The state government has assembled key industry leaders to secure the long-term future of the attraction…

Almost three years after referrals were made in the robodebt royal commission’s so-called ‘sealed section’, the NACC is finally preparing to name the Robodebt Six.

Named as Australia’s Children’s Laureate for 2026/2027, the beloved author opens up about the best thing a fan has ever sent him – and his first tattoo * Get our weekend culture and lifestyle email You’ve just been announced as Australia’s Children’s Laureate – congratulations! What’s the first book that had a transformative effect on you? It was a German children’s classic called Struwwelpeter (Straw Peter), written in 1845. My grandmother had the book. It’s a collection of cautionary tales, and in colourful pictures and rhyming language it showed the various awful consequences of disobeying your parents, playing with matches or sucking your thumb – you would end up maimed or disfigured or dead. It was kind of terrifying, but it was so over the top it was quite funny to me, as a four-year-old. And I was transfixed, because I’d never know what was going to happen when I turned that page – what horror would be awaiting me. Sign up for the fun stuff with our rundown of must-reads, pop culture and tips for the weekend, every Saturday morning Continue reading...

As a teenager I wondered what I would have in common with this Nordic island. Then my teacher gave me a book of poetry Lying in my bed, I listened to what sounded like a woman screaming outside in the dark. I picked up my pen. A month of living in this Icelandic village and I was still unaccustomed to the impenetrable January gloom and the ferocity of the wind; its propensity to sound sentient. I had started to feel like the island was trying to tell me something, had a story it wanted me to write. Sauðárkrókur, a fishing town in the northern fjord of Skagafjörður, was all mountain, sea and valley. There were no trees to slow the Arctic winds, and I had already been blown sideways into a snowbank while walking home from Fjölbrautaskóli Norðurlands vestra, my new high school whose name I could not yet pronounce. At night, my dreams were filled with a soundscape of weeping women. When I woke, their wailing continued in the gusts outside. That was when I wrote. I wrote to understand myself in this new place. I wrote to understand Iceland, its brutality and its beauty. Continue reading...

I was a ski god. An avalanche. I was starting to think about the Olympics. Darude’s Sandstorm was playing in my head. Then wham, bam, stacked it * Read more summer essentials Twenty hot lesbians in a cabin in the snow. It sounds like a budget porn plot from the 70s, but it was the pitch my sister gave when she convinced me to try out skiing for the first time. I am not a sports dyke. I am a like-to-read-books-and-sit-in-saunas dyke. Continue reading...

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