Category: Remarkable Characters

Hurricanes, cyclones and other major storms are given human names to make them easily identifiable. The idea came from Queensland meteorologist Clement Wragge.

Lina Bryans was a successful female artist and an independent single mother, at a time when both were less common. She also threw a hell of a party.

Annette Kellerman was a champion swimmer, a Hollywood movie star, and a pioneer for healthy living and women’s rights.

From a riverbank in Mildura, to the world’s most prestigious art galleries: this is the story of artist Trevor ‘Turbo’ Brown.

Henry Fielding is a literary legend; the 18th century author of the classic ‘Tom Jones’. In 1754, he witnessed a kitten go overboard.

Francoise Gilot was a friend of Matisse, muse of Picasso, and an exciting and successful artist in her own right.

The Archibald Prize is Australia’s richest art prize. It was founded by a self-made miner turned journalist, who liked to pretend he was French. 

She sang and she shredded on electric guitar. She was black, bi-sexual, and a woman, at a time when it was hard to be any of these things. She is Sister Rosetta Tharpe.

Gwoya Tjungurrayi was a Warlpiri man from the Northern Territory desert. You may not know the name, but you have seen him: he’s the Man on the $2 Coin.

William Edmondson was an African-American sharecropper from Tennessee. One day, God told him his destiny was to become an artist.