Bluegrass Music and Australian Rules Football - without question the the best football code on the planet (and perhaps even within our own galaxy. I don't know a lot about the football played in other galaxies. Do they even have feet?)
Bill Monroe, Ralph Stanley and Tom T and Dixie Hall of course, but I would be interested in anybody who shares my love and appreciation of bluegrass music.
Do you really have to ask?
They should have stopped making films after "Gone With The Wind" although I do have a very soft spot for "Picnic At Hanging Rock", because of its direct locality reference to a part of Central Victoria which my family and I spent many happy days and weeks around especially when our youngest daughter was quite little. It is also the best best "atmosphere" film I've ever seen because of its maintained cloud of mystery and tragedy, and finally because we always used to climb Hanging Rock and, indeed, on cloudy days you can hear echoes of other people coming around the rock to you from all over the place. I never tire of that particular movie.
Next question please ...
Wow This one is difficult. Maybe D. H. Lawrence's "The Rainbow", Dostoyevsky's "Crime And Punishment" and any non-fiction book about Australian history and heritage.
Yes, we still, I believe, all need heroes so long as they are genuine and not manufactured by media. Three people I really admire are Douglas Bader, Sherlock Holmes and Bill Monroe. Bader was an unstoppable young bloke who always wanted to fly aircraft. In air training, when twenty years old, he had a massive accident which nearly cost him his life and resulted in amputation of both legs. Undaunted, he went on to become a dominant fighter pilot during the Second World War. Although a fictional character, Sherlock Holmes is a somewhat larger than life, reclusive figure who was a master of what we would nowadays call lateral thinking. Prone to thinking whilst playing the violin I devoured his every story, many times over, as a boy growing up and still believe that there is a reason for everything if we can just think it through.In more recent times, my third hero would probably be Bill Monroe: an amazingly charismatic brilliantly musical man with tremendous will and drive to succeed helping him to overcome a difficult and very lonely childhood. In the process he revolutionised early twentieth century old-time dance music and gave bluegrass music to the world.