In this episode, hear about why we left, how we left, our last two London adventures, and the toll London took on Craig’s mental health. If you go to England, you bound to turn mad — Olive Senior ‘I’m quite alright with that’ ( Not Quite Right For Us ) My images of London are illusions. My two years in London was a mess from go to whoa. I understand that moving to the UK a month before the outbreak of a global pandemic and the subsequent isolating lockdowns wasn’t in my control, but the fallout ...
Jul 07, 2022•57 min•Ep. 16
Hear about Shona’s da’s story; learn about the highland clearances, the 10-pound poms, and how people fashion intimate connections and meaning in countries far from their place of birth; and travel through 400 years of UK Departures and Arrivals. (Two years ago today, the UK locked down.) Dear Migration Museum, Hope you’re well. Just a note to let you know that I loved volunteering with you and it was really important to me. I know it might sound a little strange, saying that, given I wasn’t the...
Mar 24, 2022•13 min
A fete in a cemetery, a tiny underground mail train, and a museum in a shopping centre. Come and celebrate everything that’s NOT the British Museum. ************************** Nunhead Cemetery Open Day Bug hunts, whittling workshops, crypt tours, a petting zoo, ice cream — a ‘typical’ open day. It’s spring and there’s still a chill to the air, but after months of lockdown we’re enjoying being outside. Before arriving if you’d asked me who’d be at the open day I’d have said three history buffs an...
Feb 20, 2022•26 min•Ep. 15
The idea of travel brings with it the promise of exotic places filled with interesting people, and images of glittering beaches and crystal clear water, or adventure, relaxation, or even a family holiday. But that’s for those who are able to come and go as they please: one person’s exploration is another’s exploitation. For many, ‘travel’ has been ‘not quite right’ for centuries, bringing conquest and oppression, inequality and ecological disaster, prejudice, and at times walls to keep out ‘the ...
Oct 11, 2021•24 min
Love touches us all at some point — from dependable familial bonds to the warm comfort of childhood pets, from the heady perfume of romance to the cherished appreciation of community, culture, country. The physical and emotional connections transcend barriers, cross generations and borders. And yet, love can sometimes be ‘not quite right’, taking where it should be giving, causing destruction — even as we still love. Celebrating ten years of Speaking Volumes, this anthology is a warning shot, an...
Jun 30, 2021•22 min
A series of hard-hitting tidbits about London life, including an insight into the cultural icon that is Henry Hoover. ************************** The pandemic isn’t linear or coherent. I started writing an article about my claustrophobic thoughts about an unknown lockdown. A city that once paid no attention is now all ears, in the wake of sirens marking time — as the only time stamp they move through the streets faster than anything else. The sirens cut loud, continue for longer, can be heard fro...
Apr 23, 2021•16 min•Ep. 14
As a community and a nation we can’t know where we are, where we’re going, or where we could be if our map is faulty, incomplete or badly drawn. We also miss out on great stories. In this episode authors Jacqueline Roy, SI Martin and Nicola Williams expertly guide us through Britain’s past and present. So come celebrate the UK’s diverse and brilliant Black British voices with us. ************************** To truly trace the contours of this place, in all its complexity and beauty, we need to bu...
Mar 07, 2021•34 min•Ep. 13
This episode looks at Aboriginal resistance and activism in London and England — as told by First Nations people. As non-Indigenous people born on the Australian continent, Craig acknowledges he was born on Ngunnawal Country, and Shona acknowledges she was born on the land of the Kulin Nation. ************************** Every January Australia finds itself running headlong down a steep hill towards the 26th. We’re in shorts and a t-shirt, and like all kids, the scrapes and scratches on our arms ...
Jan 24, 2021•44 min•Ep. 12
It’s almost the end of 2020. As a special gift for getting through a hard year, in this bonus episode we share one of our all time favourite pieces of radio, and a holiday classic: ‘Xmas in Merimbula’ by Kayla (then aged 8). ************************** Some 30 years ago, aged 17, I first heard The Pogues’ ‘Fairytale of New York’ and fell in love with the city, the band and the song — and all the complexities and contradictions within. Unlike so many other Xmas songs, there’s nothing sentimental h...
Dec 24, 2020•15 min
When a 1979 BBC documentary titled "Who is Poly Styrene?" introduces us to the punk singer’s work, we become utterly fascinated. With help from Poly’s daughter Celeste Bell, musician Rhoda Dakar and archival audio from Poly herself, this episode explores why her work looks, feels and sounds so relevant today. I know your antiseptic, your deodorant smells nice I’d like to get to know you, you’re deep frozen like the ice He’s a germ free adolescent, cleanliness is her obsession Cleans her teeth te...
Nov 23, 2020•26 min•Ep. 11
In this episode we talk about what it's like to be in work, to be out of work, and what it’s like looking for work in a pandemic. ************************** I’m a workaholic. In 2015 I forgot how to swallow. Every time I ate, it felt like a bit of food lodged in my throat. It was intermittent at first; then it would happen a couple if times during a meal; then it was every time I swallowed, and no matter how much water I drank or how many times I cleared my throat, it felt like the food would ge...
