Rada Priya

The Work Continues

2026-09-17T12:42:45.855+10:00

For years, I had noticed the unfinished house beyond Tyalgum. Set against the valley, it looked both permanent and incomplete: a broad timber structure overlooking Wollumbin, ambitious enough to draw the eye and unfinished enough to invite questions.

Then I met the woman who built it.

Visitors reach Shirley Kennedy’s home across sheets of plywood laid over the mud and enter from the side. Across the opening where a formal entrance may one day stand, two large paintings she made while studying art slide into place as protection from the weather.

Inside, reclaimed hardwood beams hold one immense room filled with books, pottery, canvases, photographs, newspaper clippings and preserved catalogues. The house is home, studio, workshop and archive. Its contents are abundant, but not accidental. Shirley knows what she has and why it matters.

Her own path into art was hard won. The seventh of nine children in a farming family, she recalls being told that art was “a joke”. She did not enter university until she was 42. By then she had spent years making art and helping create opportunities for other artists.

Shirley recalls exhibiting at Murwillumbah’s School of Arts, when the district had no permanent public gallery. She says she coordinated a local art prize for more than two decades, preserving the catalogues year by year, and later pressed for prize-winning work to be acquired for a public collection.

The names and dates are not yet neat. “Murwillumbah Art Prize”, “Tweed Valley Art Prize”, “Border Art Prize” and today’s Wollumbin Art Award appear across this history, but may not form an unbroken lineage. The story changed hands, venues and institutions. Shirley’s recollections reach further back than the Gallery’s official opening, and that difference is not something to smooth over. It is a question to investigate.

What is already clear is the breadth of her contribution. Council records place Shirley on the Gallery’s advisory committee, teaching life-drawing classes and funding awards for artists. Her notes also recall advocating for a purpose-built gallery and advising director Garry Corbett on the practical design of its workshop.

Her practice stretches across painting, drawing, printmaking and pottery. Her notes record that, in the 2001 Site Work project, she was one of ten artists who made work at the Gallery site to help fund the new building.

Shirley’s story is larger than a claim to a single prize or building. It is about the less visible labour through which a region develops an artistic life: organising exhibitions, teaching, arguing, sponsoring artists, keeping records and insisting that local work be seen.

This is not a final history. It is an opening portrait, and an invitation to place memory beside catalogues, newspaper archives, Council minutes and the recollections of others.

If Shirley chooses to continue the conversation, those records may reveal a richer account of the Tweed’s cultural history—and of the determined artist who kept so much of it safe.

The house remains unfinished.

The history may be unfinished too.

But the work continues...

I took this photograph the first time I met Shirley Kennedy at her home in Limpinwood. That day, she told me explicitly: “You are not writing my biography. I’m writing that myself.”
Shirley sits at the left of the frame, with Sue Kinneally laughing at the centre and Julia beside her. Around us were quiche, fruit, biscuits, mugs, interruptions and stories. I thought I had come to hear about Shirley’s part in the history of the Tweed’s art prizes. I did not yet understand the scale of the life surrounding us—or how much of the region’s cultural history was sitting inside that house.
It was Sue who brought me to Shirley. She recognised the significance of what Shirley had done and understood that her memories, art and carefully preserved records deserved sustained attention. Sue did more than make an introduction: she created the conditions in which trust could begin.
Since this photograph was taken, something extraordinary has shifted. After reading my work line by line, correcting it and testing whether I had truly listened, Shirley asked me to help her write her story. Today, we are beginning to explore what that book might become.
I do not take that invitation lightly. I do not want to take possession of Shirley’s life or impose a neat version upon it. I hope to be a careful vessel: to listen closely, preserve the force of her voice, investigate the history around her and help carry her immense contribution to the Tweed into the record where it belongs.
Whatever comes next, this photograph marks its beginning—the first meeting, the first table, and the first page of what I hope will become something extraordinary.

A Different Inheritance

2026-09-13T12:43:31.833+10:00

For most of my life, womanhood has felt like a series of thresholds I crossed without the right kind of witness.

At forty, I have met a woman who makes me curious about the next one.

Sharon Moloney approached me last November at an ArtPost exhibition opening. She had seen me around the village with my daughters, she said, and enjoyed watching the way I interacted with them. Something had drawn her to introduce herself.

Ordinarily, being told that a stranger had been watching me with my children might have raised my defences. But Sharon’s presence was calm and uncomplicated. I did not feel watched. I felt seen.

She invited my girls and me to swim in the creek at her Smiths Creek home and share tea. Something made me accept. I learned that Sharon had spent decades working in women’s health, completed a PhD in women’s spirituality and written a book. On Christmas Day, she came by simply to slip a card beneath my door.

It was a lovely new friendship. I did not yet understand it as an intervention.

Then I listened to Sharon speaking with Lisa Fitzpatrick on the Feminine Body Speaks podcast about menopause and female power. She shared a teaching that reorganised something inside me:

“At menarche, a young girl enters her power. During her menstruating years, she practises her power, and at menopause, she becomes her power.”

I had never understood my life through that sequence.

My first threshold was not properly held. I hid my period from my mother for a year. When she discovered it, the ceremony she created felt less like being welcomed into womanhood and more like being placed inside somebody else’s idea of it.

My mother knew the language of female power. Our home was filled with spiritual books. She taught massage and breathwork. But the language surrounding me did not match the way I was mothered.

The same fracture followed me into birth. When I needed my mother during the final push that brought my first daughter into the world, I watched her retreat into the shadows. The midwife stepped forward. My daughter arrived safely, but my body recorded the difference between speaking about women’s power and knowing how to stand beside it.

I have spent years examining those moments. I do not need to build another home inside them.

What Sharon offered me was not a better explanation of my past. She offered me an image of the future.

Recently, I have been interviewing women in their seventies and beyond. In some stories I sensed bitterness and wondered what life had done to them. Sharon’s words encouraged a more generous question: what happens when a girl’s power is not honoured, when a woman has little room to practise it, and when the authority of age is treated as irrelevance?

Perhaps some of what we call bitterness is power that has had nowhere to go.

More importantly, perhaps it can still be reclaimed.

When Sharon and I sat down to speak for the Tweed Weekly, she described authenticity through sympathetic resonance: strike a chord on one guitar and another across the room will begin to vibrate. A woman may know all the correct language, but the body recognises whether truth lives beneath it.

Sharon jokingly calls this the menopausal “bullshit radar”.

I understand exactly what she means.

Her work has intellectual substance—a PhD, decades of professional practice and research—but it is the integration that moves me. At 71, Sharon is not theorising about female power from a distance. She is beautiful, vibrant, sexual, intelligent and fully inhabiting her age. She does not present menopause as a problem to be conquered or a decline to be disguised.

She makes it look like an arrival.

That possibility matters in a culture with an enormous commercial investment in making women fear ageing. What might change in families and communities if older women were recognised not as fading from relevance, but as becoming less willing to betray what they know?

The piece I am writing for the Weekly began as a profile of an interesting local woman. It has become a question about what we lose when female ageing is reduced to symptoms, invisibility or jokes.

For me, it has become more personal still.

Watching my mother move through menopause was violent and frightening. Without realising it, I had accepted her experience as a preview of my own.

Sharon has disrupted that inheritance.

I am forty. I feel better than I have ever felt. I am still in the years of practising my power, and for the first time, I am not using that practice simply to survive what has already happened.

I am practising for the woman I am still becoming.

Dr Sharon Moloney with husband at ArtPost Uki. Photo by Vibrant Imaging

One hundred stories later

2026-08-06T13:27:32.735+10:00

This week, my 100th article was published in The Tweed Valley Weekly.

But the number sent me back to the first time I walked into its office, when I still didn’t know whether my first two stories were good enough to print.

