I had a lot of expectations around meeting Kylie and thankfully she met none of them. Having trawled her Instagram before meeting her I was very sure that she was an outgoing socialite of Brisbane who would be hard to impress. She’d given me a stern one-hour timeframe to inspect her home as she had an important appointment. I eventually found out that was a lie and a scapegoat in case I turned out to be a complete weirdo.

First off I have to say that Kylie is stunning. Really beautiful and very intelligent. She’s aware that she comes off as a socialite but at the core is an introvert. She sometimes finds herself regretfully agreeing to parties and dinners and only MC’s events and pop’s champion bottles out of an obligation to her work. And her work is her priority. She’s the associate editor for the Courier Mail as well as a single mum to a 21-year boy who begrudges his engineering degree like most 21 year old’s.

I met him briefly when he finally opened his bedroom door to leave the house. At that point Kylie trailed off from our conversation, checked him over, and with the astute protectiveness only a mother could know, watching him like a hawk until he left the front gate. We picked up our conversation again but it took a few moments for the motherly instinct to recede and the candid nature to return.

Kylie’s house was absolutely pristine, white, and shiny, coloured only with those blue and white ceramic pieces you see in homeware stores. I must’ve counted 18 in the lounge alone, and a total of 26 in the entire house (although she wouldn’t let me into her bathroom). I was taking photos in the sunroom when she started to tell me about her short-lived pianist career. At 8 years old she was playing Beethoven on the piano. She was a prodigy and seemed destined for great things. Unfortunately, life isn’t exactly fair and humans have a history of unnecessary cruelty. Kylie would leave class to practice piano and any mistakes would be noted by the teacher and relayed to the nuns. Out of some vindictive disciplinary response, the nuns would make Kylie stand up in front of the class and recall to her peers every mistake she had made and why.

Kylie struck me as an extraordinary woman and mother, and someone I would love to introduce to my family and friends.

When I enter someones home it’s my role to ask all the questions. However, I found myself thrown off by Dinesh. With a calm curiosity, he began asking me questions about my art, my education, and even my tattoos. It took me a few minutes to realise that he’s a doctor, who spends his days going from patient to patient with the same level of presence and consideration as the last one. He was checking my charts, asking about my history, and making notes on my condition, all while making me feel safe and acknowledged. An absolute professional.

Dinesh’s apartment is pristine. Absolutely pristine. Barely a single item in sight except for a decorative bottle of olive oil and a red throw. Even the bathroom is void of any mess. I mentioned it to him and he asked if it was what I expected, and I responded with, “clean home, clean mind.” The only thing that didn’t quite match was the vertical shoe rack filled with sneakers and at least 2 pairs of Yeezys. Style is important.

Dinesh is a man that defied all odds. He managed to complete his medical degree after becoming quadriplegic in a car accident. And even after completing university and being denied a job due to the risk that his wheels posed, he fought back at the discrimination and earned the respect of everyone around him in doing so. He has a Ted Talk, an Order of Australia Medal, hero status, and is much adored by everyone.

Behind this courageous and charismatic face, Dinesh inspires the world with, I was humbled to see the man in vulnerability who lives at home with his mother, dependent on three carers to manage everyday tasks yet still in pursuit of love.

There were small odes to dogs throughout Scott and Liz’s home; a dog posing as a sphinx, Swarovski dogs in a small cabinet full of glassware, a pet pawtrait of the late Whiskey. The house was well-worn in with oddities in all corners.

In 2014 Whiskey, Scott’s loyal companion passed away. Whiskey had been a godsend to Scott and his PTSD that had onset after his time serving in the Australian army. The charity was started not long after and focused on linking veterans with support dogs and providing training on both sides. 8 years on and it supports not just veterans but first responders and correctional officers as well.

Scott showed me around the house and introduced me to the animals. He wore a beanie and tattooed on his knuckles were the words LOVE and HATE. Not exactly the type of guy you would assume ran a charity, but it didn’t take long for me to see his adoration for animals the men and women that come through their program. What struck me with Liz and Scott was the resilience of their relationship, driven by a deep purpose and an unwillingness to quit. There was mutual respect and patience between the two, the kind of thing built over a lifetime together. Liz spoke of the struggles of running the charity and the unnecessary red tape. But they also both spoke of how rewarding the work was and the massive impact the program has had on their participants’ lives.

