If the footy gods presiding in the late 90s had been a little kinder, and Ryan Fitzgerald became the on-field success he was touted to be, his career probably wouldn’t have reached the heights it has today. For Fitzy – no foreigner to failure – has made a career off the back of his shortcomings.

When he was drafted by the Sydney Swans in 1998, he thought he was on the path to greatness. Within two years he had graduated from suburban footy to the SANFL, then from the SANFL to the Swans. Continuing on this trajectory, he’d have his own footy card within a year and within three his own mural in Paddington.

When he kicked 5 on debut in 2000, everything seemed to be going to plan. But within four years Fitzy had suffered three season-ending surgeries; and by 2002, a ruptured ACL saw him call it quits on footy. It was naturally devastating: ‘footy was the only thing I ever thought I was good at’.

But Fitzy wasted no time wallowing in his failures. In fact, he cashed in on them, sending an audition tape to Big Brother, where he made a joke of his proclivity to fail. With an ambition to eventually make it in the media, appearing on reality TV was something of a career strategy, albeit an unconventional one in the early 2000s.

When Barnaby and Fitzy were at the Swans together, they played with a cousin of a former B.B. winner. He advised Fitzy on how to stay low and keep out of trouble. And he made a good crack of it, making it into the final four, ultimately losing out to a tradie with plans to propose to his wife—an irresistible story to voters.

The whole experience was a strange one. People would audition as a personality that often didn’t correspond to their own. The result being a show that presents a warped, manipulated reality. And yet, the cameras are everywhere, and the audience are not as stupid as may they seem, as they have no trouble distinguishing between the frank and the fraudulent.

So while Fitzy didn’t win the comp (or the $1 million prize) in many ways he was the real winner. His new stardom launched him to the top of celebrity firmament. And eager not to let his fame be a fleeting one, he was quick to accept a role as sports reporter at Nova, in the radio station's inaugural year.

After establishing himself in Adelaide on the morning show, he was poached by Nova Sydney where he’d host the much cosier 4-6pm window—the second most coveted radio slot in Australia*.* Overjoyed to put the 4am starts behind him, he moved to the Emerald City and swore to never work binman hours again.

But within 8 months of the Fitzy and Wippa Show, they were asked to take the most coveted slot in the country—the morning drive at Nova. And after a bit of negotiating, Fitzy assumed the role of Australia’s vaccine for the morning crankies.

However, it won’t come as a surprise to long-time listeners that Fitzy doesn’t measure success in followers or triumphant contract negotiations at his job. Rather, Fitzy’s gold-strike comes in the form of his wife and kids—a corny, throw-away line that invariably produces scepticism, but which, in the case of Ryan Fitzgerald, we know to be sincere.

For Matt DeGroot, growing up in a small coastal town, friendships were easy to come by and easy to maintain. Everyone was a three-minute walk/scooter away, while an Xbox and a healthy dose of parental neglect was all you needed for a great night with the boys. But as an adult, Matt knows, maintaining friendships has required a little more effort.

Matt’s grandfather was a great exponent of the timeless custom of looking someone in the eye and shaking their hand upon the first encounter of the day. It was a custom adopted by his forebears and one which, from an early age, Matt always deemed an essential feature of his friendships.

In adulthood, he is often compelled to communicate this appreciation in more overt ways (often courtesy of alcohol’s lubricative effects). In the midst or aftermath of a big night out, Matt will unmincingly express his love for his friends either to their face or via text. The idea being to simply remind a mate that they’re cherished. Over time, Matt has endeavoured to turn this drunken custom into a more sober one.

This is something men have typically struggled with. As work and life have a way of separating us from those we love, words of affirmation become exceedingly important. But it’s not just mates that can benefit from these reminders, but family too.

Before embarking on her inaugural American tour as a pro golfer, Matt’s younger sister, Emma, offered him a job as her caddy. It was a no-brainer. Matt had always wanted to travel the US and his stale job and dormant love-life meant there was nothing in his way. But this was no holiday.