I had filed them under deadline a couple of days earlier and was there to meet editor Jonathan Howard for the first time. It happened to be print day. That week’s layout had been decided the day before, distribution was the following morning and work on the next edition was already underway.

I hadn’t yet learned that newspapers seem to exist in several weeks at once.

Jonathan looked at me and said, “I recognise you. You’ll be in the paper tomorrow.”

I assumed he meant a small mention somewhere inside.

The following morning, I was the front-page story.

I had walked into the office wondering whether I belonged behind a byline, only to discover the paper had already placed me on its cover.

Journalism had never been part of my plan. I was finishing a Diploma of Fashion while single-parenting two daughters and managing the usual chaos of our lives.

Then there was Madeleine Murray, one of those unmistakable village characters who had taken a particular liking to me and my girls. She praised our beauty and talents with the shameless enthusiasm of someone determined that we should see them too.

With no grandparents present in my daughters’ lives, my father gone and my mother having disowned me, as I have written about previously, Madeleine became a friend and mentor during a period when I had very little older support around me.

When she needed knee surgery, she repeatedly asked whether I would cover her stories. Somewhere between assignments, sewing deadlines and school runs, I said yes without appreciating how little I knew about newspaper journalism.

Then an email arrived from Madeleine’s hospital bed: two stories were due in four days.

I panicked.

Fortunately, panic can be an excellent teacher. Finding subjects, asking questions and drawing out their stories came naturally. Compressing a person’s life into 350 words while making every sentence earn its place was harder.

Madeleine guided me from her recovery bed, while Jonathan generously showed me where I was going wrong. Slowly, the unfamiliar rules became instinct.

In the nine months that followed came conversations with Suzanne Vega, Richard Clapton and Thomas Mayo, alongside artists, actors, drag performers, chefs, teachers, volunteers, teenagers and elders. Each required me to listen differently.

My 100th published article was a profile of 17-year-old musician Wren Hynes, drawn from my 97th interview. Publication schedules and interview order had long since parted ways.

My 100th interview was a joint conversation with Australian music legends Troy Cassar-Daley and Ian Moss. When I told them, they responded with such warmth and delight that I briefly allowed myself to feel proud. Their story will be published next week.

There is an irony here that I love: I found my own voice by listening to other people.

Finding it in print, at a time when the medium can feel increasingly fragile, is bittersweet. Perhaps that is why each story feels worth preserving.

One hundred articles later, I don’t feel as though I have arrived. I feel grateful that one slightly reckless yes changed the direction of my life.

The Painter on the hill

2026-06-25T12:12:31.757+10:00

I went to meet Scott McDougall deliberately underprepared.

This is not how journalists are usually meant to begin. We are supposed to research, cross-check, read the biography, study the exhibition history, arrive with neat questions and enough knowledge to sound vaguely authoritative.

But Scott had been recommended to me by artist Hobie Porter, who told me he was someone I might find interesting. That was enough.

I did not want to arrive with the internet’s version of him already sitting between us. I wanted to meet the man, see the work, stand in the room where it happened and absorb it without the corruption of other people’s opinions.

I am not an art writer. Not really. But I am an artist at heart. A fashion designer by training. A lover of light, texture, form, fabric, structure, composition and the controlled drama of a perfectly judged line.

Becoming a journalist has opened a new lens. It has also made me realise how often I underestimate people. My general disappointment in humanity means I am constantly surprised by how extraordinary people can be when you get close enough to see them properly.

Scott McDougall was no exception.

His home sits high in Stokers Siding, tucked into the hill as if it has always known where it belongs. The house is white, grand and immaculate, but not showy. It has the calm confidence of something designed to age beautifully.

There is a hint of Moroccan villa in the high white walls, the enclosed feeling of sanctuary, the way the home opens inward and outward at the same time. A koi pond filled with goldfish sits between the house and his oversized studio. The rooms are open plan and high-ceilinged, with enormous glass windows pulling the caldera, rainforest and sky into view.

White walls, warm wood, turquoise water and furnishings did not so much complement the unbridled green of the landscape as control it. Everything belonged, while still standing out.

That balance, I soon realised, was also in his work.

Scott, at 73, has the twinkle of someone still amused by life. There is nothing finished about him. No sense of an artist coasting on reputation, tidying the archive, waiting to be assessed. He is very much still in motion.

He began painting seriously at 23. By 30, he had what he called his “midlife crisis”.

“I thought I would have been an established artist by then,” he told me.

So he left Brisbane, packed up his young family and moved to Sydney. It was not romantic. It was necessary.

“I think I was flat broke within 18 months of moving down there,” he said.

Sydney was where his career began to ignite. He took on advertising illustration work to survive, painting at the same time until his fine art income matched what he was earning commercially.

Then he stopped doing anything else.

“I stopped and painted and I haven’t stopped painting,” he said.

“I’ve never had a second job. I’ve just lived on my painting.”

That line sat with me. Not because it sounded boastful. It didn’t. Scott said it with the humility of someone who knows exactly how rare it is. Most artists, as he pointed out, become teachers, lecturers, taxi drivers, anything that allows the work to keep existing on the side.

Scott’s work has never been on the side.

For more than four decades he has lived through painting. Not around it. Not adjacent to it. Through it.

Before arriving at Stokers Siding, his eye had travelled widely. Europe, Morocco, Cuba, Vietnam. He was drawn to ageing buildings, crumbling render, flaking paint, the patina of time and use. He spoke of the difference between seeing history in books and physically touching a wall that was 1000 years old.

That made sense to me. From my own explorations of Europe and beyond. His paintings are rich without being decorative. They are realist, but not cold. The realism is not there to impress you with technical ability, although it does. It is there because texture matters. A wall matters. Skin matters. Fabric matters. A shadow has weight. A surface remembers.

In his studio, his aesthetic intelligence was visible everywhere. Not just on the canvases, but in the way objects were placed, the way works in progress leaned, the way the studio itself seemed to hold both discipline and freedom.

Then Covid arrived, and the travel stopped.

For an artist whose subject matter had been shaped by movement, architecture and the textures of faraway places, the interruption was profound.

“I tried to tackle the landscape here,” Scott said.

“Green is not my favourite. It is too lush.”

It is a startling thing to hear from a painter living in one of the lushest regions in Australia. But it is also the point where the story becomes interesting.

The Caldera is green in a way that can feel excessive. The rainforest does not politely sit in the background. It comes at you. It climbs, drips, wraps, crowds and glows. It is beautiful, yes, but beauty can be difficult to paint without becoming sentimental.

Scott’s idea of the Australian landscape was harsher, browner, more open. The Australia of hard light, drought, heat, shadow, rock and distance.

The green valley around him resisted that.

When restrictions lifted, he began travelling west to Tenterfield, where the landscape changed dramatically. There he found brown grass, granite, distance and sky. He also found a new way into the Australian landscape.

“The Australian light really is different to anywhere else in the world,” he said.

He spoke about the sharpness of the horizon here, the darker shadows, the higher contrasts. In Europe, he said, the light is softer, often hazed. Here, the separation between sky and sea can feel as if it has been cut with a knife.

Listening to him, I thought about how often Australian beauty is misunderstood because we inherit European rules for seeing. Even colour behaves differently here. The light is less forgiving. The shadows are not gentle. The landscape does not always want to be pretty.

Scott’s newer paintings often hold that tension. Big skies. Hard contrasts. Clouds that become almost architectural. Landscapes without figures.

“I don’t put figures in,” he said.

“Because I think it makes that figure the story.”

He wants us, the viewer, to step into the landscape without being told where to look. A figure would interrupt that. A figure would become narrative. Without one, the landscape can remain the event.

This absence of people does not make the work empty. It makes it strangely full. The viewer becomes the body in the painting.

