinatown – the ‘wrong’ part of Chinatown because it used to be the red-light area – and nobody wanted it.

I bought it for a song … and at the beginning of 2003 started 1929, which, at the time, was Singapore’s first boutique hotel. That hotel really sparked a realisation that boutique hotels could work in Singapore. When we first opened, it wasn’t something that people were familiar with and it took a bit of education. Now I think it’s something that people really appreciate.

People who are very well travelled … are the types who usually stay at our hotels. They’ve really done their own research and it’s often people from the fairly wealthy younger set. We also get some interesting corporate types who are in industries like video-game design and architecture – people like that.

The concept for each boutique hotel we create is … standalone. We don’t have a set approach. What we tend to do is look at each property as it comes along and then work with different designers to see if there’s anything interesting we can do.

The fun part of it is … that at the New Majestic each room is different. We worked with about a dozen artists to execute that. It was a process of curation between the architect, myself and an art curator – and the artists themselves. We had lots of proposals and we got rid of the ones that just weren’t buildable due to physical constraints or cost, and we whittled it down to ones we could execute.

It was also very difficult … because it was building 30 different individual rooms. So we when were designing the Wanderlust, which is 29 rooms, we decided to just have one designer responsible for each floor.

I’d rather work with smaller hotels … because hotels around the 30–50 room mark are ideal for me. The Waterhouse in Shanghai is 19 rooms, but the Town Hall in London is 98 rooms.

The key to good design in a hotel … for me, is something that is a little unusual. I don’t necessarily go to a hotel to find a home away from home, which a lot of people do. When I travel I like to be provoked a little bit and to be put out of my comfort zone so that I look at things anew. It’s always an adventure for me and I like hotels that give me a sense of that, whether it’s the neighbourhood or the design. Of course, it has to be comfortable at the end of the day, but I like something a little bit off the wall.

The Waterhouse is … what the Meatpacking District in New York was 10–15 years ago. It’s at the old docks of Shanghai so it has this tremendous architecture in old industrial warehouses right by the waterfront, but still close to the city. Stuff that you dream of and would usually find in places like New York or London.

One of my most memorable hotel experiences … was in this little hotel in Big Sur in California. I always remember it for its location rather than anything else. You stay in these little chalets overlooking an enormous cliff and it’s amazing.

I imagine that the boutique of hotel of the future will … continue to evolve. People’s tastes change, technology changes and urban renewal changes. Design hotels tend to be in urban renewal areas because those are areas where you can push the boundaries a little bit. They tend to catch the mood of the moment and the design of a particular area. If you’re in a high-end expensive shopping area, chances are that the hotels there is going to be a Ritz-Carlton or something like that.

I‘d love to build a hotel in … New York. It’s just one of those cities that represents a really lively place with a mix of lots of different cultures, leading-edge design, art and fashion. That whole milieu for me is really interesting. One day I’ll hopefully do something there – probably a little bit down the track.

A hotel shouldn’t be … a place where only tourists go. It has to have some local relevance and that’s something we spend a lot of time on. A lot of that comes down to the concept of the hotel’s restaurant being attractive to locals so that people will come to it and so it will always be lively.

People often ask me … if I consider myself to be a success. I have a hard time answering that because I think that, at one level, I’ve been quite successful, but it’s very early days and I’ve certainly had my share of failures too. I certainly don’t see this as the end of the journey, but I don’t know what my measure of success is.

I’ve come to realise that … everything involves some aspect of luck. I think I’ve been lucky in many respects and have just been there at the right time.

I’m inspired by … the early pioneers of boutique hotels. On a personal basis, I’m really inspired by my parents. I guess one of the reasons I really want to succeed is to please my parents. Maybe when I have my own children that motivation might change.

The thing that gets my blood going is … a new experience. Seeing and doing new things – particularly at the start of a new project. I love the energy that comes from when you start putting all the pieces together.

I find peace when I’m … 20,000 feet up in the air in an aeroplane cabin. Travel really is one of the best ways to unwind.

