Where Are They Now? Looking back On The Couch, Reflecting & Moving Forward
April 2025
Hey Caddyshackers
As many of you know, we have spent a lot of time dedicated to our “On The Couch” series over the past few years, with a podcast of these wonderful conversations going live in 2024. If you have no idea what we are talking about, “On The Couch” is a series, where Caddyshack Project hosts guests to discuss and explore current social themes and sex positive topics. We collaborate with experts, practitioners, authors, advocates and influencers to share stories and insights that matter.
On The Couch is in it’s 4th season, with a wonderful line up for 2025, so get your free ticket to be part our live online audience. You can also catch up on past episodes as a podcast (Podbean or wherever you listen) or vodcast (on YouTube). Listen while going for a walk, commuting or wherever you have your downtime to tune in. While you’re there let us know what you think by leaving a review.
What we chat about On The Couch
We just love that there are so many fields of work related to ours in sexual health, reproductive health and healthy, consensual relationships. We have found our guests through our extensive networks, following their work on social media, through personal chance meetings at conferences and the recommendations of others. Our guest list is extensive including but not limited to trans health advocates, sexology practitioner and sexologists, clinical nurses, authors, program founders, disability advocates, researchers and Indigenous artist.
Where are they now?
We are so honoured that our guests give their time to share their journeys with us and that we can capture the content to produce podcasts, where these conversations live on.
All of our guests from the past 3 seasons have continued to achieve and contribute to their chosen fields since their episode with us. We thought we would highlight just a few things that have been happening in that time and reflect on where some of our guests are now.
The Art Space
Our episodes with both Chris Cheers and Kirli Saunders reflected on the art space. It just so happens that both of these guests are also authors!
Chris Cheers
Chris, author of “The New Rulebook: Notes from a psychologist to help redefine the way you live” spoke with raw love and enthusiasm for the queer art space, and how Covid-19 really caused havoc for those in the arts, particularly performers. Identifying with the community himself, he found a lot of his psychology work was helping those who not only had lost their means of income, but also during lockdown, found it hard to continue expressing themselves and living their authentic lives.
Off the back of this, Chris has partnered with the Melbourne Fringe Festival and made a collection of well-being resources for artists, a passion project with so much importance.
Since our episode with Chris, he has continued to specialise in providing workshops and individual psychology services for artists, creatives and LGBTQI+ clients. He featured in ABC News Unwind post in November 2023 and when asked what piece of advice he often turns to he responded with
“It's quite cliché, but when I'm feeling anxious or worried about something, it's been helpful to return to the idea that "this too will pass" — it helps me remember that this feeling will pass, just as every other emotion has before it”.
What sound advice it is. You can read more of Chris’s work and practices here.
Kirli Saunders
Kirli Saunders (OAM) is a proud Gunai Woman. She’s an award-winning multi-disciplinary artist, writer, singer-songwriter and consultant.
Kirli creates to connect, to make change. Kirli’s eight celebrated books, among others, include Eclipse (Allen & Unwin, 2025), Returning (Magabala, 2023) and Bindi (Magabala, 2020). She was awarded an Order of Australia Medal for her contribution to the arts (2022).
As an artist, Kirli’s works span many mediums, including painting, printmaking, fibre, sculpture, installation and digital. She created TRACES with Kamsani Bin Saleh for VIVID (Google x Magabala Books x Sydney Opera House) & was commissioned for First Lights with Buung Ba Ma Ndhu a large scale drone installation (Ngununggula x Fremantle Biennale).
Kirli has exhibited with Shoalhaven Regional Gallery, Wollongong Art Gallery, Good Space, Red Earth Arts Precinct, Cement Fondue, First Draft and Ngununggula Galleries, as well as Open Field and Sculpture in the Gardens. Her solo show, Returning, held at Southern Highlands Artisans Collective in 2021, was supported by Creative Australia.
You can clearly see that Kirli is a creative force to be reckoned with. Since we hosted Kirli back in 2022, she has released a further 3 books (Our Dreaming, Returning, Afloat and newly released Eclipse), had several art installations, many creative appearances, staged “Yhanda Djanbay (Go Slowly) at Merrigong Theatre and appeared on Big Ted’s story time on Play School! She’s currently writing an album for Cooee with Mark Chester Harding.
When On The Couch, we asked Kirli what made her proud? It was such a beautiful response, we just had to re-share it.
“We come from a 60,000 year plus, time immemorial kind of lineage. So, I think there's a pride in being part of the oldest continuous culture on the planet. I think there's also a deep pride instilled familiarly. So, my mum is this super powerhouse, resilient, you know, beautiful, moves with grace in the world kind of woman. And knowing that I'm hers, that makes me feel really proud.”