There is another tension in Scott’s career, and it visibly frustrates him: the art market’s appetite for consistency.

Galleries, he said, often want artists to remain recognisable because it makes the work easier to sell. Change becomes a commercial inconvenience.

“Galleries, as I said, don’t like change very much,” he said.

“They want a product that will sell.”

For an artist who has spent 45 years evolving, that kind of expectation is a cage dressed up as professionalism.

Scott’s work has shifted from figurative painting to urban landscapes, from European walls to Cuban doorways, from architecture to Australian bush, from land to sky. But he does not see those changes as ruptures. If the work were laid out chronologically, he said, the evolution would be subtle but clear.

That made sense. The subject changes, but the eye remains.

The same painter who loved flaking paint in Europe can love the texture of bark. The same eye that studied fabric against skin can study cloud against hard light. The same fascination with surfaces, time and atmosphere continues.

Scott’s local connection also runs deeper than geography. His grandparents, the Cranney’s, were among the early settlers of the valley, working as timber getters and banana farmers. As a child, he holidayed near Razorback. In one sense, his move to Stokers Siding was a return. In another, it was an artistic confrontation.

He came back to a place he knew, only to discover he had to learn how to see it.

That is perhaps what stayed with me most. Not the career achievements, although they are considerable. Not the beautiful house, although it was magnificent. Not even the paintings, rich and precise as they were.

It was the fact that Scott McDougall still appears to be in argument with seeing.

At 73, he is not finished wrestling with light, landscape, colour, scale or the strange demands of a canvas. He is not trying to become a monument to his own career. He is still curious. Still frustrated. Still looking.

“Every morning I wake up and I want to paint,” he said.

There are people who spend their lives waiting for permission to become themselves. Scott seems to have given himself that permission early, then paid the full price of it, day after day, decade after decade.

To live from art is rare. To keep changing while living from art is rarer.

As I left his house on the hill, past the pond and the studio full of unfinished work, I thought about the strange privilege of entering someone else’s world for an afternoon. Writing has given me that. A reason to knock on doors I would otherwise only wonder about.

And sometimes, behind those doors, there is a person who has spent a lifetime learning how to see.

By Rada Campbell

Extended version of A life painted for the Tweed Weekly

He Paints What Locals Think They Already Know

2026-05-21T19:51:58.184+10:00

CEDAR CREEK, Australia - The road to Hobie Porter’s studio winds through dense green, the kind of layered rainforest that seems to breathe. It is quiet in a way that feels deliberate, as if the landscape is holding something back. Porter has built a career on that exact tension.

I had known of Hobie Porter long before I knew him personally. His sweeping landscapes hanging at Tweed Regional Gallery had stopped me in my tracks. It took me an embarrassingly long time to realise he was the same person I saw regularly at my daily café, Bastion Lane in Uki.

For more than two decades, Porter has painted the Tweed Valley - its escarpments, shifting light and familiar outlines - but rarely in ways that feel settled. His works resist the easy beauty often associated with landscape painting. Instead, they hover somewhere between recognition and unease, inviting viewers to look again at places they thought they understood.

“I’m trying to present a fresh perspective of something people are familiar with, but haven’t really seen,” Porter said.

That idea - familiarity unsettled - sits at the centre of his practice.

Born in Sydney and raised in northern New South Wales, Porter remembers sensing early on that this region was different.

“I remember as a kid thinking this area is so special, you’d be mad to move away,” he said.

The sentiment stayed with him, not as nostalgia but as a framework. While many artists leave regional areas in pursuit of opportunity, Porter made a deliberate choice to stay.

That decision was tested during his time in New York, where he studied and absorbed the pace and scale of the global art world. The experience, he said, was valuable - but clarifying.

“It was a concrete jungle,” he said. “There was magic there, but it was of a different kind - more about people. Here, it’s quieter. You have the time and space to think through your own ideas.”

That distance from the centre has shaped not only his lifestyle but his work. In metropolitan art scenes, artists are often in constant dialogue with one another - a feedback loop that can sharpen ideas but also flatten them. Porter, by contrast, works in relative isolation.

“If everyone is talking to each other about what they should be doing, they end up with the same product,” he said.

“You have to find a way to turn down the volume of those other voices to find your own.”

His paintings reflect that independence. They are technically precise, often built from multiple perspectives layered into a single frame. Viewpoints shift subtly - a cliff face might feel both distant and immediate, a tree both grounded and suspended. The effect is disorienting, almost dreamlike.

Standing in front of one of his works, I don’t feel like I am positioned within the landscape but somewhere above or within it, as if drifting.

“I want people to rethink the landscape,” Porter said. “To break away from standard ways of reading it.”

That rethinking is not purely aesthetic. Porter’s work engages with deeper questions about how landscapes are seen, interpreted and historically framed. Traditional Australian landscape painting often carries the weight of colonial narratives - the land as something to be surveyed, owned or romanticised. Porter’s approach disrupts that lineage without directly confronting it.

Instead, he alters perspective.

By shifting scale, compressing space or introducing small, almost imperceptible human traces, he creates a sense of dislocation. I, as the viewer, am no longer looking at a passive scene but participating in an experience that feels slightly out of reach.

“There’s a kind of transcendence in it,” he said. “You’re not just looking at a place; you’re rethinking how you relate to it.”

For local audiences, that experience carries particular resonance. We recognise the forms in Porter’s paintings immediately - a ridgeline, a valley, a familiar silhouette. But the way those elements are presented feels unfamiliar.

“Locals see something they know, but refreshed,” Porter said.

Further afield, the response shifts. Viewers without a direct connection to the region tend to read the work more broadly - through environmental themes, or as part of a wider conversation about landscape in contemporary art.

“I was always curious how that would translate,” Porter said. “But people seem to respond to the beauty of the environment, even if they don’t know it personally.”

Though I had known Hobie for years, this was my first time visiting the home and studio he had spoken about so often. The house itself felt like an extension of the landscape and, in many ways, of the paintings. Built by his father, the home curves around a grand central stone fireplace, its organic forms softening the weight of the rock. Art and tribal artefacts fill the walls, and a low library divides the stone kitchen from the sprawling lounge room. Even the bathroom opens itself to nature through glass, blurring the line between inside and outside.

Seeing the landscape in person - the lush green, the isolation, the mountains sweeping upward all around - made the work click into place in a completely different way.

Down at the neighbouring studio, Porter’s mother Jenny, an accomplished artist in her own right, sat quietly in front of a large canvas, layering light into one of her sweeping local beach scenes. Creativity here did not feel performative or commercial. It felt inherited. Embedded into the environment itself.

That duality - local specificity and broader relevance - has helped his work gain national recognition. Exhibitions in major galleries and inclusion in public collections have expanded his audience, but Porter remains wary of the idea of success as something external.

“When you’re living your life, you forget that people even know you exist,” he said.

What he does not forget is the role of the community around him.

“The local community has played a key role,” he said. “That support gave me the confidence to take the work further.”

One of the pivotal moments in his career came with a body of work titled Dry Rain, developed during the drought years of the late 2000s. The series introduced elements that would become central to his practice: altered perspectives, environmental tension and subtle disruptions of natural order.

“It set up my way of thinking,” he said.

In those paintings, leaves fall through empty space, suspended between sky and ground. The imagery is simple, but the effect is unsettling - an inversion of expectation that mirrors the instability of the landscape itself.

The idea of painting as a form of communication runs through Porter’s work, though not in a literal sense. He is less interested in conveying a fixed message than in creating conditions for perception.

“We want the feeling to be evident in the painting,” he said. “If people can feel it without it being explained, that’s the goal.”

Back in his studio, surrounded by canvases at various stages of completion, the process feels both methodical and uncertain. Each painting, he said, presents its own set of problems.

