The final curtain
Jan 16, 2026 - Gill Heal has left the theatre but a touch of magic remains. By Catherine Watson
Jan 16, 2026 - Gill Heal has left the theatre but a touch of magic remains. By Catherine Watson
 Chris Davies with Charlie (left), Meg, Willow and Drift Chris Davies was a horse woman through and through … until the day Charlie the pet kelpie decided to herd some sheep.
 Reg Toull and companion. Photo: Terry Francis By Gill Heal
IT’S THAT kind of morning in Coronet Bay. Clear sky, light breeze off the water, sun warm on your back. 7am: dog walking time. Joy Button and her border collie are heading home up Cutty Sark Road. Four days to go to Coronet Bay’s 11th annual Christmas lunch for people who’d like to be among friends. She’s mentally ticking off jobs to be done by the planning group. Sixty diners coming from as far away as Nyora and Clyde plus 16 volunteers. Ham, turkey, Christmas pudding, pavlova and berries ... $12 all in. And a takeaway box for the mince pies, shortbread, rumballs, Christmas cake. All home-baked fare. Walking down the hill towards her is Reg Toull, his Jack Russell pulling at the lead to get to the water. Reg is close to 90 and he’s a bit of a legend.  Artist Tom Murray-White has learned to turn off the part of his brain that makes words. By Gill Heal
MEET Tom Murray-White, street artist, the VCAL teacher who’s collaborated with local artists and young people over eight years to bring Wonthaggi its laneway art. “A couple of those students are doing amazingly original work,” he says. “That’s rare!” Or Tom Murray-White, twice winner of the Great Southern Portrait Prize, having fun challenging the conventions of portrait making. One of his entries, titled “I Love Claudia”, was a glass jar full of tin lids each with a drawing of his wife. Tom never signs his work. He likes the fact that the judges have no idea who the makers are. There’s a third, very different art maker. This is Tom Murray-White: visionary painter, whose work is to be exhibited in Wonthaggi from next weekend.  After 70 hours recording three novels for Audible, Fiona Macleod welcomes the chance to read to a live Bass Coast audience. By Gill Heal
WHEN Melbourne actor Fiona Macleod was invited to read for the latest “Readings at the Old Dalyston Deli” event, she was quick to say yes. She’d recently spent 70 hours recording three novels for Audible, the world’s largest publisher of audiobooks, and relished the work. But she’d read at Dalyston before and she knew that narrating a short 20-minute story to a live Bass Coast audience brought a different kind of pleasure. Nominated for Green Room awards for her stage work, Fiona appreciates the lure of theatre and film. But she and her colleagues are also aware of the unique satisfactions of book narration. An audience creates a well of silence. The narrator reads into this receptive space. “One of my favourite things I get to do is read stories aloud,” says Fiona. By Gill Heal
I’VE been thinking about values and patriotism and I think I know what our prime minister means. We’re a first world country; we’re out in front of the pack. And we should be proud of it, not doubt it.  By Gill Heal
DONALD Trump was elected six months ago and we’re still here. We’ve watched the world’s most powerful leader spin fantasy, insult and demean, and legitimise ignorance. And the sky hasn’t fallen in, yet. Life goes on. But there’s a fallout. The quality of public debate is already jeopardised. We are increasingly unable to filter the information that comes from a plethora of voices. Trump just gives the stamp of approval to our worst behaviours. So we become more cynical, less trusting, more willing to settle for arguments that confirm what we already believe. We choose to believe that things are simple: black and white, good and bad, us and them. It’s acceptable to jeer.  Peter Brooks valued music and theatre almost as much as medicine. By Gill Heal
THERE’S a memorable moment in To Kill a Mockingbird when Atticus Finch sits, defeated, in the emptying courtroom. As he rises to exit, the black townsfolk in the balcony stand as one. “Miss Jean Louise, stand up,” says one of them, nudging Scout. “Your father’s passing.” It was a little like that last week when more than 300 people pressed into the Wonthaggi town hall to celebrate the life of Dr Peter Brooks. There was the same sense of deference, the same need to mark a significant event. Hundreds of people: family, friends, former patients, people from all over. There to celebrate the life of a good man and to reflect on its significance. Peter Brooks was at home in his adopted Wonthaggi. The son of a miner, he’d grown up in a Welsh mining town. He knew about work and its value.  Tracey and Ross Denby want their new cafe to feed the soul as wellas the body. By Gill Heal