My advice to the world would be to … try new things all the time. Don’t be afraid to try. A lot of people are always afraid to take that first step, but you just need to stick your foot out and see what happens. At a certain stage in life, failure doesn’t really matter. You’ve just got to take it as one of life’s lessons.

INTERVIEW BY
MIKKI BRAMMER

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How did writing this book help you personally reflect on your experience
as a hostage? I found it incredibly helpful. It was quite healing in a way to emotionally relive everything that had happened because, during the experience, I was so devoid of emotion due to the simple fact that I was terrified of having a breakdown. Writing this book as a family and giving it the three perspectives really showed not only what I endured, but also what our whole family went through.

What did you learn about yourself during your time in captivity? I had some real lightbulb moments in captivity. I’ve learnt to be more compassionate, less judgemental and more understanding of people. I can now understand that following your dreams is really important, but you need to think things through before you actually put them into action. People ask me if I hate the guys who took me – if I hold hatred or bitterness towards them. And I learnt that hatred is such a waste of emotion, because it’s such a self-destructive one. What is it going to achieve for me harbouring hatred towards those people?

Why do you feel compelled to tell stories through photographs? I know that I was criticised for going into Somalia and into a dangerous country, but my counter to that is if journalists and humanitarian workers don’t venture into these places, then the rest of us are left ignorant because we aren’t exposed to what’s going on in the world.

Why is it important to foster inquisitiveness? Inquisitiveness leads to knowledge, because it entices you to seek out new things and to learn, and this quest for knowledge is such an important thing. As people, we should be constantly trying to grow our knowledge. For me, that’s why I love to travel.

How did you stay positive throughout your time in Somalia? I was really fortunate to have Amanda there with me, because at the start she pulled me out of a depression. I was spiralling out of control and being quite negative, and she said to me: ‘You’ve got to be a bit more positive than this, buddy, because if you think negatively, that will have a negative outcome.’ We worked as a peer-support group for each other.

What made you not give up? To be honest, it was that I wanted to see my family again. Throughout the whole 15 months, I was consumed by guilt and shame from what I was doing to them. I knew I was potentially going to destroy mum and dad’s retirement by putting them through a trauma because of my own ambition to go into a war zone. What drove me not to give up was definitely the thought of my brothers and sisters and mum and dad.

What is success to you? For me, in the last few years, success would be just getting back to a really good place after going through a massive trauma and coming out of it and not looking at the experience as a bad thing. People always seem to look at trauma and think it’s horrendous, but something I’ve been learning about is the presence of post-traumatic growth.

Where do you find peace in life? When I am at home. I think, before I was in captivity, I really craved being around other people – I didn’t feel comfortable being by myself or with myself. Whereas now, I really love just having my own space in my home reading, gardening and spending some time with my new puppy.

Who inspires you? Around the first three months in captivity, we were sent a care package and inside it were some books. One of the books that I found incredibly inspiring was Nelson Mandela’s Long Walk to Freedom. I think I read it more than 75 times while incarcerated. He went through 27 years of being treated brutally by other human beings, and his whole resolve was to come out of the situation and to not let them break him. He is proof that, if you put your mind to it, you can achieve amazing things.

What are your words of wisdom? Don’t live a buried life. Don’t become so terrified that you’re unable to let go and follow your dreams. Strive to never let yourself get to a point where you feel you’ve wasted your life, because what’s the worst that could happen?

INTERVIEW BY
LIBBY DAVIS

PHOTOGRAPHY by
NIGEL BRENNAN

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The sun-drenched island state of Hawaii has provided the location for the beginnings of many dreams. Honolulu set the scene for a serendipitous evening in 1996 when Peta Fielding, an Australian corporate lawyer who was doing her MBA at the University of Hawaii, first encountered her soon-to-be husband Brennan at a party. “It was a mutual friend’s party,” Peta recalls, laughing. “And I really should have been home studying at the time.”

