Author: Hamilton Today Co;umnist

From Perth to Hobart, the Oct 5 edition of Macca’s program unfolded like a road map of Australia — conversations stitched together by travel, music, work and memory. It was a Sunday morning soundtrack of real voices: people doing what they do best, keeping the country quietly alive.

Queensland Divers Take the Leap in Perth

At East Perth, Gary and Anne from Mount Ommaney stood proudly by the pool, watching their grandson William compete in the national elite diving championships. Twenty young Queenslanders had made the trip, each dreaming of a place on the Olympic stage.

“He’s calm, easy to get along with,” Anne said. “He plans, works hard and never gives up.”

They’d come a week early to wander up to Monkey Mia, taking in the Western sun before the competition began. “Wherever our children are, we go,” Gary added. “We trip as far as we can, as much as we can.”

William, barely in his teens, may well be one of those who rise with the 2032 Brisbane Games. For now, it was enough that three generations had crossed the continent together — the kind of quiet, hopeful journey that feels unmistakably Australian.

Stoney on the Nullarbor

Out on the edge of the continent, Stoney keeps watch. Twenty years after Macca first met him at Eucla, he’s still out there, running starling traps that stretch from the Nullarbor Roadhouse to the Eyre Bird Observatory.

“We’ve shot them, netted them, poisoned them,” he said, matter-of-fact. “Most are pushed back to the border now.”

He lives among weather-station workers and fishermen, where the wind whistles off the Great Australian Bight and cliffs rise 100 metres straight from the sea. He fishes from those heights, lowering lines into the swell below. “By the time you get one up the top,” he said with a laugh, “you don’t feel like throwing it back.”

It’s a hard, beautiful life — the sort of self-contained existence only possible in places where the horizon is everything.

The Spell of Lake Eyre

From Stoney’s cliffs, the program turned inland to the shimmering emptiness of Lake Eyre. Macca read from Roma Dulhunty’s The Spell of Lake Eyre, describing mesas and salt plains so stark they seemed carved from another planet.

A small mob of wild camels moved through the mirage, their silhouettes black against gold light. Dulhunty called the place “Little Camel Canyon”, a valley of stillness and sculpted stone. It was a reminder that even the loneliest parts of the map can feel alive when someone takes the time to look and write them down.

Potatoes and the Price of Living

Not far from Mount Gambier, truck driver John was loading 42 tonnes of stored potatoes for Melbourne. The B-double hummed as he called from the road.

“They load you in thirty-five minutes — all bulk now,” he said. Asked about varieties, he chuckled. “Spuds are spuds to me.”

He’s been carting them since February’s harvest, the crop kept fresh in temperature-controlled sheds. But talk soon shifted from logistics to life. “Eggs have doubled in two years,” he said. “Food’s never been this dear.”

Both men remembered the backyard patches of earlier generations — the Pontiacs and Sebagos that came up in every second yard. Those gardens, they agreed, had a kind of quiet wealth no supermarket could replace.

Songs from Newcastle: Bob Corbett

Musician Bob Corbett called from Newcastle, his voice bright with gratitude. “Thanks for playing Long Weekend, Macca. You’ve sent a lot of good people my way.”

He’s a working musician in the Hunter Valley, playing three gigs a week while raising kids. “Spending time together, creating — that’s the joy of it,” he said.

The two reminisced about the old studio days — Slim Dusty recording at EMI, the Beatles in two-day sessions. “You don’t book time in a big studio anymore,” Bob said. “We all have our own now.”

In his backyard studio, surrounded by guitars and the easy noise of family life, Corbett keeps writing songs that feel like travel postcards from an ordinary weekend in Australia.

Bathurst’s Cortina Nationals

In Bathurst, the main street gleamed with vintage paintwork. Paul Geeran had trailered his classic Cortina all the way from Alice Springs for the Cortina Nationals, marking sixty years since the GT500’s famous Mount Panorama win.

“Everyone was on the track yesterday — nose to tail all the way round,” he said, still sounding amazed. Cars from every state, and even Tasmania, had filled the paddock.

Paul’s been in the Alice since 1983. “People think it’s all trouble,” he said. “But we love living there.” The festival of engines and memory, under a crisp Bathurst sky, carried that same sentiment — a love of place that runs on petrol, polish and pride.