PAUL’S Table is the stuff of dreams. Or, to be more precise, of faith. It’s an unlikely idea that’s been forged by life experience and finally made real, here in Bass Coast. Run by Tracey and Ross Denby, Paul’s Table is an unusual cafe which opened at the Bass Valley Community Centre last Sunday. Paul was their son, who died in 1999 aged 13. The journey here has taken years. First and most profoundly, there was Paul’s debilitating disease and their gratitude for the times people opened their hearts to a beloved son and accepted his difference. Like the owners of Loch’s Stockyard Tea Rooms, who responded to a boy lying on the floor as if it was the most natural thing in the world.  Gardening taught Carolyn Rowson to understand the seasons of her own life. By Gill Heal
IN 2002 Carolyn Rowson was a city woman running a childcare centre. On stress leave from work and holidaying in Inverloch with her mother, she saw an ad in a real estate window. The photo showed an old house in a bare paddock in a place called Kongwak, “The Valley of Peace”. It was the first house she’d seen that didn’t need a lot of work done. She took it. For two to three years it was her holiday house, a retreat. “But ultimately,” she says, “I realised I didn’t want to go back to the city.” The twin towers had fallen not long before. “You could feel things weren’t right with the world. The systems weren’t working.” Kongwak had become a kind of sanctuary.  Little Shop of Horrors was the Wonthaggi Theatrical Group’s first blockbuster. This time it’s being performed as it was written, with a small ensemble, and in the group’s new home. By Gill Heal
WHEN Karen Milkins Hendry took her proposal for the cult classic Little Shop of Horrors to the Wonthaggi Theatre Group in 2006, few punters would have backed her chances. At the time, the risks to this cash-strapped organisation seemed enormous. There wasn’t a recent history of large-scale musicals in the arts centre, nor of big attendances. “It got up by one vote,” says Karen. Since then, the WTG trajectory has been upward and out: a major musical every year; sell-out audiences, prestigious theatrical awards, training of every kind, investment in youth and now, amazingly, an all-purpose home of their own. “Home” these days is a very new, very big tin shed at the State Coal Mine Historic Reserve. “Humble on the outside and incredibly resourced on the inside,” says Karen. “It has an art deco foyer attached, with a performance/rehearsal space that allows us to replicate the performance space at the Arts Centre.” Director Josh Gardiner leaves us no place in hide in his production of The Diary of Anne Frank.  From left, Albert Dussel (Brad Beach), Peter Van Daan (Adam Turner), Mrs Van Daan (Jaz Kaye), Anne Frank (Cluanie Swanwick), Mr Van Daan (Adam Turner), Edith Frank (Bron Kalos), Margot Frank (Jaz Hendry) and Otto Frank (Simon Furniss). Photo: Geoff Glare  Zena Benbow, third from right, at Pioneer Bay’s Aussie Day Bash. By Gill Heal
SHE was a city girl until the time she dated a West Gippsland dairy farmer. The relationship fizzled out but her love for the area remained. Since then, Zena Benbow has never tired of being up close to seasonal change. She says you can’t appreciate the seasons in the city. Working in Cowes as a computer technologist three days a week she’s spoilt for choice – the mainland is so different from the island. “Then coming home at the end of the day, you turn into Kallay Drive and see the sunlight dancing across the water; it’s something to behold.”  By Gill Heal
THE first thing you notice when you walk in is the top hat and bowler. On display in a glass case, the bowler is labelled Christies of London; the top hat, 100 years old, is made by Woodrow and Sons of Piccadilly. These hats are beautiful, deeply black, assured. They make you want to do something elegant with your feet and a cane. “I’ve always loved hats,” Darren says, explaining his collection and his decision to sell it. “It’s sad that they’re hidden away. They should be out there for people to enjoy.” Darren George Hair is tucked away in a side street in Sunderland Bay. Booming Bass Strait is just down the end of the road. In April he and his partner Danny will have been here for six years. Darren is actually Darren George Talbot, a Newhaven boy who went to Newhaven Primary and later Wonthaggi Tech because he was always good with his hands and the tech also offered instrumental music. He played trombone for six years in the Wonthaggi Citizens” Band.  Mariamma Cheriyan: “If I can achieve all this starting with so little, what can ordinary Australians achieve?” By Gill Heal