It goes without saying that a younger sister as a boss was a major disruption to the natural order of things. To make matters more curly, infused into their relationship was the high intensity environment that comes with professional sport. When she was having a bad day, so was Matt. When Matt offered poor putting advice, his error could be priced at upwards of 5 grand.

With these errors becoming both too costly and too frequent, Matt was eventually relieved of his caddying services. That said, that seven-month period of high stress strengthened his bond with his sister and provided them with a lifetime of memories which time has since rendered comical.

Be it to friends, siblings or his wife, Matt recognises that his lifelong endeavour of being a good mate has provided him with a wealth of love in his life.

At a glance, Manda Hatter’s CV reads as a woman’s fleet-footed rise to the pinnacle of Australia’s media industry. But as a gay woman, her ascent to self-actualisation, though a much more rewarding climb, was a true slog.

Manda grew up in both a God-loving and -fearing country town in south-coast NSW. As the organist, her mum soundtracked her weekly visits to church; while her dad, after retiring from his government job, was the lay preacher there. God was a part of the family, like an extra parent, supervising Manda’s every move.

But after finishing her degree, Manda underwent a quest of self-discovery, one which took her to an overseas missionary base. As planned, she learned things about herself that she couldn’t have accepted back home.

When she returned to Australia, she came out to a select group of her colleagues at Channel 10, where she was working as a producer. But it seemed she was ‘late to the party’. While she was expecting a resounding embrace, she was instead met with a ‘Yeh, no shit!’

A few years later, she took another leap forward, joining Dykes on Bikes, a global lesbian motorcycle club where the roaring exhausts are an anthem of unapologetic pride and cultural defiance. And yet, even then, Manda was still paranoid about being identified as gay. She wore a mask in the Mardi Gras parade and asked the editors from Channel 10 to delete any footage they took of her.

This is when she first clued on to the idea of her professional identity compromising her personal identity. She was always careful not to jeopardise her job by coming out to the wrong people. ‘I was in the realm of men… and always worked with and for men—some of whom had made it very clear what they thought of homosexuals.’

It wasn’t until many years later, in her mid-40s, that Manda finally addressed her double-life head on. It was a decision prompted by a friend’s innocent query, ‘When was the moment you could look in the mirror and finally accept yourself for who you are?’

It was a confronting question. At work, Manda had always prided herself on her values of integrity and truth. And thus it came as an unwelcome yet necessary epiphany that at no point in her life had she truly been herself.

Enough was enough. It was time to resume her quest for authenticity, the one she had started but never finished. She became the president of Dykes and Bikes Sydney and started to apply her business principles into its growth—a far cry from her past as a masked participant, 20 years prior.

When she joined the ABC in 2017 as Head of Operations, Manda founded the ABC Pride Network Employee Group. It is the proudest moment of her career. It was a moment of ‘allowing my professional principles in life to blend with my real authentic life’—something neither she nor the media culture had ever permitted herself to do.

Eugene would never forget that immense pride he felt when visiting the Freedom Furniture factory and seeing his own design lined up on the conveyor belt: The Jackson...

One night after work, Eugene decided to go for a twilight jog. Two laps in, he started feeling lethargic and was breathing heavily. He put this down to poor fitness and tried to push through.

But the pain got worse and Eugene was soon sitting on the grass, trying to catch his breath. The setting sun was painting the sky pink, the birds were stirring in the trees. It was time to call it a night.

But as Eugene went to stand up his legs collapsed under him. Panic swarmed. He was back on the grass, only this time he could feel gravity crushing him. The world started to warp around him. His vision fell out of focus. Tingles shot up his arm.

On the other side of the oval there was a playground. He could make out a mother and daughter, on the swing set. He couldn’t walk, couldn’t yell, so he started crawling.

