CAPTURING THE ENERGY AND SPIRIT of story subjects is my craft, and I consider it a privilege to learn from a crowd of interesting people, in interesting places! I interviewed Paralympian Liesl Tesch in her car enroute to a pirate party. I got to know entrepreneur Dick Smith in a supermarket aisle over a bottle of sauce. I spoke with Everest legend Lincoln Hall while hanging off a rock face. In person, on the phone, or via Skype – I am grateful to be inspired by every subject I’m invited to meet.

TERRY SNOW: “You can’t take it with you”

Seventy years old, the white-haired Terry Snow is a capital character.

Head of the family business that owns the Canberra Airport, Brindabella Business Park, Fairbairn commercial precinct, and Majura shopping district, Snow is having a peak year. In 2013 his beloved Canberra celebrated its centenary, his once “sheep paddock with tin shed” airport stretched its wings with a new terminal, and his forty-year philanthropy habit went on its biggest ever bender, with an $8 million donation to Canberra Grammar School.

“Fortunes don’t last through generations,” Snow says with certainty. “And you can’t control one from the grave. You think the family’s going to manage it, but I tell you, it won’t work. You don’t know who will join your family after you’re gone, and money has a way of dripping through fingers. And if you leave a business behind, that’ll get trashed too. It’s just the way things are.” Snow says you’ve only got to look at once great Australian businesses such as Anthony Hordern’s or Ansett for evidence. “Where are they today? Disappeared.”

“If you want to do some good in the world, why not do it when you’re alive?” he asks. “You may as well give the money out and set up something in which the family can participate, something that represents your family values in a continuing way through four or five generations – like the Myers have done. Setting up an enduring philanthropic organisation to pursue those interests – those decent things that matter to you – for many generations? What a wonderful way to check in your cards.”

CRAIG ROSEVAR: “What’s more inclusive than drumming? Bam! Nothing.”

Some people’s greatest gift is their ability to see the ‘awesome’ in everyone. Craig “Rosie” Rosevear, Australian 90s rock icon, ex-drummer of The Screaming Jets, and founder of Rosie’s School of Rock, is one of them. When I meet the long-haired, forty-something rocker he is in the middle of a Saturday afternoon’s music program. In the state-of-the-art rock warren that is his Newcastle school, a legion of primary-age and teen guitar groms are holding band meetings. An all-girl drum group is finishing its prep for an upcoming gig, and techy teens carry audio cable from editing suites to studios.

Before Rosie tells me anything about himself, or the two programs he runs to make rock available to kids with disabilities, he introduces two of his crew. “This is Brit, who is teaching drums,” he beams. “She’s 15 and she’s absolutely fantastic. And Jordan – he’s a mentor for our kids on the spectrum. He’s got the best temperament for teaching and I couldn’t do any of this without him.” Rosie proudly points to photos of the rest of his staff that line the school corridor in a wall of rock-school fame: “We’ve got the best crew ever.”

It’s little surprise that AU:SUM, Rosie’s School of Rock’s program for kids on the autism spectrum, kicked off because of a push by local mums. “Over time parents were coming up to me saying, ‘You’ve done wonders for my kid’,” Rosie explains. “I thought, well that’s good. But then they’d say, ‘Nah, you don’t understand. You’ve done wonders for him: He’s got autism and we never thought he could stand up in front of anybody – you’ve changed his life’.”

Four or five kids come together, choose a band name, write a song, shoot some video, come up with a logo, pick an instrument, then start jamming. At the end of 20 weeks they perform a gig and release their single. Past hits have included classics such as ‘We Are The Best’ by the Killex, and ‘The Fart Song’ by Crusty Volcano.

HOULDING ON: “There’s more to life than climbing”

Many of us have grown up with Britain’s Leo Houlding. In the pages, and eventually on the covers of our climbing magazines, he was the long-haired teenager who took the sport to impossible heights.

These days, at 31, Houlding the adventurer, climber, BASE-jumper, and para alpinist is still at the leading edge of his game, and in collaboration with filmmaker Alastair Lee is collecting festival awards by the chalky fistful.

In 2010, while Banff Mountain Film and Book Festival audiences were still applauding his Baffin Island nail-biter The Asgard Project, Houlding was busy fulfilling a nine-year dream in establishing The Prophet (5.13d R); a 600-metre, 13-pitch free route on Yosemite’s El Capitan. It was a climb that he describes as the hardest of his life, and the subject of Lee’s latest award-winning film, The Prophet; a ‘Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels-meets bigwall-climbing’ experience. I caught up with Leo – as much as anyone can – to talk about what sends him up the wall …