Brennan, who grew up in Honolulu, had diverged from his initial dreams of becoming an engineer and left his university degree to become a brewmaster. Peta dreamed of running her own company. And so, as the two began their life together, it soon became an unspoken given that they would one day combine their skills to create a brewery together. “I always knew I wanted to run a business,” Peta recalls. “It didn’t matter what the product was, I just wanted to build a business.”

Initially the duo took over the running of a brewery that Brennan was working at in Hawaii, giving them hands-on experience in the vagaries of running their own business. But eventually their hearts yearned to return to Australia to make an impact on a market that had remained unchanged for decades. “Living in America, we knew what potential there was for the market in Australia and we just desperately wanted to come back and do it,” Peta says. “A great opportunity came up for us to sell our interest in the brewery there and move back to Australia and put our plan into action.”

Following a stage of intensive planning, Peta and Brennan launched their company, Burleigh Brewing Co., in 2006 before finally selling their first beer in August of 2007.The first brand to emerge from the Gold Coast-based brewery was Duke. “The reason why we began with the Duke brand was because, traditionally, a duke is the independent leader of a region – not the king, not taking over the world, he’s just all about the local region. And in the German tradition of lager brewing, they always used to say that beer shouldn’t travel more than a one-day horse-and-cart ride from the brewery because beer is meant to be fresh and, once it goes into the bottle, it doesn’t get better. So we wanted to be very traditional with that brand and basically say: ‘You’ve got to be here to have it.’”

They went so far as to name the distribution area for the beer ‘Dukeland’, cheekily informing people via the bottle labels that if they didn’t live in Dukeland, they’d need to move in order to experience the coveted ale. “We still protect that brand and that concept very fiercely,” Peta says proudly. “But we were getting so many enquiries from interstate and we kept saying no to them. So we started to think that it was a bit silly from a business sense!”

Refusing to budge on the philosophy of the Duke brand, Peta and Brennan decided that the solution was to create other brands that could satisfy the demand for their craft beers further afield. Other brews that
have since joined the Burleigh Brewing Co. stable include the moustachioed ‘HEF’, the ‘28 Pale Ale’, a full-flavoured lager known as ‘Bighead’ and, in addition to several others, the tongue-in-cheek ‘My Wife’s Bitter’, which Peta coined after Brennan had named beers after their two children, Daisy and Skagen, but not his wife.

“The story behind each of the beers is so genuine that it naturally leads us somewhere,” Peta explains of the distinct branding of Burleigh Brewing Co.. “It’s not like we’re sitting in a room putting a beer in a bottle and then thinking of a label. There’s so much that goes into it that it just has its own story. With the 28 Pale Ale, that style of beer, in a sense, really gave some momentum to the craft beer revolution in America in the mid-seventies. The story for that branding came from a period of perfect surf for 28 days at Burleigh Head in 1975 and that whole era just had a sense of genuine, laid-back lifestyle, which is what that type of beer should be.”

As for their niche market, Peta defines it as anyone who will appreciate their beer. “That’s the cool thing about craft beer, it really seems to see no bounds,” she laughs. “You don’t need to be a beer expert or be able to talk about the beer; you just need to want to try something, explore some flavours and like it. I guess other people are attracted to our beer because it’s independent, or because it doesn’t have any preservatives, or because there are real people behind it. We brew six different beers in our regular line-up, knowing that everyone has different tastes.”

Amongst the challenges that they have faced along the way, Peta says that the actual setting up of the business was one of the most difficult. “It was the fear in thinking: ‘Gosh, can we really do this?’” she reveals. “I suppose having a really good plan beforehand helped us overcome that, but actually taking the step and putting the plan into action was massive. The thing that really got us to do it in the end was when we read Richard Branson’s book, Screw It, Let’s Do It. We were planning so much, trying to get the plan perfect and in the end we just said: ‘Well, screw it, let’s do it!’”

Five years later, and the two still find great joy in walking past a bottleshop or bar and seeing their beer in a bottle, knowing the sheer effort that was required to get that bottle there from its very origins as just a simple plan on paper. “We’re so lucky to be able to do this together and that was very much a part of our plan,” Peta says.

