Mandy Nolan
- Contributor, Freelance
- Co-Host, Women Like Us - Mandy Nolan and Ellen Briggs
Comedian, Writer, social provocateur & revolutionary. (Well, on Thursdays 9-10.)
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Articles by Mandy Nolan
Mandy Nolan’s Soapbox: It stops with Helen
Hate feeds violence. It dehumanises. It’s dangerous. The horrendous and shocking violence experienced by MP for Indi, Helen Haines has shown us, in technicolour, that public life is not safe. Helen is known for her moderate approach, her lack of affiliation with party politics and her deep commitment to community. If Helen isn’t safe, then none of us are. But in particular women in public life are not safe. We are targets of hate and abuse at profoundly higher rates than men.
Mandy Nolan’s Soapbox: Bring Out Your Dead
In my small town, I became the girl with the dead father. No one talked to me about it. Life just went on and death got put in a bottom drawer and closed. Illustration: thinkblinkdesign.com Having a dead father made me different to other kids. I was six when he died, and in a small town even I knew that for the week of his death, our family was all anyone was talking about.
Mandy Nolan’s Soapbox: Big Problem with Small Print
I don’t want to tell you how to run your business, but unless you’re Specsavers, your menu shouldn’t read like the bottom line of an eye test. Who ever thought putting menus in an 8-point font was a good idea? As a woman with reading glasses, who often forgets said glasses, I take it personally. It says: go away old lady. It feels like a restaurant or cafe for people with perfect vision. There may be a disabled toilet but I’m just not feeling the inclusion. I’m squinting.
Why We Still March to Reclaim the Night
We’re not excluding men. We want you to get involved. We want you to care enough to call out your brothers and mates. To recognise your own role. We want you to lead change. Imagine being raped or killed and being blamed. That’s how it’s been for women in a patriarchy that instead of holding the perpetrator to account, asks ‘What was she wearing?’, ‘Why was she walking on that street at that time of night?’, ‘Was she a sex worker?’ These are the wrong questions.
Mandy Nolan’s Soapbox: The Joy of Boredom
How do we stop? How do we just unplug and deprogram? Stop the yelling and the outrage. Stop scrolling. Window shopping the lives of people we barely know? How do we sit with discomfort? Are we at risk of losing our ability to experience boredom? Will boredom soon be extinct? There’s just so much content floating around. So many platforms. So many issues. So many things to go to. So many people to text back. TV used to be boring. If you were hooked on a show, you had to wait until next week to see the next ep.
Mandy Nolan’s Soapbox: Lets Talk About Dementia
It’s perfectly safe to continue a relationship with a person with dementia. Of course the relationship will change over time. But all relationships change over time. This week is Dementia Action Week. Some of its purposes are to raise awareness, reduce stigma and build understanding. We don’t talk about dementia because it scares us.
Mandy Nolan’s Soapbox: How do you view the world without taking your view from the world?
So how do I view the world without becoming indoctrinated and subdued? Where do I find my source? Sometimes people will say something, and the words just land inside me. Like a bird flying home to their nest. Like an ant finding the cool underside of a rock. Like a salmon swimming upstream to the place where they were born. I’m hosting a men’s breakfast at a women’s festival. And one of the men asks: ‘How do we view the world without taking our view from the world?’ Boom. It landed.
Mandy Nolan’s Soapbox: Warning: Choking Hazard
When you put your hands around someone’s neck, you are trying to kill them. You can kill them. And in some cases, you will kill them. There is no safe way of choking someone. When you put your hands around someone’s neck, you are trying to kill them. You can kill them. And in some cases, you will kill them. Somehow that’s become a ‘normal’ sexual activity. If you’ve ever needed evidence that the patriarchy wants to rape and kill women, then that’s it. And it’s gendered.
Mandy Nolan’s Soapbox: Turn and Face the Change
…in the three minutes it takes to read this article – three million plastic bottles were purchased somewhere on earth. ‘Changes’ – It’s my favourite Bowie song. How do we change? And I don’t just mean personally. I mean as a large community of humans. As a species? Because we have to change. Now. ‘And these children that you spit on, as they try to change their worlds …’ Behaviour change is hard. Our brain is designed to return to old patterns, especially when life becomes stressful.
Mandy Nolan’s Soapbox: I Am Home
You might wake with the once weekly anxiety of ‘shit, is it bin day?’ Or can I pay the mortgage this month? But you don’t wake at 3am wondering about renewing your lease that expires in a few months. We are in a housing crisis. But does that adequately describe where we are right now? The last census told us there are lots of houses. A million empty ones in fact. So if we’re building enough houses, is it in fact less a housing crisis, and more a homing crisis?
