By Samiro Douglas
 
WORDS such as fantastic, amazing and DEADLY filled the space as the doors opened after each session. Wide smiles and a vibe of delight and creativity was everywhere.  It was exactly what all of us on the committee had hoped for. 
 
The presenters told stories of hardship, inspiration, and dreams.  Sailing the wild seas, of creating new characters out of past life moments, the history of the harsh practices used in the Parramatta women’s prison still repeating itself in our present day treatment of asylum seekers. 

 

​Dr Laura Brearley

THE whale migration season off Phillip Island has begun again and the texts have started to arrive:

• Wednesday May 29, 9.45am. First Island whales this season. Two whales off San Remo jetty, heading to Cape Woolamai.
• Tuesday, June 4, 3.31pm. One humpback sighted 1.4 kms of the Nobbies, heading towards Pyramid Rock.
• Friday, June 7, 10.48am. One humpback whale, close to shore at Cape Woolamai.

​We live at Cape Woolamai and although I was deep in work when this third message came through, I answered what I felt was a call to action. When I arrived at Anzacs Beach at Cape Woolamai, the car park was full. A crowd of people was standing looking out to sea. There were families with children. People who had never met before were talking and laughing together. Just as I had, everyone there had dropped what they were doing when that text came through. Excitement was in the air and it felt like a shared experience of connection with the whales, as well as with one another.​

By Catherine Watson

THE EYES are the hardest. Phil Henshall has looked at lots of photos of Malcolm Bain but the eyes are eluding him.

“Mmmm,” says Malcolm’s mother, Annie Bain. She doesn’t want to discourage the artist but the eyes aren’t quite right.

“When Malcolm spoke to you, he often looked over the top of his glasses,” she says. “And his eyes twinkled.”

Glasses … twinkle. They’re the clues Phil needs. He has another go. Malcolm is standing in Annie’s kitchen holding a plate of sushi. He’s looking at someone to his left, out of the frame. His glasses are half way down his nose and he’s deep in thought.

By Kirsty Mawer
 
HAVE you heard the one about the San Remo Cork Club? Or the local Robin Hood Club?
 
You’ll learn about the clubs, and much more, at Movie Matinee: San Remo Stories, later this month. Narrated by locals, the 10 mini movies – each four to six minutes long – provide an entertaining insight into events, practices, and people that have shaped the San Remo.
 
We’ve sub-titled the matinee “Probable Truths or Plausible Lies - You be the Judge”. That’s because the movies are based on people’s memories and someone’s view of one thing could be quite different from someone else’s view.​

With its engaging characters, dark mystery and a 1960s small town setting, Jasper Jones is a rich work for the stage, writes director Sue Lindsay

​By Sue Lindsay

I WAS having a conversation with my mother recently about head lice. When we were kids, she was horrified when we got the nits. “It was the Butts kids who spread them,” she said. The Butts was a place on the edge of the rubbish tip where these children lived in a house without electricity or running water. After the nits alarm, they came to school with their heads shaved, isolating them and confirming their role in the community as the persons to blame. Sixty years on, those poor Butts kids remain in my memory.

Jasper Jones is a teenager who is the scapegoat in the (fictitious) mining town of Corrigan. Set in the 1960s, the play reveals dark secrets behind the windows of respectable families, and evil intentions behind the smiles of respected adults. An old man with a car wreck in his front yard is the bogey man who grows large in the minds of the young people playing out all their fears and horror fantasies.

By Ellen Hubble
 
AT THE age of 80, Wonthaggi artist Kathy West held her first solo exhibition at ArtSpace Gallery. At 90, she has just launched her first book.
 
Covering almost a century, Reflections is a collection of Kathy’s memories of horse and cart days, of new frontiers in Papua New Guinea, of riots in Malaysia and the rag trade in Australia.

Following a successful concert here in 2018, the Celtic band John John Festival return to launch their 2019 tour and new album in Wonthaggi this month.
 
Arguably Japan’s most popular celtic band, John John Festival have continued to delight and thrill audiences around the globe with their exuberant and joyful Celtic grooves. The band members are Mana Okubo (John) on fiddle and vocals, Hirofumi Nakamura (Annie) on guitar and vocals, and Toshi Bodhran on bodhran and tambourine.​