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Think back to your school days. At lunchtime, where did you sit? Did you take advantage of the smorgasbord of kids to find someone new and expand your horizons? Probably not. But that’s what Kate Freston advises you do when eating with other people. She’s a veteran of dining at Castlemaine’s Community Lunch – which attracts up to 150 people every Tuesday during school term time. “I used to do a quick scan around the tables and think, ‘Oh God, I hope I don’t sit next to a dud’,” she says sheepishly. “And then, you’re like … maybe I’m the dud! Now, I really like how this crosses over into general life. You may have had a chat with 80-year-old Margaret, then you see her down the street and you may give a little wave and have a little chat.”

Happy meals: is eating together the secret to happiness? (The Guardian)

Think back to your school days. At lunchtime, where did you sit? Did you take advantage of the smorgasbord of kids to find someone new and expand your horizons? Probably not. But that’s what Kate Freston advises you do when eating with other people. She’s a veteran of dining at Castlemaine’s Community Lunch – which attracts up to 150 people every Tuesday during school term time.

“I used to do a quick scan around the tables and think, ‘Oh God, I hope I don’t sit next to a dud’,” she says sheepishly. “And then, you’re like … maybe I’m the dud! Now, I really like how this crosses over into general life. You may have had a chat with 80-year-old Margaret, then you see her down the street and you may give a little wave and have a little chat.”

Not long after M Ellen Burns arrived in Kalgoorlie, Western Australia, the state’s borders closed to the rest of Australia and the world for the first time in history. The photographer had been on a road trip from the Blue Mountains to visit her partner’s parents in WA when Covid-19 first began to spread; now she was well and truly stuck. She found work shooting for the town’s tourist board, but a chance meeting with a local barmaid introduced her to the other jewels in Kalgoorlie’s crown: skimpy bars.

Inside the world of Skimpies (The Guardian)

This morning’s location: a field outside Castlemaine, Victoria. The air is thick with flies, attracted to the cow dung but ignoring the nearby dinosaur poo, sturdily constructed from papier-mache. “Oh god,” Sam Neill groans – though these words aren’t actually uttered by Neill but local builder Ian Flavell, who has taken on Neill’s role as palaeontologist Alan Grant – and drops to his knees in front of an ailing triceratops.

The film fans who remade Jurassic Park (The Guardian)

Marlon Williams recalls a survey he once read about how often people think about death: on average, once a week. He laughs incredulously. “You know that statistic about men thinking about sex once every seven seconds? That’s how often I think about death.”

‘It’s so politically loaded’: Marlon Williams on ‘finding the gall’ to write an album entirely in Māori (The Guardian)

It was a beautiful Friday afternoon in April 2010 when Will Salter stood on the shore and appraised a reef break on Victoria’s Mornington peninsula. He can tell you the exact time, too: 5pm. As he paddled for 10 minutes towards three other surfers, he could smell remnants from a whale carcass that had washed up months earlier. Seagulls circled.

‘The longer I left it, the more it was going to freak me out’: how Will returned to the water after a close call with a shark

Twenty-two years after Gettin’ Square became a cult favourite, Wenham is back in the thongs and in court for Spit – ‘one of the happiest creative periods’ of his life.

David Wenham on the return of Johnny ‘Spit’ Spitieri: ‘Every second day someone comes up to talk about him’ (The Guardian)

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Everything Harder Than Everyone Else

When Jenny Valentish wrote a memoir about addiction in 2017, she noticed that people who treated drug-taking like an Olympic sport would often hurl themselves into a pursuit like marathon running upon giving up. What stayed constant was the need to push their boundaries.

Woman of Substances

Journalist Jenny Valentish investigates the female experience of drugs and alcohol, using her own story to light the way. Her travels around Australia take her to treatment facilities and AA groups. Mining the expertise of 30 leading researchers, she explores the early predictors of addiction, such as childhood trauma and temperament, and teenage impulsivity.

Cherry Bomb

Word is The Dolls got their record deal through nepotism, but if it wasn’t for Nina sleeping with the right people they wouldn’t be anywhere at all. Now her aunt’s career is threatening to take off again and eclipse her own, and nobody likes her new material. A stretch in rehab’s starting to look like a good career move.

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