The weight of gravity grew. The sounds of the birds were drowned out by a droning hum. All he could see was indistinct shapes, losing colour and form.

He knew he’d made it to the playground when he felt the wood chips under his stomach. He groaned for help. The mother rushed to him. But she too didn’t have her phone.

In the distance, a train pulled in from the city. Commuters spilled out and headed to their cars. The mother ran off to ask one for help. The last thing Eurgene remembers was the dial tones of a stranger’s phone.

His life story was now a split in two: before and after that run. But in between these episodes there were vivid dreams in which he was Eugene, able-bodied, living his everyday life.

After three weeks of being in a coma, Eugene woke up in a North Shore hospital bed, in a tangle of tubes, one of which was pumping blood from a hole in his skull.

He remained there for 6 months, after which he was transferred to rehab, where he was told he’d be wheelchair-bound for the rest of his life.

At the time, he was in a four-year relationship. He hated being a burden to his girlfriend. So he resolved to reclaim his independence. But first he had to relearn how to stand, eat, talk and so on. Slowly, he graduated from a wheelchair to a rollator, from a rollator to an A-frame. Today he walks with a stick.

It was at this milestone, once he could walk again, that his girlfriend upped and left. His desire for independence then shifted towards finding work.

With all his experience in industrial design, Eugene could no longer draw or build prototypes—his right side was shot. He tried to use his expertise for consulting, but found that no such job existed.

He went to an agency for disability employment, but found that all the jobs were menial, mindless and had nothing to do with his skillset. Depression soon set in.

But yet again, confronted with the boundaries of his disability, Eugene decided to transcend them. He went out on his own, starting a movement called Chemisim, an online platform which empowers people with disabilities to achieve freedom through work.

‘Think of Chemism like this: in the physical space we can see considerations given to people with disabilities: chair ramps, parking spaces, toilets and so on. Chemism is transposing these things into an intellectual space, creating a metaphorical ramp to make entrepreneurship and self-employment more accessible to people with disabilities.’

Seeing Chemism take off has given Eugene the same satisfaction as seeing The Jackson on the factory floor, ready for shipment. It’s feedback from the world that what he’s creating is desired and needed by people.

‘Making it’ is a pretty ambiguous concept in any field. In acting, maybe it’s quitting your second job and surviving solely off your craft. Maybe it’s finally landing roles that you’re connected to and that spiritually fulfil. Or maybe – and this one’s kinda the trap – it’s feeling like you’ve become someone, someone who people want to meet or whom companies want to associate with to sell tyres/shoes/stationery.

Whatever your definition is, in acting, people follow the 10-year rule. Which is to say, an actor should start their journey prepared for 10 years of rejection.

And so, when Airlie Dodds was cast in a Sydney Theatre Company production at 16, she thought she’d jumped the queue. She thought she’d ‘made it’. She was still in school and had no reason to believe it wouldn’t be easy from there.

While the show was in itself a remarkable, formative experience, Airlie emerged from it with a warped view of how her career really would turn out. And yet, adjusting to this reality has never deterred her.

Airlie has learned to view her career as a trajectory, rather than something that will happen to her. Now over 10 years in, her love for her craft has never dwindled, which in itself is a better gift than any. Airlie pursues this career because she has a profound impulse for it, an inner calling. And by keeping her love intact, Airlie has avoided that fame-seeking trap that ensnares so many in the trade.

For better or worse, many actors will welcome the fusion of their talent and their identity. Whereas binmen, businessmen and bakers alike generally hope their identity transcends their job title.

For actors, there is thus a tendency to define themselves by what Airlie calls the ‘extrinsic results’. Either way, this is problematic, as an unrecognised actor will often fail to recognise their worth, while I’m sure we’ve all seen the alternative: the successful actor who sincerely believes that their excrement carries the scent of a bouquet.

For Airlie, being ‘genuine’ is not a strategy employed to find work (although it invariably shines through in her roles), but a way of being which, over time, she has found to be vital to her quality of life.

