“The idea was a bit of a risk,” says Natksy, “but judging by the support it was one well worth taking.”  Almost 300 people gathered at the old Hurford’s Hardware building to celebrate the opening.  With live music by Deana & Julia, wine and food, and of course the wonderful array of images on the walls, it was a night to remember.

“We’ve already got photographers putting images together for the next exhibition in four weeks time,” Natsky says.

On show were images by Denise Alison of the fabulous Humans of Lismore (facebook.com/Humansoflismore) , the Northern River’s favourite landscape photographer Alex Clarke, the artistic nudes of Cloud Nine’s Simon Fraser, amazing wildlife photography by Meg Gordon, a rare dabble with a holga camera by local artist Michael ‘Whitey’ White and flora details by Natsky herself.

Meg Gordon, Reflection.

“There are so many amazing images out there trapped on hard drives that are never being seen. Exhibiting is expensive so at the Den I am trying to minimise those costs for photographers and help them to get their work out there. It is also the reason the Den wont’ – I repeat won’t – be charging commission on sales. It’s the photographer’s work, so they should be rewarded for it in full,” says Natsky, who is both  owner and operator of the Den.

Natksy fully intends that The Den will be evolving over time with much more photography based events planned over the coming months. “Think studio, workshops, darkroom, events and much more,” she says. “It will only happen if the people want it though, so people need to get involved, either as a photographer or somebody who loves beautiful imagery.”

So next time you’re in Lismore, make sure you take a wander through the Northern Rivers latest art  space.

Natsky, Viking Ship.

Landscape photographer and regular Verandah Magazine contributor Alex Clarke, changed lenses for the evening and focused on the opening night crowd:

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This year when Bluesfest Byron Bay opens on March 24 it will officially include ‘Boomerang’, a new world festival for all Australians, and the brainchild of one of Australia’s most important cultural custodians – Rhoda Roberts.

Back in 1997, when Rhoda Roberts delivered the third Rex Cramphorn memorial lecture at Sydney’s Belvoir Street theatre, after her highly successful stint as Artistic Director of the Festival of the Dreaming, an audience member asked her a pertinent question – was there, she was asked, a need for future Aboriginal festivals.

“Yes,” Roberts replied, “I think there is a need, because you only have to look at all the festivals that come out and the level of indigenous works in them. There’s very, very rarely collaborative work…so I think that there is a need for a biennial festival, a community or indigenous festival, particularly if it has the collaborative nature of the works.”

Sixteen years and many gigs later, Roberts saw the realisation of those long-ago words as Artistic Director of the Boomerang Festival which took place on the Bluesfest site at Tyagarah in 2013. This year, in 2016, with Boomerang fully incorporated into the Bluesfest program, Roberts has finally managed to achieve what she wanted – a funded festival which will allow her to showcase Indigenous arts from around the country to the hundreds of thousands of people who visit Bluesfest.

Harvest Café owner Tristan Grier, Bluesfest Director Peter Noble, Boomerang Festival director Rhoda Roberts. Front: Belle Budden, Delta Kay and Dinewan at the Crowdfunding launch in December 2015.

It hasn’t been easy – crowdfunding efforts fell short, but where many of us would simply have given up, Roberts did what she has so often done – she dug deep into her creative and personal resilience.

Roberts is used to a road paved with difficulties – both personal and professional. A Bundjalung woman from Widjabul country, who grew up in Lismore, she started her working life as a nurse. “I originally wanted to be a journalist,” she says, “but my mother was adamant that I should know my place – who did I think would even employ an Aboriginal girl? I was used to being called a ‘little darkie’ – even by my teachers – and I was told right from the beginning not to get too big for my boots.”

Roberts late father, Frank Roberts Jnr, was a minister with the Church of Christ, her mother Muriel, who was not Aboriginal met Frank at church. They married and had two sons, Mark and Philip, and twin daughters, Rhoda and Lois, moving to Lismore when the children were small.

“The local community would think my mother was this Christian woman who had adopted these little Aboriginal children,” says Roberts, “then she’d tell people that we were actually her children and their reactions would change completely.”