“You finish one, and then you have to start again,” he said. “You face all those problems again.”

It is a cycle that resists resolution - much like the landscapes he paints.

Outside, the light shifted almost imperceptibly across the valley. It was the kind of change that might go unnoticed in passing, but under Porter’s gaze, it becomes something else entirely: a moment worth holding, reworking and offering back.

Not as it is - but as it might be seen.

Perhaps that is why Porter’s work resonates so strongly here. Locals are not just seeing a landscape. They are seeing their own home reflected back at them through the eyes of someone who has spent a lifetime paying closer attention than most of us ever do.

Hobie Porter’s work continues to resonate both locally and nationally, with upcoming exhibitions including Sydney Contemporary Art Fair in September and Tweed Regional Gallery in March 27’.
www.hobieporter.com.au

By Rada Campbell
Extended version of the feature originally published in Tweed Weekly.

The Man I Was Taught to Fear

2026-05-06T21:19:00.000+10:00

There are people we grieve twice in a lifetime.

Once for who they were.
And once for who we were never allowed to know.

My father is one of them.

When I was a child, my mother told me he was a paedophile.

She didn’t whisper it. She didn’t hesitate. She said it plainly, as fact. As warning. As control. When we misbehaved, she would drop us at the greyhound station and force us to spend sleepless weekends with him. I remember the noise of the station. The way my stomach would knot. The terror that would sit in my chest at night when the lights went out.

I was absolutely terrified to sleep.

He was a workaholic. Twelve-hour days. Long hours. Absence disguised as provision. He would leave cash on the bench, stockpiles of food in the fridge, and the television on - a wild luxury I couldn’t enjoy because fear had already moved in. At home with my mother, we weren’t allowed a TV at all.

Looking back now, my father was unemotional, but never unkind.

He didn’t ask questions. He didn’t offer himself easily. He spoke at me rather than with me. He was stubborn. Direct. A wealth of intelligence and knowledge that felt dense and inaccessible when I was young.

But I remember his laugh.

Whenever I heard it, something strange would happen in my body. A sudden calm. A softening. A fleeting joy I didn’t yet have language for. Even then, my nervous system knew something my mind wasn’t allowed to.

Years later, when I was living in Italy, I wanted to open a fashion design studio. My father was the wealthiest person I knew, so it made sense to ask him for a business loan.

His response came back in a single line:

Yes - on the condition that you move back to Melbourne.

That sentence changed my life.

I didn’t fully fulfill my end, but nevertheless over the next four years, I got to know my father for the first time. Not as a weekend threat. Not as a shadow. But as a man. A human. A presence.

It was when my daughter was born that the truth landed in my body with absolute clarity:
what my mother had told me all those years ago simply could not be true.

He was gentle. Caring. Attentive in the most emotionally practical way imaginable. The dishes were always clean. The nappies were always stocked. The pantry was always full. There was never a conversation about it. It just was.

I would mention something I needed in passing, and the very next day it would appear - quietly, without announcement, without expectation of gratitude.

He showed love through service. Through consistency. Through presence.

I hadn’t yet reconciled my anger about his emotional absence when I was younger. I still carried confusion about why he hadn’t fought harder to be involved. But he was present now. And that mattered.

Something I think about often, more than a decade after he passed, is how he welcomed people into our home.

The Mormon missionaries on Wednesdays.
The Jehovah’s on Saturdays.

They would sit in our living room while I overheard him sharing deep knowledge about God, religion, and belief. It felt as though he was converting them - not forcefully, but gently, intelligently, kindly.

They admired him. They came every week.

And I will never forget the look on their faces when they arrived in the days after he died.

My father suffered quietly. He never told anyone he was dying.

By the time he let me take him to hospital, it was the end.

The day after I admitted him, my mother began calling incessantly.

Not to ask how he was.
Not to ask how I was.

She wanted to know where his wealth was. What accounts he had. What needed to be done. I can’t remember her exact words now, but I remember the feeling - a sharp, disorienting sense that even for her, this was wildly inappropriate.

She had never uttered a kind word about him to me. Not once.

At the time, I tried to make sense of it the way I always had. I told myself this was projection - the fallout from her own parents’ deaths, the unresolved rupture that had ended her connection with her side of the family years earlier. I softened it. I contained it. I made it smaller so I could survive it.

The very next day, my father died.

And then the phone rang again.

This time she was crying. Wailing. Repeating two words over and over: “my husband.”

I will never forget it.

Up until that moment, I had always assumed there was something wrong with me. That I was unlovable to my mother. That I failed some invisible test other daughters passed without effort.

But hearing those words - so sudden, so possessive, so disconnected from everything I had lived - something shifted.

For the first time, it occurred to me that perhaps there wasn’t something just wrong with me.
That perhaps there was something fundamentally fractured in her.

In the years that followed, therapy would give language to that knowing. But that was the moment it first arrived - not with anger, but with clarity.

Before he died, my father released me completely.

He said: Everything happened exactly how it was supposed to.

In that sentence, something loosened inside me.

Free from what-ifs.
Free from guilt.
Free from regret.

My marriage ended not long after - in a violent arrest. Grieving my husband overtook grieving my father. I lost him again. Once as a parent I never fully had. And again as a grandfather my children never got to know.

During my high-risk pregnancy, while being told I might lose my baby, I was free for the first time in my life.

No mother.
No husband.
No twin.

Living alone. Raising one daughter. Growing another.

Those years were the hardest I have ever lived. And the happiest.

Somewhere along the way, I had learned - the hard way - how to squeeze meaning and even joy from the most painful places. Not because I wanted to. But because I had to.

Looking back now, I understand something I couldn’t then.

My father was not the monster I was taught to fear.
He was a man who loved quietly.
And I was a child who learned to survive by misunderstanding love.

There are versions of childhood.
And then there are “versions”.

This is the one I am finally allowed to tell.

And it sits beside the others - not instead of them - but alongside them.

Because life is heavy.
And luminous.
Often at the same time.

And sometimes the truest stories arrive not when we’re ready -
but when we’ve finally learned how to hold them.

Between these two photos exists an entire lifetime of distance, misunderstanding and silence. I barely knew my father between these moments - and somehow, it was only in the years just before he died that I finally met the man holding me all along.

Strange Darling - spoiler, it got under my skin

2026-02-05T18:10:00.001+11:00

There are films you enjoy, films you admire, and then films that bypass your intellect entirely and go straight for the nervous system. Strange Darling did that to me. I didn’t just watch it - I felt located by it.

From the title alone, the film announces its intelligence. Strange Darling sounds intimate and threatening in the same breath, and the opening scene honours that tension immediately. The colour blocking is not aesthetic flourish but psychological architecture. The cinematography is precise, deliberate, almost mannered - yet constantly vibrating with danger.

The chemistry between the leads is undeniable and unsettling. Not romantic, not safe - a charge that feels ferocious without tipping into fantasy. They are both extraordinarily talented and undeniably hot, which matters because attraction interferes with moral clarity. The film understands that beauty disarms suspicion and uses it without apology. Watching them together is confronting, hypnotic, and hard to look away from.

The sequencing fractures time just enough to destabilise meaning. I wasn’t consuming a story, I was actively reassembling one, constantly revising my assumptions. The brilliance is that the film isn’t interested in resolution so much as aftermath. It lingers where most thrillers cut away. It trusts the audience. To sit in discomfort.

The lead character felt both familiar and free to me. I live with cptsd, which means my system is always scanning - forecasting outcomes, rehearsing consequences, tracking tone and threat. I am rarely just in a moment. She is unburdened by anticipatory guilt. No forecasting. No moral accounting in advance. No “what if this ruins everything?” Just impulse → discharge → aftermath.

