We’re coming up to the last week of our podcast this week - we have 3 more episodes to publish.

You can follow along on our website here or check out the podcast where ever you regularly listen to podcasts - apple, google, amazon or spotify.

In the last few days we have published a couple of stories. The first is from local author Chloe Hooper - many of you will have read her books including Tall Man and The Arsonist. She talks about how worried her family was when the pandemic started because her husband Don Watson (also an author) was in remission from leukaemia. Her episode if very thoughtful and insightful and interesting!

Chloe

The next episode features local Fleur - and is all about aborted travel plans - Fleur and her partner Trent and her four boys were all set to head to Singapore in January 2022 when they all came down with Covid. In this episode we also talk to David Bridie (musician with Not Drowning Waving etc.) and also the musician who made the Covid Roulette theme music. He talks about his aborted travel plans as well, including a trip to Antarctica.

He also discusses the impact of the pandemic on some of the musicians from PNG who he works with regularly and are on the Wontok record label.

Fleur

And today we are publishing Ray’s story - which is a very sad one about his wife Marilyn, a nurse who stepped out of retirement to help out with the hotel quarantine program … and lost her life to Covid in November 2021.

Ray

Covid Roulette is a wonderfully interesting and personal record of the many ways that Covid has impacted our community in Yarra and Darebin, and we are very proud to have made the series. I really hope you have tuned in and are enjoying listening along.

Betty recently contacted us to enquire about a stall at one of our makers markets. She is looking to spread the word and sell some copies of her new cook book, My Vegan Cookbook.

Leanne will be working on ideas for our programming for the remainder of the year very soon. And we do hope Betty will book a stall with us when we have our next makers market in our calendar.

In the meantime we can help Betty by sharing her website with you. If you are interested in vegan cooking then take a look at Betty’s site here.

Hi all we’ll be starting program planning for the second half of the year next week. So if you have a course you’d like to run for our community, a group you’d like to start or a great idea or a recommendation please get in touch!

Email info@alphington.org.au.

The impacts of COVID haven’t just been on people’s health. In our latest episode of Covid Roulette we talk to Simon Greenland who runs a high end international tourism business … and also to Terry who similarly has a tourism business, and find out about how they managed through the pandemic … they were both particularly impacted by the international border closures of course. And they both have interesting stories!

You can listen along here or on your favourite podcast streaming service.

A reminder that Local artists are invited to join in our upcoming exhibition.

And local locals are invited to come along! We’ll have an opening event on Friday 22 July from 5-8pm (with some drinks and nibbles) and the exhibition will remain open over the weekend from 11am -5pm.

Lots of our favourites from Alphington Open Studios will be part of the event - and some new artists have already registered as well.

If you are keen to be involved you can register on our website here.