Thinking about stocking your local beers and gins? The locavore booze movement has been embraced by both customers and restaurateurs, especially since the lockdowns. When it comes to artisan alcohol, we’re spoiled for choice. Particularly over the last decade, there’s been a proliferation of small-batch makers supplying a first curious, then devoted clientele. Initially, it was craft beer, followed by the gin explosion, but other spirits and drinks continue to hit the market.

With around 2.5 million Australians consuming a largely vegetarian diet in 2019, it made perfect sense when outfits like Grill’d and Hungry Jacks very publicly joined the meat-free fray with their introduction of Beyond Burgers and the Rebel Whopper, both of which mimic meat. Debate is still rife though as to whether plant-based meat substitutes can find their way onto menus other than in a burger.

When QT Hotels & Resorts started their Australian chain on the Gold Coast in 2011 they ripped a hole in conservative accommodation, making way for a new breed of hotel as appealing to cool creatives as a more conservative white-collar crew. With six art-meets-luxury hotels already under the belt in Australia, QT Hotels (owned by the Event Hospitality & Entertainment group) only expanded the stable with a Melbourne outpost in September 2016. (Sample from magazine...)

It took a couple of cheeky journos drawing a bow between John Schumann and Henry Lawson to reignite Schumann’s Lawson-loving spark. The result was a reverential compilation of the bush bard’s poetry reformulated as songs – ie. Lawson – performed by a crack collection of Aussie musos assembled by Schumann specifically for the task. Drawing their name from a line in Lawson’s poem “Knocking Around”, which also made its way onto the 2005 album, the Vagabond Crew featured everyone from Shane Howard (Goanna), Rob Hirst (Midnight Oil) and Russell Morris through to Schumann’s former Redgum cohorts, Hugh McDonald (now sadly deceased) and Michael Atkinson.

A reported $30-million renovation pays homage to the Espy’s rich history, while making way for the future with some impressive innovation, writes Meg Crawford.

I didn’t have a defining “I love tea and I’m gonna make a career from it” moment, but there was a turning point when I was studying psychology and found that tea de-stressed me. I started with herbal tisanes before transitioning to the hardcore teas. I’ve always been entrepreneurial and, being on a student wage with not much to lose, I thought, “Why don’t I just start a business?” I’d been reading about tea and found that the least likely demographic to enjoy it ran from 20-35.

It’s 2002 and David Bowie’s just invited UK post-punk legends The The to play the Meltdown Festival at London’s Royal Festival Hall. Next thing you know, the band are taking an indefinite break with enquiries about when they’ll tour again being met with a blanket, “Never say never, but there are no plans for one-off shows or tours in the near future” response. That placeholder didn’t budge again until last year...

Looking for a laugh in the MICF void? Meet Iceland’s biggest export since Björk

Fashion and fun favourites bookend the month with the Virgin Australia Melbourne Fashion Festival (VAMFF) kickstarting proceedings and the Melbourne International Comedy Festival (MICF) bringing up the rear. Sustaining us throughout is the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival (MFWF).

Once upon a time, a restaurant’s biggest security risk was an intruder absconding with the takings. These days, the security landscape for the hospitality industry is radically different. While the physical security of a premises remains critical, the necessity to protect data is just as important. In fact, a recent PwC report indicated that 85 per cent of consumers wouldn’t engage in business with a company at risk of a cyber breach.

I’ve always had a fascination with human behaviour and the impact of mental health, so I studied clinical psychology at university. I’d had a very sheltered upbringing and was concerned that I’d be too naive to actually assist people. So, how do you cram in a couple of years of world experience? I thought that joining the police force would be a pretty good place to start.

When her dick of a first husband walked out on their marriage, Sarah Millican’s unexpectedly awesome response was to forge a super-successful career as a comedian. Making it even more remarkable is the fact that Millican was working for Jobcentre (the Brit equivalent of Centrelink) at the time, and comedy wasn’t even on her radar. Hell, she’d never even been to a comedy club.

Dylan Moran has been woken up from a nap for this interview. He’s just finished the UK leg of touring his new show Off the Hook (his first stand-up show in four years), he’s knackered, and he’s not in love with the media at the best of times. This doesn’t augur well. We’re half expecting an Bernard Black-like rant (his hard-drinking, misanthropic and yet oddly endearing shambles of a character in Black Books). Instead, he’s unstintingly polite, albeit not overly effusive, and wryly funny.

It wasn’t too long ago that Aussie novelist Liane Moriarty was being hailed as “the most successful author you’ve never heard of”. But the HBO adaptation of her 2014 novel Big Little Lies put paid to that. With an all-star cast led by Reese Witherspoon and Nicole Kidman, the series transported Moriarty’s characters from a fictional northern-beach Sydney suburb to Monterey, California, but the guts of the smart, dark and addictive tale remained the same, and everyone was talking about it.

I’m a proud ginger these days, but that wasn’t always the case. I was teased mercilessly at primary school. I wore a plate, had red hair, freckles and was a book nerd – so you can imagine the stick I copped. At high school I was called Anne of Green Gables, which secretly delighted me – but being called Bea, after the red, frizzy-haired monster on Prisoner sucked. Later in life, I was Fanta pants, fire crotch, ’ranga and the brunt of jokes about gingers lacking souls.

In recent years, Rob “Millsy” Mills has secured a niche for himself as one of Australia’s most beloved musical-theatre talents. Once better known for his shenanigans with a certain heiress and as a finalist on the first series of Australian Idol, Mills has busted his chops to redeem himself – not that his reputation was ever that bad; it just happens that he’s got a whole lot more substance and talent than his cheeky-chappie image ever belied.

Australians try to feign a lack of interest in the Crown, but when push came to shove Republicans couldn’t oust the constitutional monarchy in the 1999 referendum, and God knows we love a royal wedding. When Kate and William tied the knot in 2011, an estimated 5.7 million viewers tuned in for the occasion, a figure so large it wasn’t just expats and royalists glued to their screens.

Kid Congo Powers is a US punk-rock legend. He's a founding member of the Gun Club, was a bassist for The Cramps, one of Nick Cave’s Bad Seeds and now fronts his own punk, psychobilly, rock’n’roll-riot outfit Kid Congo and the Pink Monkey Birds. Here's just a snippet of what he's learned on life's rock highway.

In the late ’80s, I got a job pushing punts on the Avon River in Christchurch as a uni student. I personally widened the river bank within the first two weeks. It’s not as easy as it looks, although pushing the punt is all to do with technique rather than strength. I never graduated, but I did set up my own business on the Avon River, and now run Punting On The Lake in the Royal Botanic Gardens.

Dita Von Teese is instantly recognisable as one of the most glamorous women in the world. Her fame is such that it's not too hard to unearth some fascinating snippets from her past: that she was born Heather Renée Sweet, is really a blonde, was too short for ballet and became a stripper instead.