So their ‘safe’ futures were settled – nursing for Rhoda, and hairdressing for Lois. Working at Canterbury hospital, Rhoda looked forward to visits from her twin, who was as extroverted as Rhoda was introverted. Then tragedy struck just before their 21^st birthday when Lois had a car accident, and was given only a few days to live. Their father insisted that the life-support machine be kept on, and the next day the doctors discovered brain activity. “Unfortunately the brain damage and strokes she suffered meant she became a bit of a lost soul,” says Roberts. “I was incredibly protective of her, but it wasn’t an easy life for her.”

Lois Roberts – Rhoda’s twin sister went missing in 1998.

For Roberts, one thing nursing gave her was the ability to travel. She lived and worked in London for five years, and once she even gave Princess Margaret a lung wash. Eventually the NHS under Margaret Thatcher’s iron rule became too depressing, and Roberts returned to Sydney, determined this time to become involved in the arts scene she’d always felt so drawn towards. “I enrolled in a an acting course alongside Ernie Dingo,” she says, “and I volunteered for Aboriginal community radio.”

From small seeds mighty gum trees grow. Roberts was the first Aboriginal presenter on prime-time television, fronting SBS’s First in Line. The first time I ever saw Roberts was in the original production of Louis Nowra’s Radiance, and she literally shone, in a role written specifically for her. She went on to become a host of Deadly Sounds, an indigenous music and lifestyle show; she worked with the current affairs program, Vox Populi, and when SOCOG was formed, she was appointed director of the Festival Dreaming. From that appointment came the prize gig as Artistic Director of the indigenous opening section of the Sydney Olympics opening ceremony.

On the face of it, the nineties were an amazing decade professionally, even though, as Roberts says, “racism was never far away. I received death threats when I was appointed to the Festival of the Dreaming; human faeces were left on my doorstep when I was appointed to the opening segment at the Olympics. Remember this was the time of Pauline Hanson, and for every supporter of Aborigines there was an equal amount – or more – of racists.”

But despite the obstacles Roberts career flourished, although her personal life was more difficult. In 1992 Roberts had married actor Bill Hunter, and together they raised Lois’s daughter, Emily, due to Lois’s inability to look after a child. Hunter, it was well-known, was a big drinker, and gradually the differences between them – Robert’s desire to have a settled home-life versus Hunter’s peripatetic and often chaotic actor’s existence, saw the marriage begin to unravel.

Then in 1998, tragedy struck – Lois went missing, having last been seen hitching in Nimbin, and despite extensive searching there was no news, until January 8, 1999 when Lois’s body was discovered in the Whian Whian State Forest. The family was devastated, and for Rhoda the idea that her twin had suffered a painful death was unbearable. “I knew somehow I had to keep going,” she says, “and that my way was to continue to be as creative as I could be, and to create collaborations that connect us – the contemporary and the traditional, black and white.”  (The story so moved director Ivan Sen that in 2007 he made a documentary, A Sister’s Love, in which Rhoda explored the terrain of grief and loss – even visiting the site where her sister’s body was found.)

The overwhelming success and accolades of the Awakening segment led to a more and more creatively complex career, and these days Roberts juggles her part-time job as Head of Indigenous Programming at the Sydney Opera House, as well as hosting a new radio program, Deadly Voices from the House, with her job as Artistic Director of Boomerang.

Archie Roach will be playing at Bluesfest, and will be In Conversation with Rhoda Roberts.

“I’m extremely proud of what we’ve done,” she says. “We did the first festival in 2013 entirely self-funded, and this is the first year we’ve received funding. Bluesfest director Peter Noble has always believed in Aboriginal culture, and in reconciliation on the ground. His invitation for Boomerang to be included in Bluesfest has created a win-win situation for our artists – they can develop new audiences, plus show how culutural individualism and integration is possible.”