‘In life, anything negative that you do, you have to wear. I think when I was younger, I was bitter when things didn’t come to me, or comparative towards other people. And I had to wear that energy, which I think is quite repellent.’

Airlie’s path to becoming an actor has made her in many ways a kinder and more introspective human being. And I expect that with her depth of insight, quality work will come her way. Watch this space.

Back in 1979, when Waverley Stanley was twelve, a perceptive teacher identified something in him that she thought needed to be harnessed. Along with great sporting and academic promise, Waverley possessed something Ms Bishop called ‘stickability’—a will to persevere, even when the odds were stacked against him.

In Murgon, a remote Queensland town, Waverley belonged to one of the four indigenous families in the area. He was popular, sporty and a devoted student— qualities which saw him elected by his peers to be school captain.

Throughout his final year at primary school, Ms Bishop was secretly posting his report cards to the principal of Toowoomba Grammar, advertising her star pupil to the prestigious boarding school. Her persistence landed Waverley an interview, after which he was offered a scholarship to TGS for year 7.

Ms Bishop would dismiss any thanks or credit Waverley gave her: ‘I just opened the door,’ she’d say. ‘You did the rest.’ But other doors soon flung wide open for Waverley, opportunities that wouldn’t have been possible if he’d continued his education in Murgon. At Toowoomba Grammar he was able to pursue his favourite subjects and sports, while establishing lifelong friendships.

That said, Waverley was the only indigenous kid at the school. And while the experience was positively life-changing, it was slightly tainted by the fact that other indigenous kids – his six siblings, for instance – weren’t ever afforded the same opportunities.

Post-school, Waverley pursued a career in education, always maintaining a desire to remedy that discrepancy between blacks and whites. And in the early-mid 2000s, he came up with an answer.

Along with his wife, Llew, Waverley founded Yalari, a not-for-profit scholarship program designed to give indigenous kids the same opportunities he had. After coming up with the idea, his first task was to call up Ms Bishop, asking her permission to name the scholarships after her. The honour made her cry: ‘Of course.’

In its 20 years, Yalari has over 500 alumni and over 200 kids currently enrolled. Each week, Waverley and Llew clock up thousands of K’s in their Hyundai Getz, scouring the country for the best scholarship prospects for Australian boarding schools. Besides a desire to learn and excel, stickability remains one of the key criteria.

When they sit down in the living rooms of prospective scholarship recipients, it’s always their top concern. How do you think you will fare living away from your parents? Or not sharing a room with your siblings? Or being the only black kid in your class?

Ms Bishop and Waverley were still close up until her recent passing. Not long ago, she came by the Yalari office for lunch with Waverley and told him a little story:

‘At the end of your first year at Toowoomba,’ she recounted, ‘the principal gave me a call… He told me, ‘I’m just calling to let you know that we’re accepting Waverley to have a year eight scholarship.’’

She explained that at the end of every year his scholarship was reviewed by the faculty; and Ms Bishop would receive the call from the principal, always with positive news.

At the end of year 10, however, she picked up the phone to: ‘I’m sorry Rosemary, we won’t be offering Waverley a year 11 scholarship…’ Her heart plummeted, before he continued: ‘We’ll be offering him a year 11 and 12 scholarship, making him the first indigenous prefect in the history of the school, since 1875.’

Thanks to the pioneering efforts of Ms Bishop all those years ago, and Waverley’s talent and determination to match, hundreds of Indigenous kids are now getting the same opportunities that he had in his TGS days.

A comedian by trade, Andrew Barnett earns his copper by making light of the dark. But when his four-year-old son, Teddy, was diagnosed with leukaemia, the curative value of laughter was put to the ultimate test.

There is an inherent optimism in comedy: no matter how bleak a subject may be, laughing at it can make it less-so.  And it was this optimism that kept Teddy, his family and even Andrew himself sane throughout Teddy’s debilitating two-year treatment.

