Australiana

B&S Ball refers to a dance held in rural Australia for single young adults who can sometimes live up to a day's drive from their nearest neighbor. The "B&S" stands for "bachelors and spinsters" and the balls are notoriously drunken and raucous. Most of us take contact with the opposite sex for granted, but for these people, it's not always so easy.

The remote community of the Tiwi Islands, located 80km north of the Australian mainland, has a thriving gay and trans community known as the Sistergirls. More than 5 percent of the Tiwi population identify as a Sistergirl with most of them living publicly as women and observing local Indigenous traditions. In this episode of Australiana, VICE embeds with the Sistergirls to explore the intersection of traditional culture and gender identity. We follow the story of Laura, who at the age of 33 has been awaiting gender reassignment hormones since she was 10 years old. Her access has been complicated by the island's limited access to doctors, let alone hormone treatment. This documentary explores the push-pull the Sistergirls experience living on their remote Tiwi home, while wanting to find love in the city and start families of their own.

At this time in Australia, only a “defined group of patients” have access to medicinal cannabis, including children with “severe intractable epilepsy”. But while the government embarks on the long process of implementing legal medicinal cannabis schemes for those beyond the current legislation, desperate patients have been forced to source medicine from the black market. In Stealthcare, VICE embeds with illegal growers and the patients they service, exploring the issues surrounding access to medicinal cannabis. These growers, essentially cannabis enthusiasts, often donate their product for little or no cost, at great personal risk. Scarred by jealous drug dealers, police raids and government persecution, these “Compassion Clubs” are forced to operate on the black market where they can deliver the medicine to sufferers.

VICE embed with the staff and residents of The Stay Inn, a motel that gets most of its clientele through prison and homeless services. Arrests and fights between residents are a common occurrence and everyone here has a past that involves tragedy, mental illness, drug abuse or incarceration. In the midst of an unprecedented homelessness crisis in Melbourne, we see members of The Stay Inn community hope and plan for a better future. But while they dream of breaking the cycle of poverty, The Stay Inn is as close to a home as most of them will get for now.

In Shooting Cats VICE set out to explore the consequences of Australia's feral cat plague, and confront the uncomfortable and violent realities of dealing with it. Most suburban Australians give feral cats little thought. But for residents of the country’s rural fringes, they’re a diabolical pest and scourge on wildlife. Found in 99 percent of Australia, they’re estimated to kill more than two million native animals a day. That devastation has seen Kangaroo Island local Barry Green declare a personal war against cats; trapping and skinning them, before turning them into hats and fridge magnets.

Tassie tigers, otherwise known as thylacines, were thought to have become extinct after the last known specimen “Benjamin” died in a Hobart zoo in 1936. But new evidence and a growing civilian movement are challenging that belief, with the Thylacine Awareness Group of Australia (TAGOA) boasting 10,000 members Australia-wide. In this episode of Australiana, we embed with its president, Neil Waters, a retired gardener who commits his life savings to an epic two year search for the ancient marsupial. As Neil edges closer to a tantalising ‘re-discovery’, the search brings him hope and meaning, but we also learn the price of this obsession.