ELEVEN years ago, Mariamma Cheriyan arrived in Australia with little more than a passport and a certificate of nursing. She had limited English, almost no money, no job and she’d come alone. Left behind in India were her husband and three young daughters, the youngest just six and four years old. While her agent submitted her resume to several hospitals, she completed a nursing registration course and waited. A hospital in a weirdly named country town called Wonthaggi was the first to offer her an interview. When they followed up with the offer of a job, she accepted instantly.  Maddy Harford and Harry Freeman didn't expect their new lives to be quite so interesting. By Gill Heal
THE “FOR SALE, 4 ACRES” sign was on West Creek Road, 10 minutes north of Wonthaggi. A nondescript driveway took off up a hill, just car tracks really. They’d been ignoring it for a couple of years. Maddy Harford and Harry Freeman were fired by a shared dream – to retire to a rural setting and live sustainably. They’d started actively looking around 2002. It helped when Maddy’s job in the public service was restructured and she made a decision to set up her own consultancy business. “It freed us up to search more widely,” she says.  Rowena Wallace: the boundary between acting and real life isn’t always clear. By Gill Heal
WHEN a worried Mrs Wallace took her shy and introverted daughter to the doctor, she couldn’t have guessed how transformative the cure would be. “Get her to join an amateur theatre group,” the GP advised. Mrs Wallace’s daughter went on the stage, became famous and eventually won a Gold Logie for the most popular television personality of the year.  The 'Pippin ensemble' with Leading Player Will Hanley. Photo: Tony Dall Masetto By Gill Heal
LIFE imitates art, reads the director’s message. And on a number of levels, the Wonthaggi Theatre Group’s production of Pippinis living proof. Pippin tells the story of an aimless young prince, fresh from university, who’s unimpressed with the ordinariness of life. He wants to find a cause, right wrongs, be extraordinary. He’s asking the existential question: “Is that all there is?” and he’s not happy with the answer. The musical is the story of his quest to make a mark and what he learns along the way  Jaquelina Alves Ferreira at Australia Zoo Taking a year away from study between school and university is sometimes seen as a slightly dangerous diversion. GILL HEAL spoke to five local students who followed their own paths and found unexpected benefits
At their best, newspapers connect us to something bigger and better than ourselves, writes GILL HEAL.
 GILL HEAL knows just how Ursain Bolt feels, thanks to her mother’s exquisite sense of timing.
 Dick Wettenhall in his Gurdies wineroom. By Gill Heal
IF YOU took Dick Wettenhall at his word, you’d believe that his successes were all about luck. It explains his distinguished academic career and the mounting tally of medals for wines from his Grantville and Gurdies vineyards. “Right place, right time,” he’d say. Born at Sale, Dick was two months old when his father died. His mother took him back to Rosedale where her brother was running the family farm. The next four years were deeply formative. His uncle was a free spirit with scant respect for conventional boundaries. Young Dick adored him. It’s where he learnt to be an independent thinker and self-starter. Aged four, he was driving tractors. Bit of luck there.  Heather Tobias's new poetry collection began as snippets scribbled on bits of paper in the depths of a mother’s worst nightmare. By Gill Heal
I SAID yes straight away when Wonthaggi poet Heather Murray Tobias asked me to read a poem at the launch of her latest book of poetry. For me, performance – that collective breath, sweat-glistening-on-the-performer’s face kind – is one of the best ways of communicating meaning and emotion, and Heather’s a gifted poet. The poem she sent me to read, called Outdoors Ink, describes the activities run by an adventure organisation for people with a disability. I rehearsed carefully and at the launch, took my turn, reading with gravitas and due respect for the absence of commas and dots. Then I bought the book. And, as they say in the literature, that made all the difference.se.  A 10-year drought forced Krowera farmer Andy Thomas to experiment with new practices. By Gill Heal ONE of the good things about living at Methane Meadows, our two-acre block in dairy country, is that you can mark the passing of the seasons from your window. The cows wend their twice-daily way up the hill to the milking shed. There’s the cutting and baling of hay in early summer, the feeding out through to winter. It’s a soothing symphony of rural permanence. You know that God’s in His heaven; all’s well with the world. But it’s not that simple, says environmental activist, Moragh McKay. Life is increasingly unpredictable. “We’re preoccupied with certainty,” she says. “We need to get better at managing uncertainty.” |
