Conversations

Latest Episodes:

The green suitcase and the secret family Apr 27, 2021

Show notes

Betty O'Neill's father disappeared when she was a baby. Decades later, inside a tiny apartment in the Polish city of Lublin she opened a green suitcase to find a huge clue to his secret life

Betty O'Neill grew up in country New South Wales with her mum Nora.

Nora worked in hotels in Kyogle and Coffs Harbour, and because she wasn't able to live at the hotels with her mum, Betty was often fostered out to families in the local area.

Nora was what was known in the 1950s as a 'deserted wife'.

Her husband Antoni had disappeared without a trace shortly after Betty was born.

As a girl Betty knew very little about her father.

She finally met him again when she was nineteen, and it was a strange and unsettling experience.

Decades later, Betty became curious about her father's life story.

She began an investigation which took her to Lublin, Poland, a city where she didn't know anyone, to finally uncover the truth.

Further information

The Other Side of Absence is published by Ventura

To binge even more great episodes of the ‘Conversations podcast’ with Richard Fidler and Sarah Kanowski go the ABC listen app (Australia) or wherever you get your podcasts. There you’ll find hundreds of the best thought-provoking interviews with authors, writers, artists, politicians, singers, psychologists, musicians, and celebrities.

The bloody futility of WWI's Battle of Passchendaele Apr 26, 2021

Show notes

Historian Paul Ham and the story of the terrible 'wearing down war' that took place in Ypres (R)

Meeting Japan's ghosts Apr 23, 2021

Show notes

The story of the 2011 earthquake that triggered multiple disasters in Japan, and took many thousands of lives, as told by Richard Lloyd Parry (CW: descriptions may be distressing) (R)

Veronica Gorrie stands up Apr 22, 2021

Show notes

Ronnie looks back on the ten years she worked as a police officer; the childhood which shaped her, and pays tribute to the guiding strength of her proud Aboriginal father (CW: family violence)

Helen Zaltzman is the Allusionist Apr 21, 2021

Show notes

Lacking the patience required to work on a dictionary, Helen turned her abiding interest in language into the subject of a highly successful podcast. Her search for curious and revealing stories about language has taken her around the world (R)

Territory taxidermist — Jared Archibald Apr 20, 2021

Show notes

Jared spent his childhood behind the scenes at the Museum of the Northern Territory, up close to prehistoric kangaroo fossils, opulent trading pearls, and sacred crocodiles flown in from Arnhem Land. Then he became the museum's taxidermist (R)

Lily Brett — love and Shelter Island Apr 19, 2021

Show notes

New York-based Australian writer Lily Brett moved her family to Shelter Island during the pandemic. There she's found a different speed of life and been adjusting to the absence of her late father. Now in her 70s, Lily's also been thinking about what it means to be old

Tina Arena — singing it loud Apr 16, 2021

Show notes

Raised in a loving but strict Italian household, Pina Arena became ‘Tina’ to compete on Young Talent Time. Reinventing herself as an adult singer was tough, and it took a disastrous marriage and years living away from Australia to find her self-confidence

The AIDS angel of Arkansas Apr 15, 2021

Show notes

Ruth Coker Burks was a young single mum in Hot Springs, Arkansas, when she began helping the dying men everyone else had rejected

Floating through the dolines — cave diving under the Nullarbor and around the world Apr 14, 2021

Show notes

Stefan Eberhard on his life as a subterranean ecologist cave diving around the world, including inside the vast glowing chambers found beneath the Nullarbor Plain (R)

Our TOPPODCAST Picks

Follow Us

Stay Connected

Related Podcasts

Links

Stay Connected