Mandy Nolan’s Soapbox: Hold a person to your ear and hear the sound of what they see
Illustration: thinkblinkdesign.com People are better than podcasts. And you don’t have to download them. It’s ironic that we have developed a love for the recorded dialogues of people – yet avoid the real thing. Possibly because it involves human engagement, and humans are, as we know, unpredictable, messy, and confronting. I love talking to people. Finding the story of ordinary people has taught me not to judge anyone. Everyone is exceptional. You just don’t know it yet.
Mandy Nolan’s Soapbox: Say NO to AI
AI has never suffered. It has never woken at 3am convinced it’s a failure. It has never wept at a sunrise so beautiful it enters your soul. Stop using AI. It’s stealing your ideas. It’s stealing your ability. It’s stealing your job. It’s stealing your soul. It’s stealing your brilliance. It’s stealing you. Stop taking the easy way. You’re not learning. You’re not struggling. You’re not pushing through.
Mandy Nolan’s Soapbox: Birdsong – Nature’s Call to Action
Native to Australia, it is the only black-coloured swan in the world. Black swans lack the immune genes that combat viral infections found in other species of water birds, which could mean being wiped out entirely. I’ve only just started really listening to the songs of birds.
Mandy Nolan’s Soapbox: Take a Bow
When I picked up the car it had a big red bow. I’d seen this on Facebook. Happy people standing next to a car with a bow on it, and I‘d thought ‘what a wanker’. Now I was that wanker. Why do they tie bows on new cars? I have only had one new car. I bought it recently after breaking down on the roadside and being towed to the mechanic who had previously said ‘she is good to drive’. The repair was quoted at $20k. Ouch. That was double what the car was worth. So I decided to ‘buy’ something new.
Bangalow CWA – how to cake friends and influence poli
Baking up a storm at Bangalow CWA. Photo supplied This year the CWA turns 104. A quietly impressive age for a quietly impressive women’s organisation that was originally founded to improve the welfare and conditions of life for women, children, and families, in particular for those living in regional and remote areas.
Mandy Nolan’s Soapbox: How the Phone Stole Us
My device has maps to help me when I’m lost. Yet we are so lost. We have so much information, yet we are so misinformed. We have so much connection, yet we are so lonely. When I was a child we didn’t have a phone. We couldn’t afford it. If we needed to make a call we went next door to the Clancys’ house and sat at their kitchen bench, lifted the receiver, turned the Bakelite handle three times, and waited for the operator.
Making THE SHIFT in women’s lives
SHIFT co-founders Julie Wells and Anne Goslett are gearing up for their annual fundraiser. Photo Tree Faerie Older women are disproportionately affected by the housing crisis and financial insecurity. They are the fastest-growing group of people experiencing homelessness or at risk of homelessness.
Mandy Nolan’s Soapbox: Why I Love Being Dry
I’ve been sober in the company of people who’ve drunk too much, and they are pretty dull too. Especially when they hug you and tell you they love you and repeat the same story for the fifth time in slow slurred speech. On 13 July I am four years sober. I am one of a growing number of people who decided to quit alcohol. It’s one of the best decisions of my life. My only regret is I didn’t do it sooner. I am more alert. I am more present in my relationships. I am less self-focused. I am healthier.
Mandy Nolan’s Soapbox: When No Means MoNo
Under the new mono you can still eat fish and chips. But you can’t have pizza. Too Italian. Maybe ham and pineapple will be permitted. Definitely no pasta. Pauline wants monoculture. No one really knows what she means. And we know that Pauline definitely doesn’t know what it means, she just knows it will create disturbance. So I’ve done a bit of a deep dive on what the mono might look like. At a very basic level we are talking white Australian culture with no ethnic or First Nation influence or input.
Mandy Nolan’s Soapbox: Vagina-Maxxing
If we stopped focusing on our physical selves and invested on our sagging brains, we might actually finally experience the improvement we’ve all been seeking. It’s a thing. It popped into my newsfeed as a story. I had to click. I mean, what new vagina fashion has come into play. Maxxing? Is this some new big vagina trend? Are our vaginas now not ‘big’ enough? Are we trying to create a spare room in our womb? Apparently maxxing has two x’s.