It’s not just musicians that will be presenting material. Roberts has curated an exciting program of events – In Conversations, workshops, weaving, dancing, art and healing, just for starters. “We have established people such as George Negus chairing talks; we have the 2015 Young Environmentalist of the Year, Amelia Telford, who is a Lismore girl; I’m doing an In Conversation with Archie Roach, who is also appearing on the main Bluesfest stage, and we have 52 dancers coming from the Torres Strait Islands,” she says. “I just love the idea of people kicking back at Bluesfest and being able to watch and absorb so much amazing material.”

Amelia Telford – Young Environmentalist of the Year for 2015 will be appearing at Boomerang.

As if running a major festival program and a job were not enough, Roberts is also involved in an artistic project very close to her heart. She’s co-directing a new play, Three Brothers with NORPA Artistic Director Julian Louis.

“The play is inspired by the Bunjalung creation story,” Roberts explains. “But it’s a very modern-day story of three brothers from the Northern Rivers – the family’s surname is Rivers, and we have three rivers that surround the area. Do you know that Aborigines on average attend 15 funerals a year? That is an extraordinary statistic. It’s normal for us to go to funerals of people in their early forties, and for many of us we are cloaked in a kind of trauma around the magnitude of loss in our community.”

What Roberts, and other cultural leaders, including curator Djon Mundine who is also involved in the project, are seeing is the sadness of the elders that the songlines are being lost. “We have no succession planning,” she says, “no leadership discussions – and we have to do this. As we move towards 2017 and constitutional reform it’s a perfect time to have a play that deals with these complex nuances.”

Not that it will all be dark material. “Far from it,” says Roberts. “The Bunjalung are rich in dances and physical movement, and the text will be full of humour and wonderful language. It’s allowing us to have real community engagement, and to work with such great people as Djon and the writer Melissa Lucashenko.”

Rhoda Roberts and her husband Stephen Field.

As Roberts picked up the pieces after the loss of her sister and her marriage, she discovered within herself not just an ability to dig deep, but also a burning desire to continue to create cultural connection, but at the same time to ‘belong’. “I’m a North Coast girl,” she says. “It’s where my family is, and so many years ago I bought a hundred acres at Jackie Bulbin Flat near New Italy, and in 2004 we moved up here.”

The ‘we’ is her husband, farmer, stonemason and landscape designer Stephen Field, Lois’s daughter Emily, now 22, as well as the two children the couple have together Jack, 17, and Sarah, 16.

As Roberts continues to expand her creative wings, including the next phase of planning some big discussions at the Opera House for May 27, Referendum Day, and a soon-to-be-announced new project, it strikes me that the overwhelming humility, work ethic and wisdom of this constantly high achiever makes her one of the most important custodians of Aboriginal culture in Australia today. Thank goodness the little Lismore girl got  ‘too big for her boots’, and may many follow her.

Boomerang – a new world festival for all Australians will be on as part of Byron Bay Bluesfest from March 24-28. For more information go to: https://www.boomerangfestival.com.au/

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Lismore’s CBD is vibrant and unique and offers a diverse range of food, retail and arts experiences. This one day Festival is a showcase of our outstanding local produce, writes the Lismore Business Panel.

Event Scope

The opportunity to attract new customers into Lismore and the CBD is our focus, and to invite our Lismore community to a fun, free, family event in the CBD. Participating existing retail businesses will promote a single special offer or a Festival ‘storewide discount’. Trade is also allowed on the footpath, by having a table directly outside your business. Participating existing Magellan and Carrington Street restaurants and cafés will trade from their premises as per normal and will also offer one $5 or one $10 ‘street food sample plate’ based on their product type. For example, an Indian cafe might choose a traditional ‘butter chicken dish’, outside of their regular menu. Similar for Mexican, Thai and so on.

The Streets

Magellan Street will be transformed into a ‘street themed strip’ with the road blocked to traffic. Market stall marquees will be arranged in Magellan and Carrington Streets and the Back Alley Gallery, alongside a beer garden and extra food stalls if required.

A music stage will run throughout the event, plus a cooking stage with a celebrity guest chef live cooking demonstrations. A children’s entertainment area is also included.

For more information go to: visitlismore.com.au

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“I don’t believe in the old way of marketing any more.” When you publicly say your change – something shifts forever.

