‘She just conjured electricity': Celebrating Divinyls legend Chrissy Amphlett
Chrissy Amphlett was unlike anything Australians had seen when she burst on the stage in 1980 as lead singer of Divinyls. Without her it's hard to imagine Amy Taylor from Amyl & the Sniffers, or Amphlett's fellow Geelong-born rocker Adalita.
A new show opening next week called Amplified showcases the work of the late artist – Amphlett died from breast cancer in 2013, aged just 53 – as well as her extraordinary impact and legacy.
Making the work has been a wonderful process, says Sheridan Harbridge, who stars in the show, and co-created it with acclaimed director Sarah Goodes and musical director Glenn Moorhouse (Hedwig and the Angry Inch).
Trawling through YouTube and watching old performances by the Divinyls and Amphlett solo, Harbridge says there are hundreds of comments from people writing things such as 'I saw them at the Crystal Ballroom and it was the most amazing thing I've ever seen'.
'And then women saying, 'I'd never seen a woman act like that and I didn't know you could',' the actor-singer-writer says, adding that 'equally for men, they were watching something quite electric'.
'I spoke to someone who worked with her and they said, 'she just conjured electricity'.'
Raised in a Pentecostal Christian family in Gippsland, Harbridge wasn't allowed to watch shows like The Simpsons and The Golden Girls, but thankfully her mum didn't know what Rage was, so that was where she first came across Amphlett.
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Grant Dooley. Affirm Press. $36.99. Grant Dooley and his wife, Kristan, had barely settled into their diplomatic posting to Indonesia in 2004 when a bomb exploded outside the Australian embassy compound in Jakarta, killing 11 people. Dooley was one of the first responders. Two-and-a-half years later he was on the scene when Garuda flight 200 crashed in Yogyakarta, killing 20 people - five of them Australians. Dooley's description of running to the burning aircraft, hoping desperately to find friends and colleagues on board, is one of the most powerful scenes in a memoir that captures the emotional and psychological toll of his tumultuous time in Indonesia. Nicole Madigan. Pantera Press. $36.99. Investigative journalist Nicole Madigan's second work of non-fiction is an intimate exploration of why people choose to stay in toxic relationships and what drives them to leave. 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Lili Berry's life in the charming coastal village of Swanning is upended by the death of her twin sister, Honey. Fuelled by grief, Lili strives to uncover the truth. Pete, who is haunted by the disappearance of his son 15 years ago, is the one who found Honey's body. He and Lili plunge headfirst into the dark secrets and lies of their not always close-knit community. This is the debut novel of former lawyer Suzanne Do, who with husband Anh Do co-wrote The Little Refugee, a children's version of his bestselling memoir, The Happiest Refugee, and the feature film Footy Legends. Grant Dooley. Affirm Press. $36.99. Grant Dooley and his wife, Kristan, had barely settled into their diplomatic posting to Indonesia in 2004 when a bomb exploded outside the Australian embassy compound in Jakarta, killing 11 people. Dooley was one of the first responders. Two-and-a-half years later he was on the scene when Garuda flight 200 crashed in Yogyakarta, killing 20 people - five of them Australians. 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Stories about the bizarre stuff medical professionals face in their daily lives are a rich seam well mined by doctors, nurses and paramedics. The latest collection comes from Tim Booth, who was a motoring journalist before he handed in his road-testing keys and became an intensive care paramedic. From the woman who called 000 because she had run out of milk to a dairy-related crisis of a more adult kind involving the illegal drug GHB and copious amounts of custard, Booth takes readers behind the scenes in the world of emergency medicine, with generous lashings of absurdity and dark humour. Stuart Mullins & Bill Hayes. Simon & Schuster. $36.99. It was a crime that changed post-war Australia. On Australia Day 1966 three children - Jane, Arnna and Grant Beaumont - went missing from Glenelg Beach in South Australia. They were never seen again. It was a story at least as seismic for generations of parents as the disappearance of Madeleine McCann in Portugal in 2007. 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