At one point during our meeting, Scott told me a story about his friend’s father who served in the Vietnam War that has never left me… While stationed in Vietnam, every day the friend’s father would drive to the water station and fill up the tanker with his camp’s water supply. When need be, he used the same tanker to fill up the camp’s supply of agent orange. Nobody thought anything of it. And when the men with families returned to their children, even their born children became sick.

The first time I met Lauren I was a little scared of her. I relayed this to a mutual friend and they just laughed and said “QACI.” QACI stands for Queensland Academies Creative Industries and is a selective entry independent school for high-performing teenagers. Highly competitive and brand new at the time, the school took only the best and from the sounds of it ran its students through fairly unorthodox and rigorous training. I recall my friend telling me about the acting classes where they’d be forced to embody a tree for literally hours on end, or until you broke.

Loz graduated from QACI and went on to study art production WAAPA, an even more rigorous university program. The kind where people say, “it will either make or break you.” And Lauren seemed to come out as the former. I found my way into Lauren’s home while working on another project that was documenting the people of White Horses - a dilapidated 1950s apartment building on the beach in Burleigh Heads on the verge of being knocked down.

A milk crate full of empty beers cans, impeccable handwriting in her planner, and a fridge with the mantra “Simplify and don’t overthink. Be consistent” written in sharpie, the whole place was run-down but happy-go-lucky, cheap-rent-on-the-beach vibe that suited Loz’s lifestyle.

My Baba is the type of woman that doesn’t really know how to tell jokes, make polite conversation, or indulge in the luxuries of life… but with bare hands she can pull a tray of pork and potatoes straight out of the oven. She lives on the old family orchard in country Victoria in a town called Shepparton, having moved over from Macedonia in 1960s.

For as long as I can remember the Saxa salt has been a staple in her kitchen, along with the jar of roasted peppers that she still grows, picks, roasts and hand peels. Jars fill her fridge, pantry, and garage as well as our luggage every time we go to visit.

I took this photo from my last visit. My dad and I went down to help her pick the last lot of chillis for the season. We spent days picking them, roasting them, hand peeling them, blending them and packing the slippery things in old jars of pasta sauce and pickles. (It’s to be noted that the extra hot ones will burn your hands for hours if you’re not careful). It took me one car lift, a train ride, a sky bus, a plane, and an Uber to get home to the Gold Coast with what turned out to be 2 jars of Dolmio sauce.

The night before meeting Rhys in his studio, I had fallen asleep while watching his documentary. A compilation of him traveling South East Asia, painting murals and finding common ground with the locals albeit the language barrier. Having arrived at his studio, I realised I might have benefited from doing a little more research into him. I’d met him briefly at an exhibition and had heard a few friends fan-girl him, and he seemed like an interesting subject.

Rhys sat across from me wearing a black hoodie, black shorts, and low-rise docs covered in paint… kind of like a hoodlum kid wagging school. We were surrounded by his art because Rhys paints on everything.

He’d grown up on the Gold Coast and from the sounds of it had left as soon as he could. He was back only temporarily due to COVID and using the empty space downstairs from his best friend’s marketing agency as his studio. I had peeked through their offices and was impressed by the setup – it was filled with Mac desktops, Kaws statues, Terry Richardson coffee table books, custom neon signs and other pop-culture collectibles. Obviously high-end and on-trend, the homepage of their website is a black screen with the words “Selling Creative by the Kilo” rotating in 3D font.

Rhys had made his international success as a street artist, painting murals all over the world. One of the rare kids doing graf that actually made it. Over the past few years, his art had moved from street to gallery. He paraphrased the transition by saying that he had only ever been interested in painting walls, but suddenly he saw more value in painting canvas. In his words, “I never like anything I paint, but it gets me closer” and I suppose that is most artists’ struggle.

Rhys spoke of the success he had gained by painting murals all over the world, but also from working with major brands whose marketing departments are more or less looking to appropriate street culture. He was disillusioned by the industry and spoke about how disconnected the process was. Someone like Nike or Adidas will come to you with a brief, you deliver a concept, and it gets passed down the line until your artwork ends up an inverted and shrunken semblance of what it once was. There was an air of fatigue that imbued his current situation. Back home and downstairs from a marketing agency that brands for influencers like Tammy Hembrow.

Dr Paul lives in a converted church in Brisbane. He and his wife’s bedroom is the loft upstairs looking over an open-plan kitchen and loungeroom. I noticed the pool outside and said “it almost seems sacrilege” to which Paul practically finished my sentence. Obviously, that’s everyone’s first thought.