That sequence is deeply my Aries nature - it’s my instinctive wiring - but trauma has placed a governor on it. So what I felt watching her wasn’t aspiration. It was contrast. The relief of imagining what it might feel like to turn the watchtower off.

She isn’t calculated. She isn’t a strategist or a mastermind. She isn’t even consistently predatory. She is reactive. State-driven. Her nervous system cascades: threat appears and survival fires; arousal spikes into something feral; loneliness surfaces and seeks connection through distortion. She isn’t choosing violence as an identity. She’s responding to overwhelming internal states without a regulatory brake.

That distinction matters to me. Especially when it comes to intimacy. Her sexuality is crude and maladaptive, but it reads as an attempt to connect rather than to dominate. That recognition was uncomfortable and clarifying. It forced me to be honest about why I enjoy violence during sex - not as cruelty, but as a controlled place where intensity, power, and closeness are negotiated rather than feared.

Then there's the layer I understand through Motherhood. I witness my child flip from silly to screeching inside a second. I recognise the primitive brain intimately. Through that lens, my own mother finally made sense - her childlike dysregulation, her volatility. The difference is that I was never allowed the same collapse. My infant and adolescent dysregulation was punished. Hers filled the room. Seeing that mirrored in an adult body on screen was shocking.

There is joy in the fantasy of dropping the watchtower, and sadness in knowing why I can’t. The character’s undomesticated energy feels wild and alive, but also lonely and destructive, instinct moving without containment. It echoed Women Who Run With the Wolves, not in its romance of instinct, but in its insistence that the feminine psyche holds forces that demand acknowledgement, not repression.

Clarissa Pinkola Estés frames these forces as medicines - psychic remedies that awaken dormant aspects of the self. In that sense, Strange Darling felt like an accidental initiation. Baba Yaga appears not as a villain but as a threshold guardian: the terrifying wild mother who strips illusion and demands maturity. She does not comfort; she teaches through ordeal. The lead character feels Baba Yaga–touched, operating beyond social permission, forcing confrontation with what happens when instinct is unleashed without wisdom.

La Loba, the Wolf Woman, gathers bones from the desert and sings them back to life. This is the psychic archaeology of trauma: retrieving what was buried to survive. I felt that in the film’s aftermath, the sense that something skeletal had been unearthed in me. Not revived fully, but recognised. Bluebeard, too, hovered in the background: the internal predator that kills curiosity and punishes transgression. In my own life, that voice learned its script early, obedience as safety, self-surveillance as survival. The lead character exists beyond Bluebeard’s rules, but at a cost.

What Strange Darling stirred in me was not a desire to become uncontained, but a reckoning with how much energy it takes to remain regulated. And what happens when instinct is unleashed without wisdom.

I watched Strange Darling beside someone I’m getting to know - someone who meets me intellectually and emotionally - which made the experience feel unexpectedly exposed. To be seen while responding honestly - disturbed, aroused, thoughtful, mattered. The film didn’t just raise questions about violence and agency. It asked how we read each other, how quickly we assign narratives, and what happens when regulation fails and no one is steering.

People don’t become dangerous because they want to be monsters. They become dangerous when regulation collapses. Strange Darling doesn’t excuse that truth. It simply refuses to sanitise it.

Versions, and “Versions”

2026-01-21T12:05:00.003+11:00

I’ve already written about The Wiiyaan as a journalist.

That piece lives in the Tweed Weekly. It’s careful, respectful, measured. It honours Bundjalung origin story, place, and the quiet authority of listening. It was written for a broad audience, many of whom - like me - come from settler families, carrying our own histories alongside the land we now call home.

But after filing that story, I knew I wasn’t done.

Some stories ask something back from you. This one did.

So this is the version that doesn’t fit in a newspaper column.

This is the version that explains why that exhibition cracked something open in me - why listening to Kyle Slabb speak about holding one version of Country, with care and restraint, felt like a mirror I wasn’t expecting.

Kyle spoke about perspective. About how this telling is not the story, but a story - shaped by lineage, responsibility and law. He was clear, careful, and deeply respectful of other versions held by others.

Standing there with my daughters, answering their questions, I found myself explaining it in the only way I know how.

I grew up with eight siblings. Same house. Same mother. Same major life events. And yet, if you ask each of us about our childhood, you’ll hear nine completely different stories.

That doesn’t mean someone is lying.
It means perspective exists.

But here’s the harder truth I’ve been circling lately:
there are versions - and then there are “versions”.

Perspective is real.
Truth still matters.

Sometimes what’s presented as someone’s truth is actually a distortion. A performance. A story designed to protect ego, gain sympathy, or avoid accountability. And that’s where things become dangerous - personally, culturally, generationally.

Six weeks before I attended The Wiiyaan, my mother disowned me.

I was sitting at my table, quietly working on my final assessments for my graduation diploma, when she invited herself over. I hadn’t asked her to come. I was hoping for peace.

Instead, she began telling me - unprompted - that we are Bundjalung. That we are Aboriginal. That there are aunties, connections, stories I’d never heard before. None of it had a point. None of it made sense.

She has claimed Aboriginal descent for as long as I can remember, but always vaguely. Always from the south. The pelican as the important ancestral figure. Growing up, she often spoke about Aunty Wilma - a girl from the Stolen Generations who lived and worked in her childhood home. Aunty Wilma was real. I knew her. She is still alive and lives in Darwin. That relationship mattered. But proximity is not lineage.

There is also truth in our family history. My mother’s eldest brother, who later took his own life, had children with a mixed Aboriginal woman. Those children were taken from him - adopted out, reportedly on the advice of family or the church. These are details I am open to being corrected on, but they exist. They are part of our story. They are not my ancestry.

What unsettled me wasn’t curiosity. It was certainty. Arriving late. Loud. Without evidence.

I closed my laptop and gently asked why this was the first time I was hearing all of this. I reminded her she had always said we were from the south. That I had spoken to her brothers, who were quite sure our ancestry was Irish and Scottish. That “bushman” on an old family tree may have been misunderstood. On my father’s side, I am proudly Scottish - from the Campbell clan of Inveraray.

If I do have Indigenous ancestry, I would want to know. Truly. I would want to honour it properly and share it with my children honestly.

But falsifying identity - whether for relevance, sympathy, or financial gain - is something I fundamentally disagree with. It isn’t harmless. It’s corrosive.

I was careful not to say the word “lie”.
I said, “Why are you telling untruths?”

Her response was instant.

“I am not your mother. You are not my daughter.”

It cut - but it also confirmed something I had always known.

I told her that the unconditional love that flows through me to my children could never have come from her or my father, because there was none. That I know I am a child of something higher. Something bigger.

A week later, on Christmas Day, she came to my home to collect my niece. I said two words: “Merry Christmas.”

The next morning, I woke up to a text message demanding apology - not to me, not to family, but to people I had never heard of.

That moment didn’t break me.

It released me.

Released me from inherited narratives.
Released me to create boundaries.
Released me to raise my girls differently.
Released me to finally start telling my own story.

Not the polished one I’ve shared since 2010.
The painful one.
The one that sits beside the colourful, creative, joyful life I’ve built.

My childhood was shaped by neglect and emotional abuse. Physical abuse. Somatic abuse. My adulthood has been shaped by walking through fire - again and again - to learn the lessons my mother never could.

Covering The Wiiyaan reminded me that we have a responsibility to story. To truth. To care. To restraint.

Perspective matters.
But truth matters more.

This painful chapter may be the cracking open that finally allows me to speak honestly - not instead of beauty, but alongside it.

Because life is brutal.
And beautiful.

And both deserve to be told.

Art, over time

2026-01-14T21:18:00.000+11:00

There is a quiet ritual in returning to an artwork a year after year-be a painting, a fashion monograph, or shadowy photograph once captured in a fleeting second. What once stunned me with surface beauty begins to find deeper things with time. These work don't fade. They gather. They become layered - like fabric worn in the elbows, softer, richer, more personal.