Kirli said that she feels
“strengthened by culture and by Kin and Country and having those relationships makes her feel a communal reciprocity as there is a non-hierarchical way of being in Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander people’s community which is very important to honour”.
“I stand on the shoulders of giants, all these beautiful elders who've come before me and I get to learn from them every day , and, to teach our little ones.”
To wrap up our chat with Kirli On The Couch we asked her to read one of her beautiful poems. She chose “Based on Us” from her collection Returning. You can listen to Kirli reading it here.
The Research Space
We have hosted some seriously committed guests, who’s own passions and advocacy work have led them to PhD’s in their chosen fields.
Dr Joy Townsend
Dr Joy Townsend’s doctoral thesis titled “Her sexual self, A Narrative Investigation Of Young Women's Sexual Subjectivities” employed a narrative methodology to present a nuanced examination of young women’s sexualities. Joy had not gone into the project ever imagining it would lead to the work she now does in the consent space.
“I absolutely did not go into that research for my PhD with consent in mind. In fact, I started my PhD in 2013. I don’t even know if the word consent would have been in my vocabulary back then to be honest. Certainly not in the way it is now in our culture and society. I actually went into that research project going, I really don’t want to spend four years writing a PhD about sexual violence, I just felt very strongly that that wouldn’t be sustainable for me. But hey, you write about women’s sexuality, you’re going to have to. If you’re honest and you’re talking to young women about their lived experience, what I found is that it’s inevitable. It’s going to come up sadly”.
This led to Joy founding Learning Consent and since being On The Couch with us in 2023, Joy has continued to grow her team for the delivery of comprehensive relationships, sexuality and consent education programs for educational institutions and organisations.
Rachel Wotton
Rachel Wotton’s submitted PhD “People with Disability who Access Sex Worker Services in Australia” prioritised the voices of people with disability to create an opportunity for them to share their own experiences and tell their stories of accessing sex worker services. As part of the research, Rachel surveyed 108 individuals, and 27 participants provided information through a detailed interview. Not surprisingly, the research showed many reasons why someone may utilise sex worker services, and it’s about more than just a physical sexual experience.
“First of all, sexual enjoyment, no surprise there. The second was a desire for sexual variety. The third was to combat loneliness and feelings of isolation. The fourth was seeking genuine intimacy and connectivity with another person. Then there was a lack of other sexual outlets in a person's life. And then a large one was around to increase a person's sexual literacy. And then there was an element of therapeutic healing. And the last one was to assist in a person's recovery and rehabilitation. So there's a lot to unpack there. I can't wait to share all my findings in detail with everyone”.
You can listen to more of Rachel’s passionate advocacy work on Triple J’s Hack.
Dr Axel-Nathaniel Rose
Axel-Nathaniel Rose crosses both the arts and research space. He was awarded a PhD in Creative Writing from UNSW in January 2025. His research has appeared in Axon: Creative Explorations, Transformative Works and Cultures, and Ludic Inquiries. His short stories, non-fiction, and poetry have been published in Unsweetened Literary Journal, Tharunka, and Aesthetic, and his plays have been performed by New South Wales University Theatrical Society.
Axel was so open about his experiences and led us on a conversation around the importance of bodily autonomy and medical consent, especially as it relates to the trans health space. We have seen a real shift in this space, but like many things, there will always be work to do!
“The public profile of what it means to be transgender has increased so, so rapidly. And overall, I think it has shifted positively. I think, you know, just a random person on the street is likely to be pretty neutral on trans people. But at the same time, just in that sort of four year period, we’ve had amazing advance in healthcare and rights and public policy and services available, but we have also seen the rise of trans exclusionary radical movement and a lot of very right wing work associated with that”.
Thank you
We acknowledge that several of our wonderful guests have moved on from the roles they held when we met with them On The Couch. We wish them all the best in their new chosen fields and with all future endeavours. We thank them so much for the legacy they leave behind in all the work they had done in contributing to the sexual and reproductive health sector.
What’s next?
As you now know, our 2025 line up is live and free tickets to be part of the live online audience is available.
What’s next for us, is the promotion of our work at the “Public Health Association” Preventative Health conference in Canberra in April 2025.
“There is no doubt that preventative health initiatives and programs provide tangible health outcomes for individuals, are excellent value for money and deliver co-benefits to many other aspects of society and community. However, working in prevention is not as straightforward as identifying and delivering evidence-based programs to improve outcomes. This year’s theme and sub-themes have been selected to surface the reality that is extremely familiar for those working in prevention and public health.”
Until Next time,
Peace, Love & Protection