The pair’s mutual admiration is unmistakable. “Brennan inspires me because he’s so passionate,” Peta smiles. “After 20 years of brewing he’ll still walk in the morning after a brew and see that the beer is fermenting like it should and skip around the tank in excitement! I think we inspire each other in that sense.”

The fact that they feel such excitement for the product is undoubtedly a secret to the duo’s success. “We almost feel like we’re cooking dinner for people each day,” Peta laughs. “We’re making something and we want them to enjoy it – unfortunately we don’t get to sit there with them all the time. But from the feedback we get back, we know they’re enjoying it and that little things like our labels make people smile. That really puts a spring in your step.”

Revealing the couple’s love for the ocean, the brewery itself is dotted with surfing memorabilia. “That’s us really; it’s who we are,” Peta affirms. “Brennan came from the ocean, in a sense, and when we moved to Australia, there was no question as to where we were going to be. We love getting out on the water; it’s a whole other world out there and it’s where I find peace.”

As someone who finds peace with her life in general, Peta’s words of wisdom for the world are simple. “Be yourself,” she says. “Figure out who you are, what you want to do and what you want your life to be.”

INTERVIEW BY
MIKKI BRAMMER
PHOTOGRAPHY BY
CARL LINDGREN

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Image: BZCT, Numbered edition of 500, dimension 24 x 18″, lasercut on 100% cotton paper, price $150

Growing up in Maui, what was your childhood dream?
I always wanted to live in a place that I loved and have work that was my passion. I feel very fortunate.

Were your parents an influence on your career and the way you live your life?
Yes, particularly my mother; she had a strong sense of aesthetics. She grew up close to New York City and loved fashion. She taught me to surround myself with beautiful things and she always made our home beautiful. As an interior designer, her passion was, and still is, textiles. That was a great influence.

How did you and Lyndie come to start ACACIA?
Starting a swimwear line has always been a dream of both of ours. Lyndie and I have been close friends for the last ten years and we work so well together it just seemed perfect. I understood and knew the design aspect of it and we just thought we would learn as we go and grow together.

What makes ACACIA distinct from other swimwear labels?
The quality and cut. Its seamless comfort with no added hardware, its custom prints, signature printed lining, and low-cut Italian and flirty Brazilian fit, which define Hawaii – though we have more covering bottoms as well. My friend recently said how she loves throwing on her ACACIA because it makes her feel like she is throwing on an outfit to go to the beach. It’s fashionable while still being practical and comfortable.

What do you love about designing swimwear over other forms of fashion?
It is very personal to me because I grew up on a tropical island and wearing a swimsuit was the everyday norm, just like wearing a t-shirt and jeans. It just made sense.

What fuels your creativity when coming up with the concept for a new collection?
The world, travel, different cultures, nature. I see patterns and colours in everything, from manmade things to hiking in the woods, walking on the beach or the streets of New York City.

You say ACACIA encompasses the lifestyle of the ‘Gypsetter’. Can you explain what this means to you?
It’s a person who feels confident wearing ACACIA. She breaks out of the norm to experience life, and learn about other places and cultures off the beaten path. She lives an authentic life. It’s not a word I just throw around, it has true meaning for me as I was raised this way.

What has been the greatest challenge you’ve had to overcome to get to where you are today?
Losing a dear friend and the love of my partner’s life. Seeing her heartbroken and pushing forward was really hard, but it was my goal to keep ACACIA going for the both of us. People might have thought that we had a lot of capital to start ACACIA, but we didn’t. I have worked very hard (sometimes 24/7) for everything that we have today.

What has been your greatest achievement?
I get great satisfaction when I hear from women that they have finally found a bathing suit that they love to wear – and no more saggy butts!

How would you define success?
I define success as when you can follow your heart and make a living from it – well, that is a double bonus. I never want to feel like I made it to the top.
I always want to feel like I am striving to do my best in designing ACACIA, and in both in my professional and personal lives.

What advice would you give other fashion designers wanting to emulate your success?
Love what you are designing, believe in it and be prepared to work very hard. It is your baby!

