THOSE WHO CHOOSE to push against the status quo tend not to be laid-back wallflowers. It seems it takes a force of personality to want to shape culture, influence attitudes and effect change. So it goes without saying that this, our Greats Issue, is populated by characters you’d love to meet around a dinner table.
Kara Hurry met a diverse bunch of makers and innovators (page 28) — they include a brewer, a surfer-turned-seaweed farmer and a travel industry disruptor — who are united in their aim to tackle the problems of our age, from the climate crisis to food insecurity in Australia’s remote communities.
Case in point: Brodie Neill, a Tasmanian-born furniture maker who was horrified by the plastic rubbish he saw washed ashore on otherwise pristine Bruny Island. He decided to take what society views as waste — old nylon fishing nets, metal scraps, “drowned” wood lying on lake beds — and reframe it as raw material for beautiful and highly desirable furniture pieces. As Sam Elsom, CEO of the Sea Forest marine farm project, says, “Never underestimate the collective power of individual actions.”
Someone else determined to go their own way is the actor Sam Corlett, our cover star and a candid interviewee on page 68. You might know Corlett as the seriously jacked Norse explorer Leif Erikson in the sword-studded Netflix saga “Vikings: Valhalla”, or as the larrikin swept up in a cattle station feud in the miniseries “Territory”, but he’s an entirely different physical presence in David Vincent Smith’s new film, “He Ain’t Heavy”, in which he gives a “guttural scream of a performance” as an emaciated addict locked in a downward spiral. This brave career move stemmed from Corlett’s itch to do something different to what was expected by the industry — “I was worried about being typecast,” he tells writer Luke Benedictus — and his yearning to understand a troubled family member. With a little help from Matt Damon. (You’ll have to read the piece for details.)
Our columnist, Lance Richardson, interviews another great, the author Charlotte Wood (page 86) in the wake of her shortlisting for the 2024 Booker Prize — the first Australian to be nominated in a decade — for her latest novel, “Stone Yard Devotional”. Fiction, she tells him, is a place to “work out what you understand about the world, in a very slow and gradual way”.
There are few greater voices in pop than that of the incomparable Florence Welch, in terms of both pure power and lyricism. She tells her story— and it’s a great one— to the author Lauren Groff on page 78. Lance Richardson examines the cultural canon (page 48), asking whether we’d recognise a future “great” composition, book or film when we saw it, or if we can only make that call in hindsight.
It wouldn’t be a December issue without T Australia’s epic gift edit (page 56). There’s something to delight your family, friends, neighbour, PT or whomever else you’ve been putting off shopping for.
As we round off the year, I’d like to offer huge thanks to the people who make T Australia happen — the staff, writers, photographers, stylists and other creatives, our loyal brand partners, the agents and retailers, our supportive flagship team in New York and, of course, you, our engaged and curious readers and subscribers. Catch you in 2025.
Katarina Kroslakova — publisher, editor-in-chief
