BONUS: Finding your way home | Safina Stewart
From Grey Areas with Petra Bagust by rova | Love It Media
April 1, 2026 · 59 min
About this episode
Safina Stewart shares her journey of finding home and identity as an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artist, discussing personal challenges and community issues.
Born in Aotearoa, raised in the highlands of Papua New Guinea, and transplanted to suburban Melbourne at age ten, Safina Stewart has spent most of her life figuring out where home is. As an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artist, educator, and storyteller, she's had to find that answer from the inside out. In this kōrero, Safina opens up about growing up as a "bush pikinini," not learning to read until she was 18, and the quiet devastation of arriving in Australia as a child with no map for the path ahead. We talk about the 2023 Voice referendum, what it cost her community, and how it lit a fire in her art. Safina shares, with remarkable honesty, the years she spent in a marriage marked by domestic violence and sexual assault, and how becoming a mother became both her anchor and the beginning of learning to love herself. We also explore perimenopause through an Indigenous lens, the power of community and the myth of the individual, equity scholarships, and the grief of losing her brother, musician and artist Stuart Fergie, to covid complications. This is a conversation about survival, defiance, and the deep, generous kind of love that holds people together across…
People in this episode
Host: Petra Bagust
Guest: Safina Stewart
Topics covered
- identity
- domestic violence
- art
- community
- perimenopause
- grief
- survival
Keywords
- Aboriginal
- Torres Strait Islander
- domestic violence
- art
- community
- perimenopause
- Voice referendum
- grief
- identity
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Safe to Talk, Women's Refuge
Places: Aotearoa, Papua New Guinea, Melbourne
More episodes of Grey Areas with Petra Bagust
- Pushed to my limits | Sir Ashley Bloomfield · June 3, 2026 · 1h 29m
- Look at my beautiful body | Morgana O'Reilly · May 27, 2026 · 1h 32m
- Give it a nudge | Brodie Kane · May 20, 2026 · 1h 19m
- I've already fallen on my face | Robyn Malcolm · May 13, 2026 · 58 min
- GSM - The issue affecting 84% of menopausal women | Dr Iona Weir · May 6, 2026 · 1h 5m
- Telling the truth under pressure | Barbara Dreaver · April 29, 2026 · 1h 14m
Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the Grey Areas with Petra Bagust podcast page.