What do you love about what you do?
Even though I work very hard, and can feel quite tired and stressed at times, somehow it doesn’t feel like work because I love what I am doing. It is the creative process.

Who inspires you, personally  or professionally?
My mother is my main inspiration, professionally and personally.  She has such a great eye and I can talk to her about anything. The Olsen sisters also are an inspiration professionally because they are exactly my age and have such a great sense of style and accomplishment with The Row and Elizabeth and James. My friends inspire me and so do the people who help me and work beside me, to make ACACIA the best we can. They are all amazing people.

What was the last thing that made you smile?
That’s a hard question to answer. I feel like I smile a lot!

What inspires you?
Life, Bali, Maui, fashion, travel and other cultures.

What has been your most memorable travel experience?
It was the first trip to Bali that Lyndie and I took together to work on ACACIA. It was just the two of us without the boyfriend/husband, which gave us a sense of freedom. We had no obligations other than ACACIA work and just being girls. We had the best time together.

Where do you find peace in life?
The ocean, beach, surfing, yoga and my home, Maui.

What is the world you imagine?
With so much going on now politically, economically and environmentally, I wish we lived in a world where people were accountable for their actions and greed was not even possible. I imagine a world that feels more in balance with the natural world.

What is your dream now?
To continue to grow, be successful and give back to the cultures that inspire ACACIA.

What is something you would like to learn how to do?
I’ve always wanted to try dirt biking. Every time I have the opportunity to I am somewhere else in the world, but I will learn how someday.

Do you believe in a god and, if so, which one?
I was raised to believe that God is in everything that is alive – in you and me in the natural world. And that we are all equal. I don’t believe that there is one god and one religion. I believe in spirituality.

What are your words of wisdom?
It all comes down to love, kindness, and respect for each other and this planet.

Interview by Mikki Brammer

Positive and forthcoming, 26-year-old Megan Samardin explains that capturing family history is essential when maintaining culture, heritage and a sense of self.  She is truly grateful for her family’s  living memories, and she treasures the astonishingly astute mind of her great grandmother, Granny Flora. “It’s important to know about your family,” she shares. “Granny Flora can tell me stories from her grandmother who experienced first contact up in North Queensland. Knowing where you’ve come from gives you a sense of belonging. Given Australia’s past and our country’s history, it’s important to remember what some families have been through and for us to learn about others.”

When Megan holds court on stage, accompanied by the subtle strains of guitar, her creative song cycle comes alive, and her emotive voice shares tales from the far reaches of North Queensland, and her family’s experience with the Stolen Generation. Co-written by composer and musician John Rodgers, the collaborative nature of Little Birung highlights Megan’s appreciation for teamwork in the arts industry. “It’s exciting to link in with other creative people,” she is quick to share. “I can learn so much from people like John Rodgers, and he can learn from me. When you’re surrounded by creative people, it gives you the drive to keep coming up with new ideas.”

Little Birung beautifully fuses gospel tunes, ballads, dulcet lullabies and rock. Megan aspires to share with her audiences her own love of music and, through performing an amalgamation of genres, she hopes to connect with each audience member in a unique way. Storytelling is an essential part of her live performance, and Megan reveres music’s role in keeping history alive. “You can evoke a lot of memories with music,” she says. “Alongside the words and the way I sing, the music itself and the melody brings my show to life. Music really is the universal language.”

Through her research and writing, Megan has experienced a humbling sense of self-reflection. “In the last couple of weeks, it has really hit me that I’m more like my great grandmother than I ever realised,” she reveals. “I can really relate to her on a personal level. She was 70 when I was born and I really didn’t get along with her. She was scary! But now that I’m an adult, I can talk to her with confidence.”

Megan emphasises the importance for young women to connect with strong female rolemodels. “I really believe that women can do anything!” she gushes. “It’s really important to have strong females to look up to. It gives you a really solid grounding for a good family unit.”

