Long reads that gripped us in 2022

We’ve written more than 8500 long reads in 2022 on the issues and people you want to know more about. These are some of the news features you couldn’t stop reading.

6 stories

The Gym Gang were behind a string of armed robberies over decades.

Investigation
Organised crime

Kickboxers, a wig and four armoured vans: The long hunt for the ‘Gym Gang’

For 40 years a group of fit Melbourne gym-goers have been suspected of committing a string of meticulously planned and lucrative robberies. Now for the first time, their full story can be told.

January 9, 2022
John Silvester

Exclusive
NSW residential property

Want a peek inside the Caddick house? You’ll need $10,000 to get in the door

Fraudster Melissa Caddick’s home went up for sale in 2022, see what was on offer for potential buyers.

September 26, 2022
Kate McClymont

Author Sian Prior tried to have a child for seven years before deciding it was “time to find out who I might be, if I’m not to be a mother”.

First Person

‘So many babies, none of them mine’: Not having a child when you dearly want one

Dealing with stereotypes on top of the particular kind of grief that comes from wanting a child and not having one leads to a deep internal reckoning.

March 12, 2022
Sian Prior

Professor Fiona Wood examines burn victim Dawn at her Perth laboratory.
“I see terrible things,” she says. “If I didn’t continue to believe that at some point we were going to do better, how would I ever have stayed at the table? That’s what’s driven me all through these decades.”

Bali bombings hero Fiona Wood: the next frontier in burns treatment

Her spray-on skin made her a household name after the Bali bombings. Today, plastic surgeon Fiona Wood remains at the vanguard of cutting-edge burns treatments.

October 1, 2022
Amanda Hooton

Alysha has blown the whistle on the conduct of her colleagues at the Tasmania’s Ashley Youth Detention Centre.

Investigation

Isolation. Strip-searches. Rape: Inside a Tasmanian youth detention centre

Alysha was hired to introduce better care to the Ashley Youth Detention Centre in Tasmania. It took only days for the first shocking incident to show her what was really going on.