At one point we moved from the kitchen to Paul’s most adored spot in the home - the bar. Filled with liqueurs like Alize, Malibu, and Midori I got the impression that these hadn’t been drunk since they were purchased in the 90s. The shelves were decorated with shot glasses from all over the world. The kind that you can only find at the airport or tourist shops. “Most people think they’re tacky but I just adore them. So much detail in them.” He leaned proudly against the bar and turned on the coffee machine, “we rarely drink, just the few espresso martinis now and then.”

Paul has spent most of his career as a virologist, researching vaccines for Dengi Fever. But once the pandemic hit, his team focused their efforts on creating a vaccine for Covid-19. They were close, incredibly close. There was one small hiccup though - the vaccine would give you a false HIV-positive reading. As someone who loves going down YouTube rabbit holes, I would’ve jumped right on that. And for that reason, Scott Morrison cut all funding from the project right as they were on the precipice of going into production. Apparently, the false-positive HIV reading would’ve fired up the anti-vax movement. You’d think rightly so, but Dr Paul was in close conversation with the HIV scientific community and they had given him assurance that the false positive was completely harmless. An insignificant piece of information that changed the direction of funding completely.

There was a moment in conversation with Dr Paul that he paused, pondered, and then said, “Sorry - I’m just looking for the analogy between art and science in what you’ve said.” And it was probably that moment that I realised just how considerate this man is. I had spent most of the morning asking him questions about the scientific community and trying to figure out the extent to which ego gets in the way of the pursuit of unbiased data. Do they cling to their thesis even if it’s wrong? Does funding and sponsorship impact the truth? How willing are they to pivot their research in the face of new information? He noted that all of these things can and do occasionally get in the way. But in Dr Paul I found a man that was passionate about his work, about education, and about humanity.

Glenn has the most unique way of holding a conversation. He never speaks about anything in a linear fashion, instead, he offers you an idea on a plate, and like turning a Lazy Susan moves on to the next topic before you’ve got your chopsticks around the dumpling.

The name ‘Glenn’ means Valley, and he considers himself a bridge between two worlds – the Western world and the indigenous realm. He grew up knowing nothing of his indigenous background and identified as Irish until his mid-20’s when an elder questioned his heritage causing an out-of-body experience for Glenn. In an instant, his entire reality changed, yet it brought clarity and sense to an intuitive feeling he had known his entire life. As he says in the film “this conversation is about the history of me, but it’s also about the feeling without the facts that get confirmed later on.”

And this is one of Glenn’s most endearing qualities, for a man that appears stoic and impenetrable, he is actually completely ruled by his heart, and his life’s journey has been one of deepening that connection. With a booming masculine voice, he speaks of softness and feminine energy. He has a deep foundational understanding of the world that is distinctly indigenous. Glenn is humble, and he is humorous and generous. He is a student and a teacher and that’s a rare quality.

I asked Glenn to explain the meaning behind all the objects in the painting and he ended on the traditional Maori carving, worn commonly as a necklace. Although appearing as an ornate and beautiful design, Glenn explained its original symbolism is of a spearhead designed to be thrust through your enemy’s heart, causing severe wounding as it’s twisted and ripped out.

I met Greg at a retreat where he facilitated an astral travel experience. I personally didn’t leave my body, I was too scared of the heights considering we were in a penthouse.

You might think otherwise from the above statement but Greg lives in a gorgeous Queenslander home, coincidentally just down the road from the great painter William Robinson. I’d say the theme of the interior is classical Danish. Stylish and understated. His Austrian-born wife Monika happens to be a critically acclaimed classical flute player and was away at rehearsals for Queensland’s Chamber Orchestra while I was photographing Greg’s home. Greg himself was a classical musician and nomenclature in a former life.

When I pulled out my camera to take photos of Greg’s home, the first thing he said was ‘please don’t take photos of those ugly kitchen tiles, we haven’t renovated them yet.’ And it made me so happy to do just that.

When Greg tells me about his life he has this insane ability to sound like he’s reading aloud from a 1970s sci-fi novel. I have zero doubts about the truth of any of it, but then again I choose to believe that life is stranger than fiction. In all earnest, I really cannot do justice to the life of Greg and his eccentricities in one artwork. The best thing I can do is to point you in the direction of his book >> https://www.gregdoyleastral.com/the-book

Hamptons Style Vase

Yeezy

Kukri

Keep It Happy

When are you visiting your Baba?

Who’s John Kaye?

Uncharted Waters

Stuff of Life

When life gives you lemons