Undoubtedly, she is a firm believer in employing positive thinking in the face of challenges. “Sometimes staying motivated is hard, I’ll admit that,” she says. “But you’ve just got to stay positive. As a performer, I’m bringing joy to other people’s lives, which is pretty good, and I’m giving back to them. I’m making someone out there happy, so that makes me happy.”

Megan is quick to impart advice for aspiring young performers. “Respect your elders,” she encourages. “I’ve had a lot of people who have helped me, and without them I wouldn’t be where I am.”

She urges all dreamers to chase their passion with unrelenting drive. “If you want something badly, you’ll work hard for it. You won’t even know you’re doing it. It won’t be a chore to you. You’ll just do it,” she asserts. “Keep practising, keep developing your skills. Never be afraid to ask questions, never be fearful of trying something new.”

Megan is quick to pay homage to her immediate family, and she is grateful to have the support of her parents and younger brother. “They are the first people I turn to when bouncing ideas around. They’re very influential, truly supportive, and always encouraging.”

She counts herself lucky that she has the opportunity to continue learning everyday and encourages curious minds to embrace any form of education available. “Keep learning, everyday,” she says, her voice brimming with passion. “It’s important to push yourself to keep learning something new throughout your life. Because each day something will happen that can teach you something new, or someone can teach you something, and then you can teach someone else. And life changes and, as such, life goes on.”

Interview by Libby Davis

It was Stephen’s broken leg that provided the catalyst for his and Sarah’s foray into ice-cream. When they went travelling through Europe and Northern Africa soon after they were married, their intention was to while away most of their time as ski instructors on the alpine slopes of The Continent. When the injury forced the couple to change plans, an opportunity arose to travel to Scotland to work as cooks in the kitchen of a majestic old castle. Serendipitously, the castle’s head chef harboured a passion for ice-cream making, and she shared her love with the young duo, schooling them in the rare culinary art.

“We were living in a fabulous place that had lots of fresh fruit and berries from the gardens, so we would use them to flavour the ice-cream we were making,” Sarah recalls fondly. “While we were travelling, we had spent a lot of time in markets in Portugal, Morocco and France. That was way before people were into regional food, but we got a wonderful sense of the flavours that you get when you go to a market that is sourcing local food.”

After also spending time working in France where they continued to perfect their ice-cream-making skills, the young couple finally returned to Australia to Gundowring in northern Victoria, to the farm where Stephen had grown up. There they continued to make ice-cream for their family, influenced by the use of the local flavours available in the area.

When they later purchased the farm from Stephen’s family, the two began to dabble in dairy farming as a kind of hobby. “When we first bought the farm, we didn’t think we’d become dairy farmers, but it had a dairy already on it so we bought a few cows just to get us going,” Sarah recalls. “We were also breeding Herefords, but we found the dairy side of things really interesting. We became really fascinated with producing milk and growing grass, knowing that what you fed the cows had such an impact on the quality and the quantity of the milk.”

Driven by their passion and insatiable curiosity, Sarah and Stephen soon found themselves immersed as professional dairy farmers, and sold all of their beef cattle to concentrate on their new vocation. In the early 1980s, they built one of the first rotary dairies and soon began to realise that what happened beyond the farm gate had as much impact on their livelihood as what they did on the farm. Sarah, whose background was in microbiology, began to study the intricacies of cow nutrition and milk manufacturing in an attempt to understand how they could run their farm as efficiently and ethically as possible. When the time came that Stephen felt compelled to find an alternative challenge to milking cows, the couple considered ways of diversifying their activities. First they considered growing green tea, travelling to Japan to study it in detail, but they soon realised that the solution lay in what they already knew so well. In 2001, they decided to return to their love of ice-cream.

The following January they travelled to Penn State University in the USA to hone their skills at the institution’s intensive ice-cream course (yes, they do exist). Upon returning to Australia, they set about creating the right combination of ingredients that would provide the base for their ice-cream, inspired by the recipe they had learned in Europe (an artful blend of egg yolks, cream, sugar and fresh fruit). Next came the task of constructing ice-cream-making facilities on their farm and developing a unique brand that would appeal to discerning ice-cream connoisseurs. And finally, perhaps most importantly, they needed to conjure the flavours with which to infuse their ice-cream.