The GAME CHANGER: You might have used new methods, proved them, mixed them in with some of the old safety net practices of the past, yet when you actually put voice to a shift that has occurred for you, you can’t go back. It’s a scary place, momentarily, as you stick your neck out. However you’ve felt splintered for a while as the old and new rubbed up against each other and just didn’t quite work.

When you state your change categorically, what happens is you feel absolute relief because you have jumped off the cliff and moved forever. You can never go back. In flight, everything is in alignment.

The old way disappears and you venture out on the new…with or without any followers. However there are usually a few. They are the ones that helped you get over the line yourself.  They are the ones you inspire. They are the ones who want you to succeed. Why? Because they are sick and tired of the treadmill too. Ground hog day is tiring and it’s not working anymore. It’s just keeping everyone busy, safe and for some the reason to stick with it is simply to keep their job.

However the seekers also feel intuitively there must be another way. You, the game changer are showing them, YES! there is.

For the last four years I’ve built models, experimented, piloted, then implemented and shared the application of behaviour economics and neuroscience on marketing and business problems. I’ve become my biggest experiment and now for me it’s become mainstream. I can’t market or solve business problems the old way anymore. Why? Because I don’t believe this is the best starting point for any business – it costs too much of a clients money, takes too long and usually you can’t measure bottom line dollar impact as a direct result of what you are doing. Today we know better. These days we know so much more about human behaviour. Today I know of more than 100 GAME CHANGING ideas in business that I never dreamt of during my traditional marketing career.  What I want is to give you my clients the edge by adding something I know works. Here’s just a few of the changes:

TRADITIONAL MARKETING v GAME CHANGING MARKETING

1. First objective is attitudinal shift v  the only objective is – behaviour change. Remember all that research that shows intention to purchase, yet six months later sales are stagnant or declining? Ask yourself, will this activity or promotion actually change behaviour? IF the answer is “NO”, easy…you don’t do it. Now how many of you will dare to do that? See how many tactics in your marketing and business plan fall away. GAME CHANGER! It’s time to outsmart not outspend the competition. It’s time to change behaviour.

2. Focus groups v observational exploration – real time (I wouldn’t recommend a focus group ever again and I’ve used hundreds of them in my career – check what you have planned in your budget for this year. Might be time to think again and make your research $ actually work for you). GAME CHANGER!

3. Concept testing out of market v split testing in-market (Turns out humans are poor predictors of their own future behaviour. So why would you start with concept testing?I can’t remember how many campaigns I’ve done like this…never again.) GAME CHANGER!
4. Information heavy v understanding of choice overload (Remember all the brochures that talk and talk and talk about our products and how fabulous they are? Well turns out our brain goes into overload very quickly (yours might be going into overload right now!) So why would we still try and communicate with customers like this, when we know it doesn’t work? I see major companies still doing this. There’s thousands of dollars down the drain right there. The core question becomes are you producing the materials because it’s what you’ve always done and the sales rep needs something to show the customers (ie makes you feel better) OR do you truly understand how humans engage with information and create to communicate (actually works)? Most posters and brochures are a waste of your promotional spend because they do not engage the customer. We know what will. Do you? GAME CHANGER!

5. Single Specific v context specific (our brain is hard wired to compare). I’ve seen sales reps meet their monthly targets within two weeks by changing the way products and prices are presented. I’ve seen revenue increase 300% in a month (at no cost, with no extra promotional materials or campaigns) for the same reason – now that’s a GAME CHANGER!

6. One product one price v product and price decoys - these are your secret agents if you understand how to use them. I’ve seen a 40% increase in revenue in one month for a client, at no cost, simply by stating a price decoy – now that’s a GAME CHANGER!

There are so many more.

I can’t justify the spend clients and communications and advertising agencies are wasting in traditional marketing anymore. For me this is lazy marketing. Behavioural economics and neuroscience change the game. Are you on board?

Understanding the brain is your business. Today, be a GAME CHANGER, or do yourself a favour and hire one.

