Two women on opposite sides of the world keep audio diaries over the course of a single week. In Amsterdam it’s mid-winter, in Sydney mid-summer. Both women are displaced: Dheera Sujan in Amsterdam was brought up in Western Australia, but her family is Indian; Sherre Delys, in Sydney, hails from Abilene in Texas. For all they might have in common (they both work in the media, they are more or less the same age, they live in a globalised world) the local weather shapes their days and their moods: the heat and light of an Australian summer, the cold and gloom of winter in Holland.
In this conversation between diaries, both reflect the state of mind born of a world where information, commodities and people are highly mobile. But how do place and landscape ground those wandering wondering thoughts?
‘The Whether Diaries’ makes gentle, intimate reflections on the kinds of choices that many people now find themselves making – the kinds of choices that a generation ago would have seemed momentous. Now, in a time of discounted airline tickets and the growing cosmopolitanism of metropolitan centres across the world, such choices are almost commonplace.
Producers: Dheera Sujan and Sherre Delys
Broadcast: May 9, 2006