Arts & Culture

If it was tough growing up as an Aboriginal child in a small country town 20 years ago, it was even tougher if you were also gay. Debut author Gary Lonesborough has written the book he wishes he had the chance to read as a youngster coming of age on the NSW Far South Coast. The Boy From the Mish...

In film and television, Geoff Burton’s name is synonymous with more than 50 feature films including The Sum of Us (1994), starring Russell Crowe, and The Year My Voice Broke (1987), shot in Braidwood, plus hundreds of TV dramas and documentaries such as The Cowra Breakout (1984) and Bangkok Hilton (1989). However, ask people in the Canberra wine region who Geoff...

Skywhale and Skywhalepapa will be seen for the first time together publicly on 6 February as the hot air balloons fly over Parkes. Only artist's sketches of the 10-storey Skywhalepapa have been released so far, so Canberrans lucky enough to get a spot at John Dunmore Lang Place will witness the inaugural family flight. It will feature in Canberra as a National...

Bega Valley Shire Library has scheduled three writing workshops for people affected by the Black Summer bushfires in Bega, Bemboka and Eden in January and February. The 'Where There's Smoke' writing workshops will be led by local author and therapeutic arts practitioner Katherine Boland. The COVID-Safe workshops are an opportunity for people to share their stories in a supportive environment....

ABBA helped Meryl Streep and Amanda Seyfried dance away their worries on a Greek island. Now ABBA can help you dance away your COVID-19 blues during live performances of Mamma Mia! in Bega this January. Dreamcoat Theatre Productions will perform the popular musical at Bega Valley Commemorative Civic Centre on 15-17 January, 20 January and 22-23 January. READ ALSO: Border...

If 2020 was a screenplay, most of us would have thought it was a work of fiction. The highs and lows played out on a global stage were also reflected in life within our region. It's been a tough 12 months for the arts, but there have also been some remarkable achievements. We've put together the top dozen arts and...

Internationally acclaimed festival director Lindy Hume will head up the next two Four Winds Festivals at Bermagui, with a focus on creatively energised, locally embedded performance drawn from her deep attachment to the place she has called home for the past 15 years. The role of Creative Director is a new leadership position and the COVID-safe Easter 2021 event also...

It's been a long and very confined year, but now is the time to get out and about and enjoy our national institutions and visitor attractions. To help you plan your Christmas/New Year break, we've got all you need to know about what's open, and when. But you'll need to pre-book online before heading out for almost all venues. For...

Digital filmmaking workshops for young filmmakers, conducted by Far South Films in Bega and Moruya in November, have been hailed as a success. The workshops gave young people an opportunity for hands-on, intensive learning under the instruction of experienced filmmakers Rima Bos in Moruya, and Lis Shelley and Jared Auer in Bega. Students used new technologies and devices, and learned the basics...

His work sits in the homes of Prince Charles, George W. Bush and Tina Turner, has featured in Bombay Sapphire’s global advertising campaign since the early 2000s, appears in the National Gallery of Victoria and Queensland Art Gallery, and has been sold in major department stores including Barneys New York and Harrods. So how did a country boy from the...

Post-Christmas, the hills of the Snowy Valleys will come alive with the sound of music, art, light, laughter, celebration and celebrity as the highly anticipated Arbour Festival gets underway. Beginning on 28 December – exactly one year after the Dunns Road Fire wrought 50 days of havoc across the region – the festival will begin its own 50-day run, not only...

Vulcan Street in Moruya will become a colourful spectacle for locals and tourists during the weekend before Christmas as a gift from Moruya Business Chamber, River of Art, Rotary Club of Moruya and Southern Phone to hearten the community and bring hope for the future. The LUMINOUS light installation will illuminate the facades of shopfronts and heritage buildings – including Moruya Courthouse and two...

Harry Cleverdon is no quiet achiever. After winning the People's Voice award in the International Songwriting Competition (ISC) with Hit Me While I’m Down, in May 2020, the singer-songwriter from Young went on to release his debut album in early August. Octothorpe features nine songs based on stories written by the 18-year-old, or shared by his friends, and has already hit...

Why do we live where we live? How do we grasp the invisible connections between people, groups and ideas? Lee Grant and Amadis Lacheta tackle this subject in their exhibition, Untold Eurobodalla, which opens to the public on Saturday, 12 December, at the Basil Sellers Exhibition Centre (The BAS) in Moruya. The exhibition coincides with the first anniversary of the...

If the children of the mountains could not make it to the ocean, the ocean sure swept into the mountains and imaginations of young people in Batlow and Tumbarumba last week. Students from K3 to year 10 had the opportunity to hear and learn about something they had never seen, and they were able to experience what it’s like to...

Two-time political cartoonist of the year Cathy Wilcox reckons you can tell a lot about a country by the state of its cartooning. Accepting an award from the Museum of Australian Democracy as cartoonist of the Year, Wilcox (whose work appears in The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age) noted that in some countries, cartoonists are harried, pilloried or even...