The artists I return to, Alexander McQueen, Collette Dinnigan, Yves Saint Laurent, etc, never really leave. The work isn't just historical or trendy, it resists the very idea of expiration. These aren't seasonal moments, they are iterative legacies. The garments, sketches, philosophies, continue to reveal themselves in fragments - as I change, as the world does.

This is the infinite life of art: it doesn't age, it ages with you. And in that shared timeline, you co-author its meaning. You respond differently at 22 then at 39. The heartbreak you hadn't yet lived, the maternal instinct that hadn't yet woken up in you - these become lenses through which old works revealed new truths.

In this sense, art isn't a frozen object. It's alive. Adapts. It waits patiently for the viewer to catch up. It's a muse that ages with you-not losing relevance but gaining residence. And that's why I keep these monographs close, like sacred texts. Because art, to me, is not just influence. It is an ongoing conversation.

As I return to fashion now, as both mother and woman, with years of life behind me, I look back at my ginormous body of work I created when I was just starting out, I was so young then, a teen eager and electric with endless fuel. I stitched from instinct. I poured my whole self into every dress every draped bodice every tiny glass bead.

For years I saw those boxes and boxes of old designs and samples as clutter - fossils of a life I hadn't lived up to.

But now, I see them as sacred relics of a becoming

Through the lens of time and experience, I can read the emotional fingerprints I left behind. My enthusiasm, my hunger, my romanticism - it's all there, sewn into seams. I can trace my story not just through my sketchbook, but through bias cuts and embroidery. Every unfinished piece has a reason it stopped. Every finished garment holds something I survived...

A look at my work - Origine Collection

2025-12-09T13:21:00.003+11:00

This look centres on my oversized “Demi” coat - the hero piece from my Origine Graduate Collection. I designed it as a strong, statement outer layer, using high-quality faux fur and reclaimed materials to keep the piece aligned with my eco-friendly values. It’s bold, comfortable, and intentionally dramatic, the kind of coat that changes how you stand the moment you put it on.

Underneath, it's paired with layered silks and textured detailing made from ethical and upcycled fabrics. Most of the materials in this outfit were sourced second-hand or repurposed from past projects, which is the way I prefer to work: low-waste, thoughtful, and practical without losing the beauty of the design.

Dean James shot this series in Victoria Springs studio within the M|Arts precinct, and his photography brought out exactly what I hoped to show - the mix of strength, softness and sustainability that shaped this collection.

This is Part One of the shoot.

By Rada Campbell (formerly Rada Priya)

Nicole McKenzie x Rada Priya

2025-12-06T15:20:00.004+11:00

Some collaborations arrive without fuss, they just work. Shooting with fellow TAFE student Nicole McKenzie became one of those unexpected highlights of my year. We’re both still refining our craft - she behind the camera, me behind the seams - and figuring out how to translate who we are into what we create.

What stood out immediately was how Nicole saw my work. She didn’t just photograph the garments; she noticed the structure, the stitching, the choices that usually only the maker pays attention to. Her images showed my designs, and me, with a clarity that felt grounding and true.

We were lucky to have Dannika with us, too -teacher, friend, and quiet powerhouse. She guided Nicole through the technical angles and helped me with poses and styling, keeping the shoot sharp, intentional, and industry-ready. The three of us worked in an easy rhythm that made the process feel collaborative rather than staged.

These are the moments that remind me why studying in a creative community matters: shared curiosity, peer support, and the generosity that exists between emerging artists. I’m grateful to Nicole for capturing this chapter so intuitively, and to Dannika for shaping the way we brought it to life.

Rada Priya is now Rada Campbell

A look at my work - silk, glass and swarovski

2025-12-03T14:50:00.000+11:00

Edwina Johnson had never photographed fashion before, and that openness - her willingness to learn, to ask, to absorb advice from fellow students and teachers-gave this shoot its own kind of magic. No ego, no pressure, just the curiosity of someone discovering a new craft in real time.

Dean James guided us with both technical clarity and stylistic direction, helping shape the light, angles and mood so Edwina could explore freely.

A beautiful documentation of my designs:

The Story Behind the Front Page

2025-11-13T10:54:00.011+11:00

When I walked into the Tweed Weekly office to meet Jonathan, the editor, I was mostly just hoping I’d find the right door. I’d been asked by my friend (and journalist) Madeline Murray to fill in for her while she recovers from surgery - my first little step into local journalism.

Jonathan looked up, smiled, and said: “I recognise you, you’ll be in the paper tomorrow.”

The week before, Madeline and I had worked on a story about a local collaboration - I had no idea it would end up splashed across the front page.

Full circle moments have a funny way of sneaking up on you.

I first met Dean three years ago at TAFE - I was studying photography, and he was in graphic design. We used to talk about how incredible it would be if students from different creative disciplines actually worked together, like we would in the real world.

Fast forward to now: I’m wrapping up my Diploma of Fashion Design, and Dean has just completed the same Certificate IV Photography course I once did. After a few persistent emails (and a couple of friendly nudges to our teachers), TAFE actually updated their assessments to include a collaboration component.

This semester, our fashion students teamed up with the photography cohort at the M|Arts Precinct studio in Murwillumbah for a full-day professional shoot. It was on that day, amid all the chaos, laughter, and caffeine, that Dean suggested we shoot my collection at Victoria Spring’s studio.

It was a flashback.

Back to where it all began

When I was sixteen, growing up barefoot in the Northern Rivers, I did my mandatory work experience in Victoria Spring’s boutique in Paddington, Sydney.

It was my first taste of the fashion world, and I was completely out of my depth - so desperate not to look like a country kid that I bought the shiniest, most impractical pair of shoes I could find. By the end of my first day, my feet were bleeding.

I was sleeping on my big brother’s university dorm room floor, sneaking his cafeteria meals, and starstruck by every designer I saw. Alannah Hill’s store was next door, and Collette Dinnigan, my absolute idol, was one of Victoria’s close friends.

It was magic and madness rolled into one glittering dream. I decided then that fashion was the life for me.

I made my first wedding dress at nineteen and kept stitching, in Israel, the U.S., and Italy, wherever life took me. I imagined a glamorous, childless life in New York… until motherhood called. I put down my needles and poured my creativity into helping my sisters’ businesses thrive. But without therapy or boundaries, old family patterns resurfaced and, eventually, everything fell apart.

Returning to fashion wasn’t accidental. It was healing. It was deliberate.

Coming home to the craft

When I enrolled at TAFE, it was meant to refine my photography skills, but when I heard the Diploma of Fashion Design and Technology was launching locally, I knew I had to do it.

From the first interview with Polina, our sharp-eyed, impeccably dressed Russian fashion teacher, I felt something awaken. She became a mentor and a compass. Two years later, I’m graduating, and TAFE NSW has announced that the Bachelor of Fashion Design will be offered at our campus next year.

That’s more than a full circle. That’s a spiral upward.

The photo shoot that started it all

So there I was again - in Victoria Spring’s studio, twenty three years later.
Same creative energy, same scent of metal and dust.
Different me.

Dean and I started shooting my collection, Origine, surrounded by Victoria’s vintage jewels and the gentle chaos of her workspace. Halfway through the shoot, I looked down and realised my feet were bleeding again - same story, different decade. Some lessons come back to remind you how far you’ve actually walked.

Two weeks later, those photos were on the front page of the Tweed Weekly.

How it feels to see yourself on the cover

Honestly? Surreal. I didn’t plan it, or even expect it. But maybe that’s the beauty of it, that full-circle things don’t arrive when you chase them. They appear when you’re quietly doing the work.

This story - like most good ones - isn’t about chasing spotlight. It’s about collaboration, reconnection, and remembering why we create in the first place.

