The successful Turning Points series returns to Radio National’s
Life Matters in October.

Series two of Turning Points features two interviews per program. Julie McCrossin
talks with prominent Australians about their ‘turning point’
– that crucial experience that can profoundly change a life.

As with series one, there is a diverse array of revealing and
inspirational personal stories:

Thursday, 2nd October, 10am

– Helen Garner is a well-known novelist and writer. Her turning
point was, amazingly, seeing a man walking down the street in
Vanuatu by himself strumming a ukulele. It taught her that
creativity doesn’t have to lead to great and public art, it can
be a private pleasure performed with an ordinary level of skill.

– Ramona Koval, ABC broadcaster and writer, nursed her mother as
she was dying, when she was in her early 20s. She bore two
children around that time – partly, she says, to give her mother
something to live for.

Thursday, 9th October, 10am

– Jane Rutter is one of Australia’s best-known and most versatile
flautists. Her turning point was living alone in Paris at the age
of 18 with two Pan-like music teachers.

– Composer, musician and songwriter, John Shortis, credits meeting
Moya Simpson, who was to become his wife, with changing his life.
She encouraged him to diversify from writing children songs to
writing and performing sharp political satire

Thursday, 16th October, 10am

– Andrew Sayers, Director of the National Portrait Gallery in
Canberra, decided at the age of 7, sitting alone in the bush,
that he would become an art historian.

– Imants Tillers is a painter and sculptor who has exhibited
extensively in Australia. He shocked his Latvian immigrant parents
by turning away from his successful career in architecture to
visual arts, including helping Christo wrap Little Bay in plastic
in 1969.