As an English teacher working at an immigration detention centre, being a 20-something single woman with all-male classes wasn’t the most difficult thing about the job, recalls Adele Dumont.

Jamie Williams had already served six months in the French Foreign Legion when he decided he would take off overseas again – this time to fight with Kurdish guerillas in Syria against Islamic State. The Australian government had a different idea.

Dutee Chand was born a woman, raised as a woman and identifies as a woman. But winning a gold medal led to a legal challenge over whether she could compete as a woman – and humiliating "gender verification" tests.

Alan Menken was instrumental in ushering in a golden age for Disney when he co-composed the songs for 1989's The Little Mermaid. And it all began with a singing, man-eating plant …

Cody Heffernan has been stomped on, headbutted and thrown like a rag doll by one-tonne bulls. Yet, Heffernan insists, he finds serious beauty in riding these beasts.

Xu Xiang's secretive trading style helped him achieve staggering returns on the Chinese sharemarket, even as the country's boom turned to bust. Then his extraordinary luck ran out.

An international ranking puts Australia's schools in the middle of the pack, way behind many Asian regions – and Finland. But could striving to reach the top signal "the end of joy" for our kids?

These Indigenous people from the south-west could field their own AFL team. How did they get to be so good?

Pedicures have replaced pass-the-parcel, high teas trump hide-and-seek: these days, children's birthday parties pump to a very different beat.

In some European cities, drug dealers and addicts are watched over by the police at legal consumption rooms. Could Australia's ice epidemic be contained if we did the same?

Too big to fail? Andrew Grech transformed an Australian law firm into a sharemarket-listed behemoth - only to see it crash and burn.

A trailblazer for feminist heroines on TV and film, Helen Mirren loves shameless women - and Kim Kardashian's butt.

By constantly hounding a loved one, tracking their every move, sufferers of adult separation anxiety disorder push away the very person they so desperately need.

Known for its obsession with privacy and its silencing tactics, the Exclusive Brethren has managed to avoid any scrutiny over alleged child sex abuse. Until now.

A dusty and decrepit cafe serves as a bizarre living museum that tells the story of Australia’s decades-long love affair with the milk bar.

German teenager Paul Bühre has written a bestseller about the secret life of adolescent boys. According to him, the worst thing on the net is not what you might think it is.

Parts of the story "Waters of Doubt" (Good Weekend, May 7) incorrectly described the conduct of the trial and the role played by the prosecutor Tim Ellis, SC, the former Director of Public Prosecutions.

Initially, many in the art world didn't quite get the wit and wonder of Queenslander William Robinson's work. Today, the 80-year-old's paintings routinely fetch six-figure sums.

A bone marrow transplant fails and Lucy Palmer, an Australian journalist, finds herself having to juggle the demands of her young family, the new farm and an adored husband, who is terminally ill.

A quiet determination to give back to those who showered him with love helped chef Matt Colinski emerge from the dark shadow of tragedy.

Two young men meet and fall in love. Twenty years later - in tragic circumstances, they marry. It is the start of a battle that will change the face of human rights across the world.

Move over Metallica ... some youthful Japanese iron maidens are giving the rockin' world of heavy metal a J-pop shake-up.