User Profile

Caroline Baum

Caroline Baum is a journalist, author and the ambassador for the Older Womens’ Network (OWN) in NSW. She lives in the Northern Illawarra.

Arts & culture

Power surge at Clifton Contemporary Art Fair 2025

It was a night of drama. A gale had been blowing all day, rain falling in horizontal squalls. It was impossible to put out the promotional banners and flags. Inside, a dedicated crew of professionals up ladders and on the ground had been battling to...

Caroline Baum

January 2025

Arts & culture

Art on the Edge at Clifton

Building on the success of the first Clifton School of Arts (CSA) Art Fair, held in 2022 as the community emerged from the Covid pandemic, the event is back for 2025. Organisers artist Vyvian Wilson and CSA president David Roach have tweaked the...

Caroline Baum

January 2025

Arts & culture

Barefoot Boho Queen: Gina Chick comes to Coledale book festival

The Alone Australia star features on the cover of the Flame’s November 2024 print edition. To read the magazine layout, click here, download a program here or find the text version below Even people who did not watch Alone Australia on SBS know Gin...

Caroline Baum

November 2024

Opinion

An ailing hospital

Recently, several friends have moved out of the area because they don’t feel the quality of health care available as they age is good enough. Which makes me wonder what it means for a community not to have confidence in its local hospital – in...

Caroline Baum

October 2024

Arts & culture

True Story: 2024 festival program reveals The State of Us

Book tickets via the South Coast Writers Centre

Caroline Baum

October 2024

Arts & culture

Local legend: Meet Judy Bourke of Barracks Art Studios Thirroul

It would be fair to say that Judy Bourke is having a moment. The colourful local identity, unmistakeable thanks to her distinctive pink hair (in a style that combines a fringe with a tail) and colourful vintage look, is so well-known to locals that she can’t move without being stopped in the street or at Austi pool, where she swims daily. It makes daily chores take much longer than they should, but Judy turns every occasion into a social encounter.

Caroline Baum

May 2024

Arts & culture

Skills of the star finder: Meet casting director Anousha Zarkesh

Chances are that if you have watched any Australian drama featuring First Nations actors, it was cast by Austinmer resident Anousha Zarkesh. Think of award-winning series like Total Control and Mystery Road: Anousha. Or films like The New Boy and...

Caroline Baum

April 2024

Arts & culture

Choir sings Alvarado’s praises

In conducting, timing is everything. But the appointment of Carlos Alvarado as Musical Director of the Illawarra Choral Society in 2019 meant the maestro had to skip a beat: the interruption of Covid delayed him showing audiences just how much of...

Caroline Baum

November 2023

Arts & culture

Back at Coledale – True Story!

This article is the Flame’s November 2023 cover story. Read the magazine layout here or the text below. I always swore I would never run a festival. I’d watched other festival directors lose sleep over variables from money to last-minute author...

Caroline Baum

November 2023

Arts & culture

Memories surface in TV drama ‘One Night’

It’s a subject close to Emily’s heart that she has been thinking about for more than three decades while building up a list of credits on shows like the TV adaptation of Christos Tsiolkas’ The Slap

Caroline Baum

September 2023

Arts & culture

Pianist Simon Tedeschi to perform at fundraising concert in Wollongong

In something of a musical coup, local violinist Cedar Newman has persuaded renowned Australian pianist Simon Tedeschi to join her for a one-night-only concert with the BlueScope Youth Orchestra to raise money for Médecins Sans Frontières at...

Caroline Baum

August 2023

Arts & culture

Yes 23 fundraiser ‘Art From Our Hearts’ comes to Clifton

A group of 29 Illawarra artists will donate their artwork for sale Art from our Hearts to support the Yes 23campaign for the 2023 Referendum to ensure an Indigenous Voice to Parliament in the Australian Constitution. Initiated by Wombarra residents...

Caroline Baum

August 2023

News

Meet the Weather Man: Roger ‘Clouds’ Badham

For many people, the easiest form of small talk with a stranger is to talk about the weather. But not for Roger Badham. Recently awarded an Order of Australia Medal (OAM) in the King’s Birthday Honours for his services to meteorology, it is...

Caroline Baum

July 2023

Arts & culture

Scientist battling MND shares his journey in ‘Fighting Fate’

Anyone who watched the 2018 ABC TV Australian Story about Professor Justin Yerbury will remember him: the basketball player turned scientist who embarked on a personal crusade to find a cure for Motor Neurone Disease, which he discovered ran in his...

Caroline Baum

June 2023