Nov 10, 2020•18 min•Ep. 10
What’s it like to be twelve and in lockdown In this short bonus episode our niece Kayla has recorded her reflections on the ways Covid-19 has impacted on her and her friends. ************************** We love everything about our nieces and nephew: their creativity, their questions, the songs they sing, the art they make... Every time we video call Tom and Sadie, Tom needs proof that if it’s day there, then it’s night here, and visa versa. Sadie has impeccable comedic timing for someone so youn...
Sep 21, 2020•4 min
This episode uncovers lost rivers, a smelly ogre and a magical reawakening. ************************** Once upon a time there was a river... I love rivers. The Birrarung (Yarra) in Naarm (Melbourne); the Murrumbidgee skirting Canberra; how the Maiwar (Brisbane River) psychologically and spiritually dominates the city of Meanjin (Brisbane) like no other river I’ve encountered; the powerful convergence of the Derbarl Yerrigan (Swan) and Djarlgarra (Canning) rivers in Mooro, Goomap (Perth); the con...
Aug 28, 2020•18 min•Ep. 9
From my home to yours. In this episode author, travel podcaster and poet Maame Blue drops by to chat about London, Naarm (Melbourne), travel and... oh yeah, her debut novel "Bad Love" (Jacaranda Books). "I’m not a romantic. I don’t know how to tell those kinds of stories, the ones filled with magic and laughter and a purple hue. Romance has never connected with me in that way. But love — hard, bad, rough love — well, I could speak on that all day." — Maame Blue "Bad Love", 2020 From the start, n...
Jul 31, 2020•33 min•Ep. 8
How much Iso birthday fun can two people have? ************************** I arrived four weeks early: induced, tiny, underfed. My ‘origin story’, according to my parents: when the doctors heard my heartbeat weakening, they induced; once born, they used tissue-sized nappies. Details are thin on the ground, but I’m the eldest, so I imagine my parents were really stressed and probably didn’t have all the information themselves. From what I can gather, the placenta wasn’t working so well (when this ...
Jul 15, 2020•12 min•Ep. 7
In this episode we see if Craig can make a new friend during lockdown. ************************** Between mid 1990 and early 1991 I had a recurring dream (Grades 11 & 12 at Lake Ginninderra College). I’m sitting in the shallows of a lake... I’m unnerved because a near drowning a few years earlier means I don’t swim. Thunder, lighting and wind convulse the water into a wave that propels me from the land. I’m lucid, but can’t control the dream. In a second, day is now night, I’m at the opposit...
Jun 15, 2020•12 min•Ep. 6
In this episode we turn our attention to those everyday sounds we often overlook: the creaks, the squeaks, the buzzes and the pops that we build our daily soundtracks around without necessarily noticing. ************************** Whenever travelling in a new place it’s easy for our attention to be hijacked by the grandiose: the British Museum, Tower of London, Big Ben, Buckingham Palace, Tower Bridge. End to end, our flat is a modest 32 footsteps. At first, when we paused to listen closer, all ...
May 27, 2020•12 min•Ep. 5
In this episode we learn about the place we now call home. “In the beginning there was a river. The river became a road and the road branched out to the whole world. And because the road was once a river it was always hungry.” So eloquent is the opening to Ben Okri’s The Famished Road (one of my all-time favourite novels), that those three sentences, drifting as they do between histories and worlds, truths and fictions, contain all the confusion, lyricism and complexity of a full-blown biblia sa...
May 15, 2020•18 min•Ep. 4
In this episode your intrepid lockdown travellers tackle the big food questions. ************************** What are Romanesco broccoli and celeriac and what do you do with them? What’s the great “jollof rice controversy”? How hot is too hot for a vindaloo? Shouldn’t we all eat cheese scones every day? Are vegetarian Scotch eggs worth it? Thanks Opening & Closing Credits by Unregistered Master Builder Touching Moments by Ketsa ( Free Music Archive ) Markus J Buehler Viral Counterpoint of the...
May 08, 2020•10 min•Ep. 3
In this episode we reflect on a confusing couple of weeks and try to make sense of events that almost don't make any sense at all. ************************** During February and March we were house hunting. My memories of those confused weeks are thin — I’d just arrived from the other side of the world, and as much as I search for a linear and coherent story, none exists. I remember having to shake off claustrophobic thoughts before going into potential homes for house interviews; the intricate ...
May 01, 2020•10 min•Ep. 2
In this series we discover what it takes to fall in love with a new city during a pandemic. ************************** When London shut down on March 24, 2020, I’d been here four weeks and my partner Shona, eight months. Our staggered arrivals were so she could take a job with a global human rights organisation and I could finish my work back in Australia. I arrived with a few contacts, a resume and a visa, so when London shut down my job prospects fell off a cliff. (Shona’s still working.) In 2...
Mar 24, 2020•7 min•Ep. 1