“A lot of our flavours come from local people who grow them,” Sarah explains of their technique in creating their ambrosial selection. “We have two local farmers who grow our berries and one of them, Henry, came to us recently and said: ‘I’ve got gooseberries this year.’ So we tried gooseberry ice-cream and I loved it. We’ve also got chestnut growers in a nearby valley and we’re actually cooking up chestnuts as we speak! We’re poaching them in milk, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg and all spice in preparation for our ice-cream plum puddings. And that’s all because we have these wonderful local chestnuts. There’s also a lovely family who grows really red rhubarb that we use. It’s great for local communities to have businesses that develop and encourage other local ingredients to be grown.”

And it’s not only local growers who help contribute to Gundowring Fine Foods’ gustatory creativity. “We’ve got some wonderful local chefs who we really enjoy working with and they’ll come up with things,” Sarah continues. “That’s where our licorice flavour came from, because a local chef wanted to serve licorice ice-cream with a lemon tart. Even the licorice that we use is local Junee Licorice.”

The licorice ice-cream was awarded Dairy Australia’s Grand Champion Dairy Product 2010, while Gundowring itself was hailed ‘Best Dairy’ in the Delicious. Produce Awards 2011. Amongst the more curious flavours that have graced the Gundowring menu are Beetroot, Gorgonzola, Shiraz and Black Pepper, Milawa Mustard (served with gazpacho) and Green Olive with a hint of anchovy. “Sometimes flavours don’t work,” Sarah admits. “People will come to us with something but because we don’t use any colour or flavour enhancers – natural or otherwise – sometimes the flavour just doesn’t work in ice-cream.”

Sarah also reveals that she and Stephen have been surprised by their company’s rapid success, with their products now stocked across Australia, including at Sourced Grocer in Brisbane. “We’ve grown much faster than we anticipated, which was a bit of a shock,” she reveals. “We were working very long hours, which we hadn’t quite intended and we’ve had to grow and expand. But one of the challenges of that is that we want
to continue to make the sort of ice-cream that we make in small batches and we don’t want to become too big. We’re not about trying to make the most ice-cream.”

Fortunately, they can keep that growth in the family for now, and the couple’s son James has recently returned to Gundowring with his partner Iris and baby Oliver (who, as the third generation, has become a resident taste-tester) to help with operations. Their other son, Alex, who works as a social scientist in Melbourne, also returns to the farm some weekends to lend a hand.

Living in the rural paradise that they do, Sarah says that it’s easy to find peace in her surroundings. “As we speak, I’m sitting in the sun and listening to the birds singing,” she marvels. “I think that sometimes finding peace is just living in the moment and appreciating what’s right there. But if you couldn’t find peace at Gundowring, you’d never find it anywhere!”

Interview by Mikki Brammer

Sex is something that lingers on the mind of Hazel Dooney, regularly. Her provocative works of art, often labelled ‘shock pop’, have made her one of Australia’s most debated and successful modern artists. Perhaps stemming from her disappointment in the inhibited conformity of her own generation, Hazel’s works confront viewers in a way that makes them consider their own relationship to sex and its place in the public realm. Her 2008 solo show, entitled PORNO, featured a collection of black-and-white photographs depicting various forms of sexual activity – including cunnilingus and masturbation – featuring the artist herself. While many artists use themselves as the subject for their art, few expose themselves in such a manner.

It is this fearlessness and self confidence that has impelled Hazel’s career along its rapid trajectory. Her willingness to question, to debate, to challenge the status quo, and defy conventional society figureheads within the art world has incited both endearment and anger. Regardless, it has made her 2005 decision to shun traditional gallery representation and take the reins of her own commercialisation, an undeniable success.