It was almost fifteen years ago now that Andrew ‘fell into’ comedy after losing a bet to a family member. He has since made a name for himself as a Fox Sports panellist who offers comedic relief on various cricket and rugby shows, where he’s affectionately known as Barney.

On-stage, Andrew plays the everyman—the relaxed, sport-loving, Aussie bloke with a perennial two-week stubble. He is honest about his shortcomings as both a husband and father, which only endears him to his audience.

But during Teddy’s treatment, Andrew was anything but the fumbling slacker he plays on stage. And if anything, the experience reaffirmed the importance of his role as a comedian, in both his family and society.

Fortunately for all, Andrew’s immutable optimism was not misplaced—Teddy made a full recovery within two years, permitting him to resume his normal life at six. The treatment had been a two-year slog that started with a tummy ache and a cautious visit to the chemist, and within a week was confirmed as the worst.

Well, not quite the worst, Andrew maintains. For there was relief to be taken in the fact that it was the most common form of leukaemia. ‘It seems funny now to look back and say that you felt some relief that your kid had a “common” form of cancer. But uncommon is something you never want your kid to be in an oncology ward.’

The normality that was restored to the Barnett family was enriched with a renewed gratitude. For Teddy, the resumption of knocking about with his older brother, Oscar, was imbued with new meaning after two years in and out of hospital. While for Andrew, his ‘belief in the power of a chuckle’ had never been stronger.

Many years ago, in rural China, a humble villager sired 24 offspring from four different wives—marriages he maintained both simultaneously and with little-to-no secrecy.

Of the 24 children, one migrated to Australia where his family would later become entwined with another family from a village just 20 minutes from their own.

It was second-gen immigrants, Pauline and Marice, who started their own clan in North Epping, Sydney, uniting two families whose roots spread all the way back to the same hills of Canton.

While fully immersing themselves in the Australian way of life, in the kitchen Pauline stuck to the traditions of her ancestors. (And can you blame her?)

Food united the family like nothing else. The children were nightly involved not only in the chopping, dicing, soaking, frying and so on, but the trips to the fishmonger, butcher and Italian greengrocers, where Pauline could tell a good spud from a dud at a glance—wisdom she’d eventually pass on to her kids.

The children experienced their mother putting on banquets of up to twenty plates for extended family and friends. Traditional dishes usually topped off with Western desserts, a sponge or or even the Aussie crown jewel: The Pav.

The biggest day for the Kwong’s is Christmas, where today Pauline can often host up to 70 relatives. In the lead-up, Pauline is always commanding her 20-odd sous chefs via text. Of course, she sends her kids around town on errands for the most obscure ingredients—cabbage from this market, a chicken from so-and-so’s rotisserie, what’s-her-name’s homemade chilli sauce…

Growing up under Pauline Kwong was an education in kindness, compassion but above all culinary excellence. Her best pupil was always Kylie, who many Australians would come to recognise from their TVs, bookshelves or Broadstreet backpages.

For over 15 years she ran her own restaurant, Billy Kwong, which since its closure has been replaced by Lucky Kwong—named after a stillborn she and her partner, Nell, had in 2012.

Last year, her contribution to the cooking industry earned her an Order of Australia. Yet still today, she attributes all of her success and inspiration to her mother, Pauline, and the timeless traditions of Canton.

A conundrum to begin with: the best way to get to know Alistair Richardson is to have him take his shirt off. However, asking him to remove his shirt without having gotten to know him is a recipe for awkwardness…

Point being this: indelibly marked into each pec is a tattoo of a Transformer—one a Decepticon, one an Autobot; the former representing the good in life, the latter the not-so.

The tatts also symbolise two fundamental yet fittingly paradoxical aspects of Richo’s personality. One: he’s unafraid to plunge into profound conversation when called upon. And two (a good companion to one): he doesn’t take himself too seriously.