So yes, I made it to the front page. But more importantly, I made it back home - to the place where it all began, shiny shoes and all.

The TAFE NSW Kingscliff Fashion Graduation Showcase
Tuesday, December 2, 5pm
TAFE NSW Kingscliff Campus

All pictures captured by James Dean

Drag Me to Bingo

2025-07-17T20:36:00.011+10:00

A growing archive of event posters I’ve designed for Buttery Chard’s Drag Queen Bingo - where camp meets Canva and every theme is a new visual playground. I draw inspiration directly from the queen herself and the show’s ever-changing themes: from flapper glam and Queen Bey’s Cowboy Carter to Christmas chaos and retro ‘80s realness.

Each poster is created using Canva, guided by a strong intuitive eye for graphic detail - a skill I didn’t learn, but one I’ve always had. (That said, I’ve since paired my natural instincts with formal training in design elements and principles.)

Where I like to think high Camp meets Helvetica

The Queens

At the heart of Drag Queen Bingo is Buttery Chard, the dazzling alter ego of my dear friend Ryan. One of the things I’ve always admired about Ryan - long before the wigs and lashes - is his deep commitment to inclusivity. He has this effortless way of going with the flow, letting his community lift him up, which in turn lifts everyone around him. That generosity of spirit is what drew me to him in the first place. He works harder than anyone I know - running Bastion Lane Espresso by day, wrangling sequins by night - and never complains. Ever. That kind of attitude, warmth, and work ethic is exactly what I think the veteran queens saw in him.

Enter Natasha St James - an iconic Gold Coast queen we first discovered at Drag Bingo GC at Miami Marketta. She’s fierce, seasoned, and brought so much guidance to Buttery when she was just starting out. Her presence elevated the show and gave Buttery the mentorship she didn’t even know she needed.

By our third show, we were joined by Dixie Wrecked, another Gold Coast queen with killer looks, a sharp sense of humour, and a sewing machine that never sleeps. She’s also a redhead and a seamstress - so naturally, I claim her as my spirit animal. These three bring such joy, grit, and sparkle to our little town. Watching them come together has been magic, and I feel so lucky to be along for the ride.

Behind the Sequins - My Role

I’ve worn a lot of invisible hats behind the scenes of Drag Queen Bingo. From the start, I helped guide the first show — not for money, but for something just as sacred: daily coffee at Bastion Lane Espresso, my absolute happy place (shout out to Gary, Ryan’s partner and Roast Master, who keeps the joy flowing and is also one of my favourite humans).

From photoshoots and styling sessions, designing the posters and promo material, building the sponsor templates, on the ground with setup, mic and sound checks, music cues - basically the unofficial producer/drag doula. I even started teaching Ryan how to sew so he can create custom looks for the stage (because what’s more empowering than making your own sparkle?).

I don’t do it for the recognition — I just want to give Ryan the kind of support I wish I had when I was starting out in fashion, or fumbling through my own “what even is this job?” moments on live TV. It’s been such a joy watching it grow - and even more joyful to see Buttery thrive in heels and on the espresso machine.

Rada Priya is now Rada Campbell

Designing My 2025/2026 Grad Collection

2025-02-02T15:29:00.002+11:00

Rada Priya 25/26' Concept board

Fashion has always been a part of my creative soul, but after stepping away for years, returning through my studies has reignited a passion I thought I'd left behind. Now, deep in the concept phase of my 2025/2026 diploma graduation collection, I'm drawing inspiration from the opulence of Paris Couture Fashion Week SS25, particularly the breathtaking craftsmanship of Armani Privé. This collection is about honoring my roots in intricate beadwork while embracing sustainable practices and modern elegance.

My design process starts with textiles, and my palette has evolved into a rich tapestry of verdant hues—lush greens, earth tones, metallic blues, and soft greys. Sustainability remains at the forefront, with natural fibres, ethically sourced Thai silk from my travels last year, and upcycled fabrics from local op shops. Faux fur, a treasure from my decade-old fabric collection, adds a layer of texture and nostalgia. Embellishments will include glass beads, metal beads, and Swarovski crystals, bringing a touch of luxury and depth to every piece.

Sketching out the collection, I've envisioned a striking balance of structure and fluidity. Oversized faux fur jackets will drape effortlessly over beaded wrap skirts, while structured corset tops pair with tailored pants, creating a synergy between craftsmanship and modern wearability. The fabrics will tell their own story—muted but luminous silk, layered textures, and coordinated matching sets that celebrate the art of tailoring.

A key theme of this collection is Textural Tapestry—showcasing a mix of fabrics and patterns in recycled and ethically sourced materials that create depth, interest, and environmental responsibility. Verdant Hues will tie each piece together, exploring the richness of nature's greens, ocean blues, and earthy neutrals. Beading and Embellishments will make a grand return, reviving the detail-oriented artistry that has always defined my work.

As a final touch, while my primary focus is on womenswear, I am incorporating a singular menswear look to round out the collection—an opportunity to push my creativity further.

I never thought I would return to fashion after giving up my patterns and most of my fabric collection three years ago, but studying again has reignited something within me. This time, I am approaching design with renewed vision, an appreciation for ethical craftsmanship, and the excitement of seeing where this next chapter takes me.

Rada Priya is now published as Rada Campbell

A Sunset Soirée: Azteca Margarita x Nine Lives Bazaar Rooftop Party

2024-11-02T12:18:00.002+11:00

Coolangatta’s Pink Hotel played host to the ultimate summer celebration, as Nine Lives Bazaar and Azteca Margarita joined forces for an unforgettable rooftop party. With the golden hues of sunset painting the sky over Rainbow Beach, guests toasted to the launch of Azteca’s newest passionfruit margarita—an instant classic that will soon be a staple on every summer drinks menu.

The event was a vibrant fusion of fashion and flavour, and as a special treat, Nine Lives Bazaar gifted me the stunning Harper Mini Dress in Kasbah—a kaleidoscope of colour and effortless bohemian charm. I styled it off the shoulder with statement accessories: layered gold belts cinched at the waist, my go-to riding boots, and a pop of orange via a bold handbag. As always, layers of my favourite gold jewels completed the look, adding a touch of retro-glam to match the electric energy of the night.

With a view that stretched endlessly over the coastline, the rooftop was the perfect location for a celebration of bold style and fresh flavours. Sipping passionfruit margaritas under a candy-coloured sky, guests danced, mingled, and revelled in the nostalgia of a bygone era—perfectly fitting for a hotel that oozes rock and roll soul. Later, I retreated downstairs to one of the Pink Hotel’s neon-lit, retro-themed rooms, where the party vibes lingered well into the night.

The passionfruit Azteca Margarita is now available in all good liquor stores, ready to transport you straight to your own rooftop escape. And for those looking to channel effortless boho glamour, the Harper Mini Dress is available now at Nine Lives Bazaar.

Because some nights are simply too good to forget.

Shorts for amusement

2024-08-19T00:42:00.004+10:00

I’ve recently started giving some love and attention to my YouTube channel where I’ve been posting Shorts about sewing hacks, upcycling fashion, trending clips, and styling tips. If you’re interested in these topics or just want to explore some new ideas, I’d love for you to check it out. Feel free to follow along and join me in exploring some practical and creative fashion tips.

RadaPriya

Show at M|Arts

2023-12-05T14:18:00.010+11:00

My work was recently featured in the local Tweed Valley Weekly newspaper, shining a spotlight on my participation in the TAFE photography exhibition. The photo is from my series called "Veiled," where I explore the history and cultural significance of veils throughout time. Veils have been around for centuries, originally serving as practical garments to protect against the elements. But they've evolved into powerful symbols of modesty, purity, and even mystery in various cultures. In "Veiled," I delve into these layers of meaning, with my daughters and I as the subjects.