Mandy Nolan’s Soapbox: Plastic Is Forever
Plastic is poison. When it enters our bodies, it doesn’t just pass through, or sit there, it breaks down into microplastics, releasing toxic chemicals that become endocrine disruptors that go directly into our bloodstream. Our family has been trying to give up plastic. And I’m not just talking single-use straws or takeaway cups or bottled water. Like most people we did that years ago. I’m talking about all the other plastic that we ingest either directly or through chemical leaching.
Mandy Nolan’s Soapbox: Let’s Disappear the Outrage Farmer
She hurts people for clicks. She kicks down for likes. She feeds on the argument about the pain she has caused. There’s super-offensive content making its way around the internet by someone who is NOT Indigenous and is NOT a comedian. I will not say her name. I will not identify her nor will I describe the content. If you think you know what I am talking about: good. And if you don’t: good. Let’s keep it that way.
Mandy Nolan’s Soapbox: Saying Goodbye to a Very Handsome Man
didn’t accept that you could deeply love and respect someone for who they were in your past, while understanding that they don’t really belong in your day to day. Last week an old friend of mine died. His name was Gary Cook. We met here in Byron Bay, when I was 23. He would have been in his early 30s. He was handsome. And funny. And weird. And self-involved. He used to come to Ringos, where I worked as a waitress. He’d sing to himself, bludge cigarettes, and shine up the serviette holder.
Mandy Nolan’s Soapbox: Old Men Dancing
‘You’ve gone viral’ has a very different meaning after 70. It’s generally not something you get excited about. A few months ago I shared a 30-second video on my socials of Old Men Dancing. They’re a small ensemble of, you guessed it ‘old men’ who meet on Mondays at the Drill Hall under the choreography and inspiration of dance teacher Kimberely McIntyre. I had invited them to open my Byron Live show with their interpretation of ‘Under Pressure’. It felt right.
Mandy Nolan’s Soapbox: Valuing Queer Family
It is hard to hear en masse what young people experience daily. Those messages about unworthiness or being unacceptable land deeply inside us as adolescents. Everyone needs their ‘people’. They are the people who get you. They might share your values, or have shared experiences. They don’t judge you. These are the people you can ‘unmask’ for. When you sit with your community, you have a sense of belonging.
Mandy Nolan’s Soapbox: From Sapphire to Trailblazer – The Story of Aunty Dr Naomi Mayers OAM
‘I was blown away by the power of this woman I never met. I can barely fathom what adversity and prejudice she pushed back on. And how she found this relentless courage to reform a racist system. And succeed.’ There is a story that we need to know. A great spirit who moves on the breeze. Who rests on Bundjalung country. Not that this fiercely visionary woman rested much! This woman of goanna and turtle dreaming who belongs not to one place, but to all places. All nations.
Mandy Nolan’s Soapbox: Echo and the Funny Woman
Everybody loves The Echo, even Keith Richards Not everyone gets the opportunity to have a voice. Especially a woman like me. I can have extreme views. Or at least views that aren’t shared or supported by mainstream media. I can upset people. A lot. I am emotional. I am unpredictable. I don’t write in a regular way. Sometimes I’m journalistic and factual. Other times I’m personal and reflective. I can be ironic or gross. Or offensive. I can be sincere one week and stupid the next.
Mandy Nolan’s Soapbox: Not All Men
If this was a website that recorded 62 million visits to find out how to rob a bank, how to drive a car into pedestrians, how to fly a plane into a building… those who own the website, those who visit, they’d be facing serious consequences. It would be terrorism. Not All Men. But always men. A CNN investigation revealed an illicit website instructing men how to rape their wives received 62 million visits.
Mandy Nolan’s Soapbox: How to Live Car Free
Imagine living in a community with state-of-the-art public transport infrastructure! Trains. Trams. Big buses. Small electric buses. I am in Melbourne, and as I write this, public transport is free for April. That’s statewide. It’s a small but powerful way to make an impact on the cost-of-living pressures on a community now also facing high fuel prices. The same happened in the Byron Shire over Easter – with free buses running to take the pressure off the roads.
Mandy Nolan’s Soapbox: Fast Fascism and the Radical Kindness Solution
Hate is a contagion. A virus that is more deadly than any pandemic. And kindness. Well, it occurred to me, that it’s the cure. Be kind. Two simple words. Profound in their simplicity. I have been thinking about kindness a lot lately. The sharp edges of a world where fast fashion and fast fascism are imploding is not a space where kindness abounds. Kindness is on its knees begging at your feet, but I don’t see her. I’m too angry to care. There is yelling. Finger-pointing. Blame. Anger. Violence. Coercion.