To find out more, call Sonia.
Contact: sonia@soniafriedrich.com or 0412 359 424 or go to: soniafriedrich.com

Sonia Friedrich is a Mentor, Strategic Consultant, Speaker and Author. Her purpose is to empower people in business and in life. She adds insight from behavioural economics (BE) and neuroscience to an extensive marketing and advertising career. 

Sonia has worked with Fortune 500 companies building brands up to $250 million in Australia and New Zealand. She was the General Manager of Grey Healthcare Advertising in Sydney.Sonia lives in Byron Bay. She works with Company Directors, Executive teams and is available for business challenges, training, conference or speaking events. Organise your next conference with Sonia in Byron Bay or she will travel upon arrangement.

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Ah, airline TV commercials: has there ever been a greater gap between fantasy and reality? Why is it that when Nicole Kidman takes to the skies she has a range of M-rated sensual experiences that always elude me when I catch a plane?

As Nicole says, “Why just improve on what’s been done before when you can totally re-imagine it?” (I’m in the word business but I have no idea what that means.) Clearly, Etihad has Nicole’s hormones racing. One minute she’s reading a serious-looking leather-bound book, the next she’s reimagining something pretty exciting: her high heels are off, she’s sipping champagne and stretched out languidly on a bed.

Naomi Watts, on British Airways, and Jennifer Aniston, on Emirates, also seem to be having a luxurious time, though as Jen was paid $7 million to make her commercial I guess she’d be smiling even if she was flying Jetstar and shelling out for a bottle of water and an egg and lettuce sandwich.

Naomi Watts recreating an iconic British Airways poster.

Closer to home, if not to reality, our local AFL coaches enjoyed Nicole-style comfort on Virgin — at least until their finals’ results. Take Adam Simpson. As his commercial declared: “The eyes of a State follow Adam’s every move, and so ‘The Business’ provides him a private environment to collect his thoughts and a luxurious fully flat bed to rest and recharge.”

As for Ross Lyon: “As a coach based in the West, Ross is constantly on the road. ‘The Business’ provides him an office in the sky to get the job done.”

But I thought Ross didn’t look too happy in his ads. Maybe he was looking into the future, or perhaps he was just cross at the lack of prepositions (the absence of the word “with”) in his and Adam’s commercials.

One hesitates to compare one’s life with the glamorous one of a film star or football coach but lately my airline experiences have differed somewhat from Nicole’s, Jen’s and Naomi’s, and even from Ross’s and Adam’s.

A recent Virgin flight, delayed for two hours at Sydney airport, eventually took off for Ballina after we’d sat on the tarmac for another two. Then the pilot thought he’d struck a bird, so we diverted to Coolangatta, Queensland, where we remained seated for another two hours while the engineers checked for feathers and beaks, before taking off again for Ballina. Understandable delays in this case, but the usual one-hour flight eventually took eight hours.

Our first experience of Melbourne’s just-opened Terminal 4 a week later, however, made the bird-strike flight seem Kidman-esque by comparison. Would-be Jetstar passengers to Melbourne take note: wear your walking shoes and have a fitness check before departure. This is an elongated, separate terminal at Tullamarine, a distance from the taxi rank. There are no chairs, shops or toilets once you’ve begun the long walk to the gates.

There are no travelators. To celebrate Terminal 4’s opening, however, there were orange and white balloons, an attendant handing out toffees, and an abject clown who left, chagrined, when exhausted travellers made sarcastic remarks.

Again, there was a one-hour delayed boarding, again a two-hour, belted-up hiatus on the tarmac, then an announcement that the plane wasn’t up to actually flying. So the 10 a.m. flight (after the requested 8 a.m. arrival) was postponed to 4.30, then 5.30, and eventually at 6 p.m. we took off. Well, we taxied back and forth, before really taking off at 6.30.

Not quite business class…

But as a keen observer of the human condition I wouldn’t have missed that ten hours at the bar for anything. Take the interesting change in demeanour of the travelling soccer team, for example; and of the 20 Italian co-ed school-leavers, and especially of the Victorian Cage-Fighting Championship participants when they spotted the three platinum blondes in hot pants.