All Over News: Roads, Wheat and Bread

The All Over News segment crossed from red dirt to grain fields. There’s a plan to bitumenise the road from Laverton (WA) through Alice Springs to Winton (Qld) — the Outback Way. Advocates say it’ll open a diagonal freight link across the nation; locals fear it could change their remote rhythm forever.

Macca then turned to the story of Gabo wheat, bred from Gaza and Bobbin strains. “To see my father in a field of wheat was to see a man at prayer,” poet Max Fetchin once wrote — and that line hung in the air like dust at harvest.

At the Perth Royal Show, baker Lachie Bisse of Big Loaf Bakery in O’Connor explained the secrets of good bread. “Aged flour absorbs more moisture,” he said. “You get a softer loaf and a better rise.” For Bisse, the dawn starts and warm ovens are a kind of calling: feeding the city one loaf at a time.

Outback Airwaves: Martin Corbin

At the airport, Macca ran into Martin Corbin, a former ABC producer now working with NG Media across the Ngaanyatjarra Lands.

“Community radio is hearing your culture brought back to you,” Corbin said. From Wingellina to Warburton, he helps remote broadcasters produce local music and health messages in language.

He spoke too of the Outback Way. “It’ll make travel safer,” he said, “but it’ll also change things — more tourists, more traffic. We’ve got to keep the balance right.”

His own commute — Uluru to Wingellina, four hours on a desert track — shows what connection really means out there.

Deniliquin Ute Muster: Country Pride

Paul from Deniliquin was still buzzing from the Deni Ute Muster, two days of country music and engines under a Riverina sun.

“It’s great for the town,” he said. “They do it tough, but this brings everyone together.” Families and farmers filled the grounds to see The Wiggles, Zac Brown Band, John Williamson and Troy Cassar-Daley.

Visitors had come from across Australia — and even from Wales — proving how far small-town festivals can reach when music and mateship do the marketing.

Ian McDougall and the Music of Snow

From Goulburn, songwriter Ian McDougall phoned in. He’s fronted Canberra’s Acme Jigs and Reels Company for decades and still skis whenever he can.

“The snow here’s heavier,” he said, comparing Australia’s drifts with the fine powder of Colorado and Niseko. His stories of Kiandra and the Snowy Scheme mixed history and affection — the sound of someone who’s spent a lifetime listening closely to both weather and song.

Strings and Feathers: Ian Simpson in Perth

In Perth, banjo master Ian Simpson picked through the difference between Merle Travis’s thumb-picking and Chet Atkins’s alternating bass. Then came the tune that started it all — The Wreck of the Old 97.

He remembered the 1970s, playing three pub shows a Saturday. “You just kept going,” he said. “Now it’s quieter — but the rhythm’s still the glue.”

At home in Armadale, Simpson tends fruit trees and a flock of chooks — recently joined by a stray guinea fowl that simply moved in. “Looks like it’s staying,” he laughed. Music, like birds, finds its own roost.

Speed Cubing in Brisbane

At Eight Mile Plains, Glenn from Bunbury watched his 14-year-old son Declan compete in the National Speed Cubing Championships — a world of flashing hands and memorised moves.

“He’s in the blindfold finals,” Glenn said proudly. “I can’t do it myself.” The two planned a week in a campervan afterwards, exploring Queensland’s hinterland — father and son solving life’s puzzles one stop at a time.

Inline Hockey in Hobart

Down south, Graham from Hobart reported from the National Inline Hockey Championships at MyState Arena. “It’s ice hockey on rollerblades,” he explained. With the city’s rink long gone, players turned to synthetic courts. Twelve age divisions, a thousand competitors — proof that Tasmania’s sporting heartbeat still thumps loud.

The Road Rolls On

When Macca signed off — “If you see me on the road, stop and say g’day” — listeners had already been there: at the diving pool, the bakery, the desert airstrip and the ute paddock. The Oct 5 Show was Australia in real time — voices, distances and dreams stitched together by a signal strong enough to cross them all.

Listen to the podcast episode here.

Disclaimer: Brisbane Suburbs Online News has no affiliation with Ian McNamara or the “Australia All Over Show.” This weekly review is an attempt to share the wonderful stories that Ian broadcasts each week and add value to what is a smorgasbord of great insights.