Veiled

2023-11-10T11:56:00.005+11:00

VEILED - exploring the significance throughout time and culture.

Veils first appeared in ancient cultures as a form of protection from evil spirits. Its symbolism has changed over time, from status in society, to sign of innocence and propriety.

While some view the veil as a way to divide god and men, biblically the veil is seen as access, unity and intimacy with the Divine. Besides its enduring religious significance, veiling continues to play a role in almost all cultures on the planet to this day. I've worn veils throughout my life, all 3 of my weddings, religious ceremonies an aplenty of times for fun. Like this shoot with my girls (and self portraits on timer).

And the significance of the rose.... that's for another time

Rada Priya is now published as Rada Campbell

High Key Portraits

2023-10-13T13:57:00.047+11:00

In the studio, Sienna's character shone through effortlessly, bringing life to each frame with her genuine smiles and infectious energy. The high-key setup accentuated the play of light on her curls and highlighted the sparkle in her eyes, resulting in a collection of portraits that capture not just her appearance but the essence of who she is – vibrant, captivating, and utterly unique

Studio Portraits

2023-08-11T16:29:00.004+10:00

First attempt at studio portraits inside the mArts precinct
Armed with professional equipment, I aim to unravel the personalities hidden within my subjects. The play of light and shadow bring their stories to life, capturing forever just a moment of each individual. In that environment, my subjects transform - the lens painting tales of expression

Twiggy inspired shoot

2023-07-28T15:39:00.004+10:00

This shoot is inspired by photographer Bert Stern's iconic images of Twiggy in the 1960s. Sahana already embodies the essence of Twiggy with her big bright eyes, blonde hair and innocent age. This was intentionally a practice shoot in my bedroom with natural light from the window, and the heavy eyeliner and mascara that is so synonymous with Twiggy's look

Design | Content | Photography

2023-07-26T11:39:00.022+10:00

Starting this journey into photography feels like catching up with an old friend – my trusty Canon camera, a gift from my filmmaker dad over a decade ago. While life kept me busy raising my wonderful daughters, Sahana and Dylana, I put photography on hold for bedtime stories. But now, as I dive into learning about product photography, my creativity sparks. Behind the lens, I'm not just snapping pictures; I'm capturing memories and stories, a talent I believe runs in the family. The classroom has become a safe space filled with inspiration, where my classmates and I cheer each other on. Here, my knack for styling fits right in, blending with the skills of others. And our teachers, full of wisdom and encouragement, make every click of the camera feel like a chance for something great.

Cooking live on TVSN with Peter Mason

2023-05-16T12:46:00.009+10:00

Cooking live on TV with Satvik Foods on TVSN was another thrilling experience, filled with flavourful "here's something I prepared earlier" dishes, nerves, and lots of fun! My sister joined me for the first time for an intro, and we shared our passion for Ayurvedic-inspired cooking with Peter Mason and our live audience. Thank you to everyone who tuned in and supported us on this exciting culinary journey!

Sunshine People

2023-04-21T09:30:00.007+10:00

RADA CAMPBELL - MOTHER & ENTREPRENEUR, SATVIK FOODS.

TELL US A LITTLE ABOUT YOURSELF- WHO YOU ARE, AND WHERE ARE YOU FROM?

I am a mother, creative and entrepreneur. I was born into the Hare Krishna religion in Northern NSW and spent most of my childhood running wild with my 8 siblings. Growing up, I was deeply influenced by stories and traditions of the varied spiritual doctrines my eccentric mother subscribed to. This left me with a rich curiosity, and audaciousness to seek out the world for myself. I spent many years overseas and returned to my roots to raise my own daughters in the little rainforest village of Uki.

WHAT SETS YOUR SOUL ON FIRE AND BRINGS SUNSHINE INTO YOUR LIFE?

Connecting deeply with people, dancing like nobody's watching, swimming in the ocean during a storm, and creating with my hands - whether I’m sewing, drawing, cooking or writing.

CREATING IS A BIG PART OF YOUR LIFE, WHEN DID THIS PASSION BEGIN?

Satvik Foods was created by my wonderful sister, Kat, in her home kitchen back in 2010. It is a health food business that specialises in creating delicious and nutritious meal packs using high-quality ingredients. Our products are inspired by traditional Ayurvedic principles, which emphasise the importance of a balanced and wholesome diet for overall health and wellbeing. We offer a range of products that are all made with natural wholesome ingredients. What sets Satvik Foods apart is our delicious flavours and ease of use, as well as our commitment to sustainability and eco-friendliness. It has been an honour for me to help grow and expand it. I have focused on the creative side of the business, developing recipe tutorials, building our online presence, and transitioning our packaging to certified home compostable materials. Our commitment to quality, sustainability, and deliciousness has allowed us to expand our reach nationally and even feature on live TV shopping channel. It's been an exciting journey, and we are always looking for new ways to innovate and grow.

WHICH SUNSHINE PEOPLE PIECE CAN YOU SEE YOURSELF LIVING IN THE MOST?

My wardrobe is brimming with NLB treasures. I am excited for this release, especially the beautiful Winnie Dress in Arcadia, and the Andie Midi Dress in Wildflower.

HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOUR PERSONAL STYLE?

Fashion and colour theory has always played a huge part in my personal style from as young as I can remember. My background is fashion design, and making myself clothing was an intrinsic expression and communication through my adolescence, and young adult life. Nowadays I follow the ancient Ayurveda colours of the week to guide what I wear. For example, Friday is ruled by the planet Venus, the divine feminine and the colour pink, which is why I have chosen the beautiful Andie Midi Dress with its pink and gold wildflowers.

WHO IS A SPECIAL SOMEONE OR PEOPLE THAT BRINGS SUNSHINE INTO YOUR LIFE?

I am so fortunate to be surrounded by women made of pure sunshine, from my daughters and sisters, to my best friends and work collaborators. I think it is so important who you share energy with, and I am a huge advocate for boundaries and observing who you are and how you feel around people. This kind of self care allows you to radiate authentically, and invites those around you to do the same.

WHAT ARE SOME DAILY PRACTICES THAT GROUND YOU AND KEEP THE SUNSHINE IN YOUR LIFE?

Starting my day with ginger tea and writing in my 5 Minute Journal has become a ritual that I like to keep. It helps me to focus on the things that I'm grateful for, and to set positive intentions for the day ahead. When I don’t have time to write, I close my eyes and bring these things to my mind in clear pictures, and it always has a big impact on my mood and outlook.

One of the things that I'm most proud of is how my daily practices have inspired my daughters to start practising mindfulness and gratitude on their own. They see me taking time for myself each morning, and they've started doing the same thing. It's amazing to see them growing into mindful, resilient young women.

I've also been experimenting with a new practice recently, where I consciously give thanks for the time I spend on my phone or computer each day. I used to feel guilty about spending too much time online, but reframing it as something to be grateful for has really helped me shift my perspective. It reminds me that technology can be a source of connection and learning, but that it's also important to disconnect and seek out meaningful experiences offline.

WHAT’S NEXT FOR RADA?

I am on a big healing journey at the moment, reconciling a colourful, yet often neglected childhood. Mending generational trauma is an important step to clearing the way for my next exploration. As well as feeling a sense of belonging within my community for the first time, I am feeling more inspired and creative than ever before, and I am exploring new artistic projects that I never would have had the confidence to pursue in the past. I am also thinking about how I can use my experiences to help others who may be struggling with trauma or a sense of disconnection. Ultimately, my goal is to live a life that is authentic and fulfilling, and I am excited to see where this adventure takes me.

WRITTEN BY KARYS STAPLEY

TELL US A EXCERPT FROM NINE LIVES BAZAAR SUNSHINE PEOPLE

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