Mandy Nolan’s Soapbox: The Fuel on the Hill: Grandpa Wars, Gas, Groceries and You
Can someone please stop these crazy old grandpas? Our grandpas have retired, are living at home with a care package or are in a nursing home. ‘Be cheaper to fill up with cocaine’. That’s what a bloke says to me while I pump petrol. I laugh. It’s funny because it’s true. It’s also my joke being repeated back to me which makes it funnier. Or maybe it’s not my joke. Maybe it’s something people say, and I just said it, so I think I made it up. There’s reports of fuel theft. Like Mad Max.
Mandy Nolan’s Soapbox: Rhoda
This image shows an aboriginal person who has died, which may cause sadness and distress to their relatives. Care and discretion should be used when viewing and sharing this image. Photo by Kate Holmes Today I write to honour Rhoda Roberts. Widjabul Wieybal woman of the Bundjalung Nation, cultural powerhouse, storyteller, knowledge holder, activist, arts executive, performer, advocate, and SBS Elder in Residence. Words are inadequate, and culturally incapable of capturing who Rhoda was.
Mandy Nolan’s Soapbox: Bluesfest Has Died
Michael Franti and crowd at Bluesfest. Photo Jeff ‘Blues Blues’ Dawson And the grief is big. Anger. Sadness. Blame. Finger-pointing. Before you start pointing the finger at Bluesfest maybe it’s time to point the finger at the NSW government. They have failed not just the event, but the local community, the artists and the affiliated workers and support staff, the stallholders, the local businesses, the accommodation providers. This is the arts. It’s music. It’s not football.
Mandy Nolan’s Soapbox: The Right to Be Forgotten
The internet knows you better than you know yourself. It knows what emails you send. What websites you visit. What petitions you sign. What your political allegiances are. Who you follow. We’re being stalked. It seems ironic, that in a life where so many of us have strived to be remembered, the real challenge, the greater subversion, is in fact the opposite: the right to be forgotten.
Mandy Nolan’s Soapbox: We Are All We Have
What the fuck is happening to our democracy? Be quiet. Step down. Don’t speak up. Don’t rock the boat. Are these end days? It certainly seems like it. Violence and insanity seems to have gone to warp speed. I wake at 5am to read my newsfeed. ‘Israel hits Tehran again.’ I feel sick. Since the Islamic Revolution in 1979 Iran has moved from being a US ally to an anti-Western power. It’s about regional influence, nuclear programs, oil and ideology.
Mandy Nolan's Soapbox: Wondering about Wuthering?
That is a triumph for any film- maker – to create something that just makes people combust – either loving or hating your content, but having the conversation. I loved Wuthering Heights. The book, and Fennell & Robbie’s film. I don’t write film reviews, in fact, never, but after observing some of the negativity slamming this contemporary reimagining of the Emily Bronte classic, I wanted to share my view, as someone who watched it with the fresh eyes of my 16-year-old daughter.
Mandy Nolan's Soapbox: Why Pauline?
Racism has always been Pauline’s centralising call to action, it is her simplistic theory of change. This bizarrely is not called hate speech. It is called political ideology. Its purpose is to exclude. A few weeks ago a trans woman told me she was a big Pauline Hanson supporter. WTF. How can a trans woman feel she is anyway represented, or safe, with One Nation?
Mandy Nolan's Soapbox: The Greatest Act of Love
She was driven home from the cafe where she worked by her boss, who raped her. She had never told anyone. It had been her secret. Like it was her shame to carry. Artwork by think blink design I have always found Valentine’s Day weirdly performative. The idea that a prescribed day could be dedicated to expressing your love. With flowers. Or chocolate. Or champagne. Or diamonds. Yuck. I find that creepy. I buy my own flowers. I eat chocolate every day. I don’t drink champagne anymore.
Mandy Nolan's Soapbox: Heat Speech
Why aren’t we culling big fossil fuels? Why aren’t we holding our governments to account, for letting the real sharks into the water? ‘Hot enough for ya?’ Where I grew up that was how people greeted each other on a sweltering summer’s day. It was a tongue-in-cheek way of saying it’s hot, can you take it? Is this the heat you ordered? It was usually how we teased people from cold climates, those who come here to enjoy our sunshine. They have no idea of how hot it can get.
Mandy Nolan's Soapbox: I Love Australia
I love this Australia. Vast. Ancient. Unique. A place of healing and growth. A country that acknowledges how it came to be. I love Australia, but I don’t love Australia Day on 26th Jan. I don’t love that it is about a flag with a Union Jack on it. I don’t love that it is a day where people drink heaps of booze and proclaim a kind of racist patriotism that calls this an incredible place because we have cultural traditions like lamington eating or thong throwing.
