Tall Story

By Megan Lehmann
The Weekend Australian Magazine
March 26, 2016

Thunk is the sound of a teenager’s head connecting with a door frame constructed by colonial carpenters. The hardwood lintel capping the front door of Reynolds Cottage in Sydney’s The Rocks was built in 1829 and it’s just part of the obstacle course 18-year-old Jackson Raddysh must run each time he visits his father Wes’s workplace. Standing 191.7cm in his port-coloured Vans, Jackson looms over his 180.3cm-tall dad, who runs ghost tours of the former penal colony out of one of Australia’s oldest surviving dwellings.
Full story: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/life/weekend-australian-magazine/taller-faster-sooner-australias-growth-spurt/news-story/1da72799deb50cc3188d876609e7f67b

Profile: Hamish & Andy

By Megan Lehmann
Sunday Style
July 11, 2015

IT’S a friendship forged over beer and sustained by regular top-ups, so it makes sense to meet in a pub. And because Hamish Blake and Andy Lee are the people’s jokesters, their cross-media stardom based on their broad appeal, it’s logical that the inner-Sydney watering hole be a punters’ paradise of counter meals, rolled-up shirt sleeves and greyhound racing on the jumbo screen.

We settle in for a Friday afternoon session (Carlton Draught – old-school) and a spontaneous game that we’ll call Which Half of a Famous Pair Are You?
Full story: http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/lifestyle/sunday-style/can-drive-radio-duo-hamish-and-andy-save-southern-cross-austereo/news-story/abfe68c79caf6d90179ebdb80e8d71e3

Profile: Ian Thorpe

By Megan Lehmann
Sunday Style
November 8, 2015

IT’S a squally, grey day and the tide is coming in. Every third wave crashes over the wall of the empty pool at Bondi Icebergs, spraying Ian Thorpe’s hulking 1.96-metre frame, creating a puddle at his size-17 feet. Thorpe doesn’t flinch. As he poses for photos on the floor of the drained ocean baths, Australia’s greatest swimmer, one of our most popular and successful athletes, is centred, calm in the eye of the storm.
Full story: http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/lifestyle/sunday-style/ian-thorpe-on-finding-mr-right-fatherhood-and-life-beyond-the-swimming-pool/news-story/4910d4b8e206cce6c793eab8eae31d9b

Out of Africa

The Weekend Australian Magazine
By Megan Lehmann
December 12, 2015
           
Because life is not a Disney movie, Donna Wilson sometimes gets whacked. Both arms are scarred by jagged claw marks; nips and scratches notch her sturdy torso. Early on, a tiger bite nearly killed her. But this day is about healing. Wilson is hurting on the inside, feeling slightly overwhelmed, and so she’s enlisted Kibulu, 140kg of tawny-furred ferocity and devotion, to help scare the blues away. She buries her face in the lion’s warm coat, angling her cheek to his sandpaper tongue and ruffling his neck scruff as he bumps his huge head against hers. “Good boy,” she coos, as he rests a paw the size of a T-bone steak on her forearm and sucks on her thumb, eyes blinking against the sun.
Full story: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/life/weekend-australian-magazine/zambi-wildlife-retreat-sydney-its-donna-wilsons-baby/news-story/1da4fc10d6bb47d4a6f7280927aaf15b

Pride & Joy

QWeekend
By Megan Lehmann
May 12, 2015

NOT long after takeoff, the afternoon sun is bouncing off wings angled toward theglittery hub of the French Riviera and I’m locked in the bathroom, crunching Valium and struggling to breathe. This plane is flying in the wrong direction.
Ahead lie ten days of demanding, gratifying and, yes, thrilling work at the Cannes International Film Festival, but behind me are my babies. I’ve made a big mistake. Stupid, stupid selfish me. I’ve left them, two little girls aged two and six, to pursue my own interests, to do something for me. And my heart is breaking.
Full story: http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/qweekend-how-to-survive-being-a-mother/story-fnn8dlfs-1227350308728

Noosa's Back, Baby!

The Weekend Australian Magazine
By Megan Lehmann
April 25, 2015

The light is fading and something quite magical is happening in the treetops along Noosa’s Hastings Street.
Cars on the pedestrian-friendly boulevard slow to a crawl. A little girl’s strawberry gelato drips gently as her eyes grow wide. Even the famed holiday strip’s signature brush turkeys, loitering in the bushes like a street-gang of young toughs, seem to pause mid-scratch. Everyone looks up as strings of delicate fairy lights flick on, hundreds of metres of lights looping the length of the street, each one beaming out 24 watts of environmentally friendly optimism and bringing a sprite-like sparkle to the heart of a town where until recently gloom reigned.
Full story: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/life/weekend-australian-magazine/noosa-booming-how-the-holiday-town-rediscovered-its-mojo/story-e6frg8h6-1227318453007

Profile: Ben Mendelsohn

The Weekend Australian Magazine
By Megan Lehmann
May 9, 2015

Eye drops. A bottle of prescription pills. Two Minties. A phone. Ben Mendelsohn unpacks the pockets of his bulky wool overcoat and lines them up neatly on the table, inspecting them in the neon-pink seepage from the party flickering into life next door. “Better take these out,” he deadpans, striking a pose and tracing the rumpled outline of his coat with a fashion-model flourish. “They’ll ruin the line.”
There are plenty of fine-looking show ponies backstage at the Netflix Australia launch, marking time, flicking their polished manes as ­minders juggle headsets and clipboards while warning them to watch their heels on the soggy red ­carpet. Mendelsohn, 46, is not a show pony.
Full story: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/life/weekend-australian-magazine/ben-mendelsohn-in-bloodline-hollywoods-dark-and-dangerous-new-star/story-e6frg8h6-1227346815106