Our latest stockist is the best darn ‘corner’ store on Waiheke Island (just off the coast of Auckland, New Zealand). It’s called Waiheke Fruit & Veg, but generally goes by its nickname ‘The Top Shop’ and its owner Emily MacDonald is a pretty top lady herself. Not only is she still in her twenties (maybe even early twenties), but she’s transformed what used to be your pretty average shop into something really special. She stocks the best organic produce and gourmet goods (local if poss) like I love Pies, No. 29 Olive Oil and Cable Bay Wines, all the produce is labeled with its English AND Maori names and now it stocks Dumbo feather!

Waiheke Fruit & Veg is also the base for an incredible project Emily’s set up. Two years ago she visited the war-ravaged province of Gulu, Uganda and was inspired to do something to help the children there. In 2009, TheVillageProject raised over $60,000 from the sale of limited edition t-shirts and artworks. This year they’ve already raised half that again, this time by selling over 1,000 stainless steel water bottles too … Emily’s also on a mission to make the island plastic water-bottle free! You go girl.

“Campfire, creative, collaboration, conversation” indeed. We had such a fabulous time in Perth the other week and met some amazing folk … We even discovered someone to profile in an upcoming issue, thanks to the incomparable Sabrina Ward Harrison (Issue 15) and a big dose of serendipity! Sabrina was our special superstar (all the way from New York, don’t you know) for the evening. Thanks to all of you who came from far and WA-wide – I enjoyed it immensely and hope you did too. Massive thanks to Distracted for hosting us, for the flat whites, and for being such a wonderful space/nest for Dumbo feather over the years. Til next time …

PS. Don’t forget ‘The Nana Project’ … nana(at)sabrinawardharrison.com

PPS. We did record the conversation and as soon as we get organised enough, we’ll post it here for all to listen to. In the mean time, here are some photos of a very special evening.

Photograph by Valentine Schmidt

[*Spoiler warning* If you want the five people in Issue 17 to remain a surprise until you receive your copy - read no further]

Photograph by Juliet Coombes

Alison Thompson : has been charged by twelve hippos, nine elephants and two rhinos. She has travelled to all the continents of the world, including the South Pole. She is an Australian who has been living and working in New York for more than 20 years. While she’s tried many things like being a mathematics teacher and an investment banker, it’s in film-making, and its ability to move people to take action, that her passion lies. Being spurred into action is something Alison knows about first hand. When the World Trade Centre was hit on 11 September 2001, she was one of the first there to volunteer. It gave her a taste for volunteering and she realised how easy it could be. So, in 2004, when the ‘Boxing Day’ tsunami hit, she jumped on a plane to Sri Lanka. The footage she took during that time formed the basis for ‘The Third Wave’, a film about volunteering which has captured the souls of viewers from Cannes to Sydney.

Photography by Ali McCann

Niels Oeltjen : In the interview that follows, Niels Oeltjen mentions ‘The Lettering Book’ which he used to use as a kid to create headings for projects and so on. Until he mentioned it, I’d completely forgotten it, but when he did the memories flooded back so strongly. It had a dark blue spiral-bound cover and you could trace all sorts of different fonts from it. For me it’s just a nostalgic memory, for Niels it was the start of his career. From doodling on school books, he started doodling on walls on the streets of Tasmania, became a graphic designer, has created a number of beautiful typefaces for Letterbox studio and worked on ad campaigns such as Tourism Victoria’s Red Thread campaign (which has featured a lot in past issues of ‘Dumbo feather’). He is also a fine artist and one of Australia’s upcoming illustrators, oh and a budding entrepreneur as well.

Photography by Joshua Morris

Shea Caplice : Any misconceptions you might have had about midwifery will surely be dispelled by listening to (or in this case, reading) the words of Shea Caplice as she talks about her years of practice as a midwife. Shea is Ms Practicality, Ms Sensible and Ms Sensitive all rolled into one. After delivering literally thousands of babies during her years as a private midwife and working in the public sector, Shea’s mission is now to educate women, and the public in general, about birth and midwifery and to help people connect better with each other when we need it most. Her extraordinary dedication to her practice and art might have personally taken its toll, but Shea still has more to give.

Photography by Will Brady

Craig Walzer : is one of the founders of Atlantis Books, a bookstore on the island of Santorini, Greece, which has been named one of the best in the world (http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2005/dec/06/top10s.bookshops). We all have outlandish ideas sometimes, but not many of us follow through on them. Craig and his friends did. Their idea was to create a bookshop that would provide them with a reason to get together, and a bed for when they did. Craig, originally from America, has also lived, worked and studied in Paris, England and Africa. In Africa he spent time in a legal clinic in Cairo working with refugees and, most recently, was engaged by Dave Eggers at McSweeneys Publishing to collate the stories of the people of Sudan into a book titled ‘Out of Exile’.

Photograph by Lynette Chiang

Lynette Chiang : abandoned her award-winning advertising career in Australia and hopped on a bike 15 years ago. First she rode the length of the UK, then ended up in Costa Rica from where she launched her assault on Cuba … again on a bike. Her book, ‘The Handsomest Man in Cuba’, is a hilarious and touching account of her three-month journey cycling the highways and footpaths of Cuba. Since then her wheels have scaled volcanoes in Hawaii, explored the hilly Chiapas and the flat-as-a-tortilla Yucatan in Mexico, traversed Italy from Fano on the Adriatic to Porto Ecole on the Mediterranean, and conquered the world’s highest paved road (all 16,000 feet of it) in Peru. Lynette’s bike of choice was a folding travel number from a small US company called Bike Friday. She now works for Bike Friday blogging and filming her adventures.