Photo: Bernadette Walker Composer Larry Hills draws on his American heritage of choral singing to delve deep into the history of his adopted Australian community.
 Cherie Smirl wanted to make a difference in the world but before she could do that she had to come to terms with her own place in it.
 Paul Speirs realised he couldn’t save the world but he could help to save his own catchment, taking nature as his guide.
On Australia Day, GILL HEAL celebrated those who grasp the opportunity to make a difference.  Joan and Gordon Henry preserved the last of the Bass Valley ecosystem . Photo courtesy of Landcare GILL HEAL looks back at the first 18 months of the Bass Coast Post and sees democracy at work, with its rights and obligations.
 From the personal to the political, Hazel Swift walks a straight line. Gill Heal meets a woman known to many simply as The Cat Lady.
 Jack, front, and Cade on their Claymation set. When students turn teachers, new worlds open for the teachers and the taught. A visit to Bass Valley Primary School was a lesson in learning for former teacher Gill Heal.
 Photo: Jim McFarlane Twenty photographers, 20 perspectives shot over two weekends ... MAPping Wonthaggi takes a fresh look at our familiar world.
 The films were always wonderful but what he loved most was the flickering beam that came from the projectionist’s room. Keith Stevens looks back on a lifetime in cinema.
 Jan Bourne and LearnShare facilitator Lee Dent. Sparks can fly – in the best sense – when people work together, Jan Bourne believes.
 Hartley Tobin Meryl and Hartley Tobin’s passions are very different, but they both bring a meticulous approach to their subjects.
When the unthinkable happens and people are trapped in mangled cars, members of Loch’s rescue unit are quickly on the scene. Gill Heal spoke to one family who will never forget their kindness to a loved son and brother.
 Dress: Anna Kentwell; model: Brittany Watters; photographer: Holly Parker; artistic director: Caleb Hooke. Anna Kentwell’s seaweed dress encrusted with pearls nestled in flowers of coral was a labour of love and imagination.
 Tom Loughridge, 1969 They left for Vietnam as boys and returned a year later as battle-scarred men. Gill Heal reports on one man's experience of trying to settle back into a life of farming and footy.
 There is a tide in the affairs of man, Shakespeare reckoned, and you only get one chance to catch it. Liz Alger was determined not to miss her chance.
 By Gill Heal
“SAND is solid,” says sand sculptor, Ricardo Alves-Ferreira. “The trick is to make it look ethereal.” And over days and even weeks he wields a variety of tiny palette knives, smoothing, cutting, rendering, carving tonnes of wet sand to achieve just that result. As Bass Coast’s volunteer firefighters face one of the most dangerous fire seasons in years, Gill Heal asks what motivates them to put their lives on the line for strangers.  Wonthaggi firefighters pictured at the site of their new fire station in White Road. From left, Alistair Lowe, Nathan Stebbin, Stuart Zaffrese, Kim O’Connor, Tye Donohue, Peter Schmidt (CFA regional director), Stephen Piasente, Damian O’Connor, Paul Kennedy, Andrew McCormick, Kathryn Sloan and Michelle Koralewski.  For almost a century, Harry Cleeland and Cape Woolamai were inseparable. Gill Heal recalls a gentle, graceful man much of whose life was governed by the sea but who
admitted he preferred to stick to shore.  When a regional show official said his show was the only one in South Gippsland that would survive, Rosemary Loughnan decided to prove him wrong. Thirty-five years
later, the Bass Coast Summer Agricultural Show goes from strength to strength.  Stanley McGeagh and Judy John Born in Belfast, trained in a British drama school, actor Stanley McGeagh has naturally got plenty of the blarney. He’s also a fair dinkum Gippslander, reports Gill Heal .
 Former full-time political activist Moragh McKay has found common ground with Bass Coast farmers through her work with Landcare.
 Six musicals in seven years and every one a triumph. Gill Heal wonders how Wonthaggi Theatre Group director Karen Milkins Hendry does it.
 For Les Kirk, schoolbooks never stood a chance against the allure of a Fergie tractor. In the first of a new series of profiles, Gill Heal reports on a man who’s part of a Krowera farming dynasty.
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