December 2011 - January 2012
Comment: Phoney Education
Don Watson
The best measure of the boon these phones have been is to recall the woe of life before them. Just 15 years ago on trams and trains people...
More ...The Lady Killers: Women in the Military
Anne Summers
A few years later, that soldier asked the other three officers who had assisted her maiden fast-rope that day to be bridesmaids at her...
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CULTURE
This Helplessness
Steven Amsterdam
I’m afraid we don’t have a lot of choices for treatment here.” “You mean I don’t have a lot of choices?” “Yes.” “Then I’m the one who’s...
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SOCIETY
Island Rising: Cockatoo Island, Sydney Harbour
Fiona McGregor
Is there any place more typical of Sydney’s protean nature than Cockatoo Island? A decade ago, it was a wasteland. One hundred and fifty...
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CULTURE
The Sitting Act: Portrait Painting
Charlotte Wood
In my early twenties I earned money sitting for life drawing classes at the small and beloved art school in my university town. I was by no...
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WORLD
Gareth Evans & Ali Alatas
One was a career diplomat, the very model of discretion, patience and good manners. The other was a famously volcanic politician, a thrower...
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Popular culture
'The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia' By Bill Gammage
James Boyce
Modern environmental sensibility has not increased the number of Australians who are able to imagine what our dominant homelands – the...
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CULTURE
'Foal’s Bread' By Gillian Mears
Carmen Callil
Gillian Mears’s new novel tells the story of the Nancarrow family of One Tree Farm, subsistence farmers in rural New South Wales. Its...
More ...An Auteur Planet: Pedro Almodóvar’s 'The Skin I Live In' and Lars von Trier’s 'Melancholia'
Peter Conrad
Ah, to be an auteur, with the power to impose your own kinked or crazy worldview on reality! Pleasing only yourself, you can cosmetically...
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CULTURE
Treasure in the Attic: The golden age of singer–songwriters
Robert Forster
As far as romantic professions go, it’s up there with lighthouse-keeping, lion-taming or jobbing as a private detective in Los Angeles in...
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CULTURE
No One Comes To See Me Now: Manoly Lascaris and Patrick White’s ghost
Debra Adelaide
Three days a week, in the winter of 1993, I would drive the children to day care and continue to 20 Martin Road, Centennial Park. The house...
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WORLD
No Script, No Storyboard: William Kentridge
Sebastian Smee
“What times are these,” wrote Bertolt Brecht in his poem, ‘To Those Born After’, “when a talk about trees is almost a crime because it...
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CULTURE
Three Boys
Sonya Hartnett
He straightens from the grass and sees them immediately, already close, already seeing him, and he’s stunned he didn’t hear the danger...
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CULTURE
At the Condamine Crossroads Motel
Janette Turner ...
Meg parks right between the goal posts of the Welcome to Condamine sign. Small print below Condamine, white against green, announces:...
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CULTURE
The Orange-bellied Parrot
Nicholas Shakespeare
Alison had never liked her grandmother, who lived alone in a big overheated apartment in Zurich, and so when Helen went into hospital after...
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CULTURE
Whirlpool
Cate Kennedy
“Mum says you better get inside right now.” Louise is already getting ready for the photo: she has one big hot-roller pinned to the top of...
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CULTURE
The Life Not Lived: Reflections on Scholarship
Peter Robb
Donaldson’s eyes narrowed when I mentioned Oxford’s own great edition of Jonson. Eleven thick octavo volumes printed magnificently and...
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SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
The Stars My Destination
Luke Davies
Yet viewed on even larger scales, the sense of our tenure here can become positively claustrophobic. There’s really nowhere to go when you...
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SOCIETY
CanDo? Campbell Newman’s Bid for Queensland
Nick Bryant
Crestfallen conservatives would have drawn little consolation from the potentially morale-boosting fact that Brisbane City Council is the...
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POLITICS
All About Cory: Cory Bernardi, Conservative Warrior
Sally Neighbour
“When you first come into this place, all the walls are blank, and after the first bonhomie’s done and people say hello, you’re left alone...
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