Not to mention the growing agitation of the best man and guests whose appearance at a Byron Bay beach wedding became less likely as the day unfolded. They weren’t going to be mollified by an $8 food voucher, especially one which couldn’t be used for alcohol.

Eventually our afternoon dissolved into a competition to spot the most extreme T-shirts. My choices were worn by an elderly biker (a naked-breasted woman sucking a bottle over the slogan DIRTY), and a pale, thin, bespectacled guy whose shirt said INSPIRED.

Then the winner hove into sight. Another fat, ageing rebel, scowling and hoeing into a tray of Krispy Kreme doughnuts. His shirt announced: “If You Don’t Like My Attitude Dial 1800 EAT SHIT!”

Like Nicole, I was doing a lot of re-imagining. And 12 hours after we set off (interestingly, you can fly from Perth to Capetown in 11 hours) we were home.

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 Given the massive crowds at the Zee Jaipur Literature Festival, India’s and the world’s largest free literary event, its sister event BookMark is a relatively sedate. But, for my money, BookMark is a better investment if you’re an emerging writer.

The Jaipur BookMark Festival, organized by the same crowd who organize the main festival, is held on the lawns of the Narain Niwas Palace. This is an upscale heritage hotel built in the 1920s in an Anglo-Indian style. It’s only a 10-15 drive from the lovely Diggi Palace where the main festival is held, but it’s a world away in atmosphere.

Some people, when they realized this wasn’t where they were going to see the festival’s superstars —Margaret Atwood, Steven Fry and the pantheon of other greats—turned tail and headed away.

But BookMark, which was held only for the second year, is where the who’s who of the worlds publishing industry gathered. This is where you could meet publishers, literary agents, literary event organisers, and other heavy hitters who are the faces behind the books we read.

Australian publishers Alice Grundy or Giramondo Publishing, Anna Mouton/ Mahabala Bokks, and Jeanne Ryckmans, Black Inc Books after the Penguin party in Jaipur.

The event was opened by the chairman of Penguin Random House (new York), John Makinsons, who a couple of nights later hosted a Who’s Who in the Publishing Industry cocktail party, at the fabulous Rambagh Palace, now a super-luxurious Taj hotel. Yes, Jaipur is full of fabulous palaces.

Because the numbers were relatively low at BookMark, I asked festival director Neeta Gupta whether the event is open for general participation. To me, this is an ideal time and place for the festival to host publisher/agent pitching events, one-on-one consultations with industry professional, and other events that enable emerging authors to take advantage of the talent.

“BookMark is indeed open for general participation,’ Neeta assured me. “But, given the exclusivity of the heritage venue where we host the event, we didn’t see much general footfall this year. I hope to change that in the coming year.”

Sanjoy Roy, Festival Producer (of both the Zee Jaipur Literature Festival and Jaipur BookMark) greeting guests on day one.

If you’re thinking of heading to the Zee Jaipur Literature Festival in the future, and if you’re already involved in the publishing industry, you can buy a ticket that includes BookMark, including lunches and dinners. Or you can by a BookMark registration only, which includes lunch on the lawns of the Narain Niwas Palace and dinner at Clarks Hotel with the other festival delegates. Participation for students and ‘aspiring authors’ is free. Or it was this year. “I would love to host a workshop with emerging writers and agents,” said Neeta.

So, there you have it. Opportunity awaits. Finding a publisher who will give you a profile in the Asian market is the way of the future. Asia boasts the world’s fastest growing middle class. Asia is where tomorrow’s readers will be.

Jane Camens, founder of Asia Pacific Writers & Translators Inc (APWT), was hosted to India by the Australia-India Council in her capacity as co-editor of ‘New Asia Now’, issue 49 of Griffith Review.  Jane joined a group of Australian publishers and literary festival organisers on an Indian Exploratory hosted by the Australia Council for the Arts.

 For more information on  Asia Pacific Writers & Translators go to: apwriters

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I’m standing on the deck of Jennifer Groves beautiful old Queenslander in Mullumbimby, and she’s explaining to me the principle behind Movement Intelligence, the modality she teaches around Australia designed to help people consciously understand how their bodies work, and to move with, rather than against them. I’m specifically here to do a class in Bones for Life, one of the programs within Movement Intelligence.