Mandy Nolan's Soapbox: Erasurehead: A South Australian Horror
Writers understand that the atrocity and mass murder that happened in Bondi on December 15 does not erase the existence of the genocide in Gaza, and the experience of Palestinians who continue to be killed. I have never been so proud to call myself a writer. To belong to a group of people who support a targeted colleague, who mobilise quietly with integrity and solidarity. Without self-interest. A group that has moral courage when our elected leaders and our decision-makers seem to have none.
Mandy Nolan's Soapbox: A Voice for the River
There is something potent about being on the river. It’s humbling to be held on its surface. To softly enter a quieter world. When I was a kid we used to swim in the river. Local waterways were full of fish and yabbies. We’d grab a giant inner tube from a tractor tyre and eight of us would fight to stay on the slippery surface. It was the closest thing we had to technology. Living inland, rivers and creeks were our swimming holes. Rivers could be placid or raging or still or fierce.
Are you on holidays here, enjoying yourself? Well then read this…
Sorry, not sorry. It’s holiday time. It’s hot. The beach is pumping. There’s a sparkle in the air. They’re here. The people who work in shit jobs that are killing them, with people they hate, to save for this two weeks of Byron. To relax. Have fun. To spend money. To get photos for Insta. This is the ‘experience.’ When you live in a place where other people take their holidays it’s a conundrum. Where do we go for holidays? Somewhere not as good as where we live?
Mandy Nolan's Soapbox: Change the World
It’s not governments who push progressive change. It’s progressive people. ‘Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.’ Margaret Mead said that. She died in 1978, but the words of this American cultural anthropologist still ring true. I hear it repeated often. But today I really thought about it. It’s not governments who push progressive change.
Mandy Nolan's Soapbox: Survival of the Shameless
In Bethlehem, where the property market was taking off, Mary, Joseph and Jesus were rough sleepers. ‘Survival of the shameless’. I heard that term this morning in a BBC podcast I was listening to with Dutch historian Rutger Bregman, who is calling for a ‘moral revolution’. It was one of those simple phrases that landed in my body. My sense of the world, of my morality has always been instinctual rather than strictly intellectual. When something hits me as a ‘truth bomb’ I feel it.
Mandy Nolan's Soapbox: The Things People Say
Newsflash: Those people kind of exist. The elite who control us. But they’re not behind some shadowy veil. They’re people like Musk and Zuckerberg and Bezos. People have said some crazy shit about me, but the other day a friend told me a friend of his had advised him not to vote for me in the last election because I was in the Illuminati. How bizarre. I am a member of the Greens and the Bangalow CWA, but that’s the extent of my covert memberships. One wants to tax billionaires and end coal and gas.
Mandy Nolan's Soapbox: Don’t Ban Kids, Ban Billionaires
Real change means making social media GENUINELY safer. Not banning kids. From 10 December, in Australia, under-16s are banned from social media. I’m not convinced that this is the cure-all safety response that the government wants us to believe it is. It’s a simple solution for what is a much bigger problem. Digital spaces have become an unregulated playground dominated by the interests of billionaires.
Mandy Nolan's Soapbox: The Care Package
‘I care that stupid governments, full of stupid politicians, make stupid decisions in the interests of their stupid mates, with too much stupid money, who want to make more stupid money, and we end up with really stupid outcomes.’ Older women don’t care what you think about them. I know. I’ve become an older woman. It’s a heady kind of liberation from the shackles of giving a F about approval, or not trying not to upset people. Some days I actually think I am in the business of upsetting people.
Mandy Nolan's Soapbox: Club 27
Last week marked 27 years since Michael Hutchence died. He was 37. The 22nd of November holds its place for me as the day when things changed. When someone who seemed bigger than life, almost super human, lost his. It was tragic and destabilising. It was unbelievable. We retold his story over and over, always hoping for a different ending. But no matter how many times we told it, it ended the same. He was gone. And we missed the clues, that perhaps things weren’t shiny and bright. We missed the pain.
Mandy Nolan's Soapbox: Why We Need Men
We can end violence against women and girls. I have always believed that. Some think I’m unrealistic, but I’m not ready to surrender hope. I’ve marched the streets, I have written articles, I’ve lobbied politicians. I’ve had my own experiences and I’ve sat with women and listened to them recount stories of rape, violence, abuse and degradation. And I barely flinch. Because these stories of near-death, of torture and abuse, they’re so normalised that none of us are shocked.
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