For Richo, the domain in which he could always express these two strains of his personality was the footy club. And now, in the twilight of his career, he often finds himself reflecting on how footy not only provided the space to be who he is, but in many ways shaped that person.

After leaving school and transitioning into adulthood, for many, football becomes the primary organiser of one’s social agenda. Without realising it, the people you spend most time with outside work and family are your teammates—two or three training sessions per week, game day, club functions… It’s only natural that they become your best mates too.

To Richo, the key to friendship has always been being there. It may sound too easy, but in an age where the majority of our interactions are virtual, the art of ‘showing up’ can sometimes seem an endangered one.

To Richo, footy also has a strange way of provoking different conversation to the types you’d have in a bar, for instance. There’s something about going down the park for a kick with a mate, a brother, a dad, that invites a guy to open up (in a more wholesome and healthy way than 10 beers might).

It’s hard to ignore how important football has been in shaping who Richo is. He is an outgoing, friendly bloke who loves a laugh but one who seeks deeper connection with his peers, beyond the banter and beers.

From an early age, footy encouraged him to cultivate these qualities. Being young and talented, footy asked him to evolve into a better leader, which in itself called upon qualities such as camaraderie, commitment and an open mind.

Before he knew it, footy had moulded Richo into the man he is. And for that, Richo has every right to be grateful for footy.

When being invited onto Everyday Greatness, Cameron was a little reluctant at first. The way he saw it, his experience a gay man was utterly unextraordinary. But if unextraordinary is spending six years in the closet before coming out (and even then, exiting in a tiptoe) then he’s slightly underselling it.

Common as his experience may be, like every queer coming-of-age story, Cameron’s is not only a tale of awkward anecdotes and deep inner conflict, but it provides a window into our ever-shifting society.

He first knew he was gay when he was 12. But at that point, being gay is seen as a major inconvenience. So, Cameron did what most gay 12 year olds do, he waited and wished for it to go away.

By about the age of sixteen, after years of self-delusion, he finally accepted it: he was condemned to the fate of a gay man—whatever that meant. Not long ago, it meant choosing between living a lie or being a social outcast. And still today, in other meridians, the fate of a gay person can be much worse.

It wasn’t lost on Cameron how ‘lucky and privileged’ he was by comparison. As a gay teen, he was living in inner-city Sydney in the early 2010s, where homosexuality was both familiar and almost universally welcomed, if not celebrated. And even then, it still took Cameron two years before he could tell a best friend at school.

As besties often do, he and Bridgette shared their own dialect, one in which the word for a gay man was a ‘sprinter’. The etymology of this term has been lost with time, but it was commonly applied to those who’d already come out (or were expected to do so imminently). And so, when Cameron came out to Bridgette he did so boldly declaring, ‘Bridget, I’m a sprinter.’ Which caused some fleeting confusion (for Cameron was, in fact, a track and field man, only one of the long-distance variety). But as he clarified, his declaration was met with an unsurprised nod.

From there, coming out was still a reticent process. First he told his parents, who kindly feigned surprise and were totally supportive. Then one-by-one, it was telling friends. ‘No one was shocked. It wasn’t groundbreaking information… But some of my other best friends I didn’t tell for years. I think sometimes the closer you are, the harder I found it to tell them.’

But even after completing this long and awkward rite of coming out, there is plenty of evolving still to do. ‘It’s an ongoing process. At the start you just wanna fit in… But as you get more comfortable, you want to be part of the community more, as the experiences it offers are really wonderful. You want to be involved rather than shunning it.’

It’s a slow process of expunging the ‘embedded shame’ from one’s youth, something Cameron, and countless others like him, is still working through today.

He now wonders whether today’s kids, those who are in the same position he was in (an unextraordinary gay teen living in inner-city Sydney, under the roof of two supportive parents), will endure half the struggle he did. But even then, it’ll be a story worth telling.