The first thing I notice is how graceful Jenny is – if ever there is a case for someone advertising their own work, than she is surely it. She moves with the grace and poise of a dancer, and her hands move with her, helping her describe what she’s explaining to me.

“Think of your body as a wave,” she says. “It’s a wave of movement.

If you think about African women, and how they move when they are carrying a heavy load on their heads, the reason they are able to do it is because of their dynamic walking style which integrates the forces of gravity.” She points out that osteoporosis is a Western disease, and that whilst a sedentary lifestyle is part of the cause so is exercise that doesn’t build up bone strength.

The ‘wave’ in action – balanced and graceful.

If ever there is someone who should know about the effects of exercise on the body it’s Jenny, who came to Movement Intelligence via her work as a Feldenkrais teacher, and to that via 20 years of yoga practice which included the setting up of Byron Bay’s first yoga centre, ‘The Byron Yoga Studio’.

“To be honest, it was partly because of my years in yoga that I was drawn further into the somatic and remedial fields,” she tells me, while she quietly observes how I walk, stand and sit. “Yoga can be a great practice but it can also inflict quite a lot of damage long term if too much strain is put on the body. It was my own health that led me towards Feldenkrais, and while I was studying it I was really drawn to the work of Ruth Alon. Ruth was one of Feldenkrais’s early students and became a well-known teacher, but she wanted to take her study further into the somatic field, and Movement Intelligence is the result.”

There’s a bit of Movement Intelligence being practised right in front of me, but it’s not actually another student, it’s Jenny’s dog, Coco, who lost a front leg in a car accident some years before. Coco has had to learn intuitively what humans can learn through practise – to use her muscles in a different way to help her in her new three-legged life.

As we talk, and Jenny points out to me various postural ways in which I am not helping my body, she explains to me that Movement Intelligence challenges, through an amazing 90 processes, the habitual movement patterns that can lead to muscular and skeletal problem such lower back pain, joint injuries and core stability. The program offers gentle movement patterns that allow for flexible posture and movement for a lifetime.

Jenny explains the waves of movements, both lateral and vertical that pass through our bodies every time we take a step. At first it feels unfamiliar to try walking with this rhythmic feel, but before long, I can sense, in a way which is quite unusual for me, every step I’m taking, and how I’m taking it.

‘Bones for Life’ – practicing feeling the movement…

Bones for Life is not the only program that Movement Intelligence is the umbrella organisation for – there’s also a Chairs program designed to teach dynamic sitting so that we can avoid degenerative problems related to bad sitting patterns; Walk for Life to encourage us to be able to walk the long distances that our bodies are actually originally designed for; Mindful Eating, where even how we chew our food is examined and other training and education programs.

The beautiful Queenslander Jenny lives in, was brought down to its current resting spot when Jenny and her partner, psychotherapist and gestalt trainer Brendan Healey, bought the big old house for the block of land they’d purchased just near the hospital in Mullumbimby. A studio near the front is the usual exercise spot, but due to some renovation we’re using the front deck.

It strikes me, when it comes time to leave, that there was a fair amount of ‘movement intelligence’ going on in the careful placement of the big old house on their beautiful block. Douphraite House, as it’s called, has become well known in the Byron region for its nurturing of the mind, body and spirit, and I for one can notice even after a single session how much lighter my body feels, with a corresponding state of mental wellbeing. Bones for Life – what a nice idea.

For more information on Jennifer Groves and Movement Intelligence go to: https://www.movement-intelligence.com.au/

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Literary love stories tend to follow a raft of expected conventions. Heightened sexual tension (usually between young-ish protagonists) is one of them; an initially antagonistic charge between the eventual lovers is another, as is the pairing of a couple who will need to overcome considerable odds in order to be together. Indeed, such trajectories are so common that when a book comes along which contests some of these ideas, it raises more than a few eyebrows.