In early 2011, Hazel was placed at number 41 in the Australian Art Auction Record’s list of the top 50 most traded artists by value cross Australia and New Zealand. Not only was she placed just below the legendary Lloyd Rees, but she was also one of the few women, and artists under 35, to grace the illustrious line-up. And as she attempts to pioneer a new paradigm for the sale and commercialisation of art in Australia, Hazel continues to play her role as pop-cultural provocateur with aplomb.

My artistic style described in ten words is … ‘to art today what The Ramones were to music in 1975’. Or so the New York-based ‘No Wave’ filmmaker Amos Poe wrote about me recently. And yeah, that’s 11 words, not ten.

As a child, I dreamed of … being elsewhere. The sparse, empty stretch of rural Queensland in which I grew up had its attractions but I longed for the exotic – Paris, Marrakesh, Istanbul, Shanghai. Think (as I did, even then) the adventurous Isabelle Eberhardt, with paintbrushes.

My father … always encouraged me to take no shit from anyone. Especially men. He was a strong influence on my art, turning me onto Vampirella, Barbarella and other, intimidatingly strong, hyper-sexualised 1960s comic-book heroines when I was at an impressionable age.

My mother … is my antithesis.

The first art piece I remember seeing was … probably in a book. I can’t really remember what it was. I had no access to ‘real’ art until I was in my late teens. Jackson Pollock’s Blue Poles was the first I saw on a gallery wall, and it altered my way of looking, not just at art, but at the whole world.

An experience that made me cry was … the death of my father, earlier this year. I found it hard to stop for a long time.

Success to me is … just as Freud (Sigmund, not Lucian) says it is for all artists: fame, money, and endless opportunities for sex and revenge.

The greatest challenge I’ve faced to get where I am today is … being relentlessly truthful about what I share of myself in public. Unfortunately, it provides a lot of fodder to an art business that thrives on bitchy gossip and innuendo.

I’ll never give up because … I have no choice. I am driven to make art. Besides, as the legendary tightrope walker Karl Wallenda once put it: ‘Life is on the wire. The rest is just waiting.’

I’m most proud of … having achieved a career that is independent of the traditional commercial gallery system. Oh, and teaching some of the limp-dicked, late-middle-aged, male bullies who operate within it not to get in my f—ing way.

My imagination is fuelled by … sex. Rather more than I would like it to be, but there you go.

A person who inspires me is … the French dancer, Sylvie Guillem. She is intensely disciplined, physically tough, expressive, fearless, and always performs without a net.

The last time I was surprised was … when I was ‘recognised’ by women at a nail shop in a suburban mall. It was my first real brush with tabloid-style celebrity.

I will never be represented by a gallery because … they’re a doomed anachronism. It’s not that I won’t exhibit in them – they are, after all, nice, blank spaces. But I won’t ever accede to the exploitative terms under which most operate; terms that effectively indenture an artist (and a hefty cut of their income) to a dealer and his cronies.

The first thing I do when starting a new artwork is … think. A lot.

My favourite sound is … hard to pin down: I was going to say ‘surf breaking on sand’ but then I was reminded of the intensifying, breathless gasps of a woman nearing orgasm. Love that.

I am inspired everyday by … the relentless process of drawing and painting, of producing the work. No matter what.

I find peace when … I sleep. Well, sometimes. I’ve made no secret of my mental illness and for long periods the notion of ‘peace’ is abstract, at best.

I would like to learn how to … be calmer, more tolerant and understanding. Then I think, ‘Oh, f— it’.

Now, my dream is … to spend the next few years living in some of the places I dreamed of as a kid. Particularly Paris and Marrakesh.

If I could share one piece of wisdom with the world, it would be … something the novelist, JG Ballard, wrote: ‘Never confuse the map with the territory.’

Sex … I like complexity.

Flesh … Best experienced  from within.

God … If my belief in one was measured on a sliding scale between ‘being’ and ‘nothingness’, it’d be maxed
at ‘nothingness’.

Love … For me, uncommon and always singular.

Book … Indispensable and never digital. I love the tactility, smell and clutter of them.

Mortality … My own is always in mind.

Interview by Mikki Brammer