Speaker 1: Hello. I'm Jamilla Risby. I've been a journalist for oh god,
Speaker 1: too long, maybe ten years now. But growing up as
Speaker 1: an Indian Australian, I heard and I read and I
Speaker 1: watched stories being told by people who didn't look like me,
Speaker 1: whose experiences weren't like mine. Whether it's our first people's
Speaker 1: or our most recent arrivals, Australia is full of diverse storytellers. Enter,
Speaker 1: find and tell. This is the search for the next
Speaker 1: generation of Australian storytellers. We've taken four diverse Australian storytellers,
Speaker 1: We've trained them up, and then we've set them loose
Speaker 1: to find and tell weird and wonderful stories from all
Speaker 1: around the country. Every episode, our storytellers are going to
Speaker 1: go head to head, competing to give you the best
Speaker 1: story to get one step closer to taking home the
Speaker 1: grand prize. Think of it like a TV talent show,
Speaker 1: but for poker. In the first episode, you will hear
Speaker 1: it from Ben and Kate. They're going to match up
Speaker 1: to find and tell the best story they can on
Speaker 1: the theme of silver linings. In our first story, Ben
Speaker 1: investigates a mysterious teddy bear invasion in the small country
Speaker 1: village of Neith.
Speaker 2: Here's a taste.
Speaker 3: Welcome to Neath, a small country village on the outskirts
Speaker 3: of Cesnok in the Hunter Valley region, Duckward Young Country.
Speaker 3: It's a real blink and you'd miss it. Top of town,
Speaker 3: one rode in and one rode out. It has a
Speaker 3: population of four hundred and ninety people, a bus stop,
Speaker 3: a servo and in true blue Australian country town fashion,
Speaker 3: one pub. You'd be forgiven if you've never heard about Neath.
Speaker 3: Not many people have. But for a short period of time,
Speaker 3: Neath was the talk of the region. All unknown country
Speaker 3: town became home to a mind boggling mystery. This story
Speaker 3: begins a few years ago at the peak of covid
Speaker 3: Lockdown in New South Wales. Morale was at an all
Speaker 3: time low and there was nothing to look forward to, work, home, work,
Speaker 3: and back home again. But that's exactly how this story starts. See.
Speaker 3: I would have to drive on that one lonely road
Speaker 3: through Neath on my daily commute to work, and that's
Speaker 3: when I first encountered the teddy bears. That's right, teddy bears.
Speaker 3: And I wasn't the only one.
Speaker 2: Would someone tell me the significance of the teddy bears inneath.
Speaker 2: They're all over the place, and some are even sitting
Speaker 2: in chairs now, so the road to neath has become
Speaker 2: a gallery of hanging teddy bears. I dig the kindergarten
Speaker 2: lad the impaler aesthetic, but does anyone know the deal?
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's disgusting.
Speaker 1: Hopefully they get pulled down soon the place look filthy.
Speaker 2: It's a beautiful gesture to make kids, and us big
Speaker 2: kids smile.
Speaker 1: People who get upset by them must have had very
Speaker 1: sad childhoods.
Speaker 3: In the following weeks, the teddy bears began to multiply,
Speaker 3: and what started as five or six soon turned into twenty,
Speaker 3: then thirty, then not before long, there was too many
Speaker 3: beers to count inhabiting the village. Beneath the trees, the parks,
Speaker 3: the benches, the telegraph poles, the signal boxes, the bus stops.
Speaker 3: The teddy bears had even infiltrated the pub. Then one
Speaker 3: day they all vanished. Where did the beers come from?
Speaker 3: Who put them there? And where did they go? This
Speaker 3: local mystery has perplexed me for far too long, and
Speaker 3: it's about time I figured out some answers. So starts
Speaker 3: my investigation to unravel the Mystery of the Neath Teddy Bears.
Speaker 1: And in our second story, Kate poured over voice notes
Speaker 1: she sent to a friend following a devastating breakup. She
Speaker 1: enlists the Elizabeth Day to craft a love letter to
Speaker 1: the friends who hold us together.
Speaker 2: I consider my romantic breakups some of the most visceral
Speaker 2: periods of grief in my life. But the mere act
Speaker 2: of living through that and surviving it had made me
Speaker 2: understand I was so much stronger than I thought I was.
Speaker 2: It taught me a lot about my capacity for resilience.
Speaker 4: That's author and podcaster Elizabeth Day in her book Friend
Speaker 4: of Hollick. It's had such a big impact on me
Speaker 4: this year. My copy is underlined and tabbed like a textbook,
Speaker 4: because I think that breakups, they really often, shine a
Speaker 4: light on all of our relationships a bit, in particular
Speaker 4: our friendships.
Speaker 2: One of the most momentous breakups in my life was
Speaker 2: three weeks before my thirty ninth birthday. I remember so
Speaker 2: vividly that breakup happening and me opening the window of
Speaker 2: my rented flat and smoking a cigarette. I don't smoke,
Speaker 2: by the way, but it felt like the only appropriately
Speaker 2: tragic thing to do.
Speaker 4: When your life gets unexpectedly turned upside down, like Elizabeths did,
Speaker 4: like mine did. The balance in the scales of everything
Speaker 4: kind of skews, including in your friendships. All of a
Speaker 4: sudden you become that friend who is kind of a miss.
Speaker 4: But there's also something so beautiful about friendship that is
Speaker 4: born out of a time when there's no expectation of
Speaker 4: anything in return.
Speaker 2: I do not know what I would have done without
Speaker 2: my friends after that breakup, literally to the extent that
Speaker 2: the first person I called was Emma, my ex was
Speaker 2: still in the flat, and I said, this has happened,
Speaker 2: and she was right, but he doesn't mean that I mean,
Speaker 2: because it seems so ludicrous to her. She's like, right,
Speaker 2: but he's joking, isn't he. I was like no, and
Speaker 2: she said, Okay, my darling, this is what we're gonna do.
Speaker 2: And she basically gave me a plan of action.
Speaker 1: That's just a little taste of Find and Tell. If
Speaker 1: you love hearing stories told by people from all walks
Speaker 1: of life, then search and follow Find and Tell in
Speaker 1: the app that you're listening on now.