Such is the case with Victoria Thompson’s The Secret Seduction and the Enigma of Attraction, a love story with a difference. Opening in the 1930s, we witness through the eyes of a young boy, the sad and untimely death of his nanny. Fast forward forty years, and that same boy is now a renowned psychotherapist (Andreas Zill) attending a formal function at which he meets the beguiling young wife (Annabelle Eichler) of another doctor. The attraction is immediate and they each leave each other that night knowing a special connection has been made.

Soon after their first encounter, Annabelle begins to see Andreas as his patient. It is a deliberate strategy on her part to seduce him and yet the psychotherapeutic process will be one which unearths complex issues for both patient and therapist. And therein lays the main point of difference between this novel and others of the genre. The sanctity of the patient doctor relationship is one which many writers are loath to broach for the precise reason that it presents a moral minefield. And yet Victoria Thompson, once a psychotherapist herself, wanders directly into the vortex of that very minefield with confidence.

As the affair burgeons over time, and both Annabelle and Andreas are forced to confront difficult realities about themselves and each other, the novel takes an interesting turn, examining the nature of those elements that draw us to our lovers and the psychology of intimate relationships. And it was at this point that the story began to really hold my interest.

Author Victoria Thompson – wandering into the vortex.

I have to admit that I wasn’t particularly enamoured (pardon the pun) with the initial scenes encompassing the early days of their relationship; however, by the time (a few years into their affair) that the cracks were apparent and growing I began to enjoy the story more. I was also intrigued (and alarmed) by the justifications used by both characters to condone and continue a relationship that challenged the sanctity of both marriage and the therapist/patient relationship.

In all, I found this to be an intriguing novel, primarily for the issues it raised and the discussions it would no doubt inspire. Definitely one for the book club.

For more information on Victoria Thompson go to: victoriathompson

The Secret Seduction and the Enigma of Attraction

By Victoria Thompson

Arcadia, 242pp, $29.95

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It’s a good time to remind ourselves that superannuation is not an investment – super is a tax and legal structure to create an income in your retirement.

Superannuation is a government regulated way to boost long term savings with generous tax concessions, as the mainstay of your retirement nest egg alongside your home. Your employer has to contribute 9.5 per cent of your wages into a complying super fund, and these contributions are taxed at 15 per cent, not the usually much higher marginal tax rate of your wages.

Once this money is in your account the earnings from the investment is taxed an average of 8 per cent. When you retire and draw down your lump sum, you pay zero tax on any earnings your investments then produce – another great benefit.

The price for all this is that once your money is in super, it is there until you retire.
The performance of your super really depends on the types of things (asset classes) you are invested in.

Growth assets like shares and property are more likely to produce shorter term fluctuations in their price.  History has shown that shares have performed in this group over the past 100 years. But to get these returns you must invest for at least 10 years to weather the volatility they can create. This requires discipline, calmness and the ability to stay focused on the long term result above the noise of today.

At the other end of the spectrum, putting your money in cash is a more stable. But when interest rates are low – as they are now – you risk losing your earnings to inflation. Generally you need to aim to produce an overall return from your super after tax and fees that is two per cent to four per cent a year better than inflation to enjoy a decent retirement. Adding in more than the regulated 9.5 per cent of wages is also required.

In between cash and equities, there are fixed interest investments such as government, corporate debt and property. They are more volatile than cash but don’t have the same returns as shares.

Where should your super be invested? Match your planned retirement length to the asset classes that will produce enough income for that time. For a 65 year old today this is at least 20 years.  In the past, people would switch to cash or fixed interest from any growth investments they held which is seemingly prudent but it is very dangerous as it maximises the impact of your number one risk. That risk is that you run out of money too early or have to live on much less than you would like.

A better way is to simply place one to two years of income into cash and bonds in a separate account. This means you have immediate living expenses covered for a few years, while your nest egg is growing and the price moves around in the short term.

The main point to remember as the super statements arrive: Super is not the investment, but you can actively manage your investment options within super to ensure you gain the best returns commensurate with your timelines.

If you would like  to contact Campbell Korff of  Yellow Brick Road Ballina go to: www.ybr.com.au/Branches/Ballina

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