In This Issue
August 2005 in brief
John Birmingham in “Deserve's got nothing to do with it": "Reading through old Beazley transcripts brings out the inner editor; you want...
More ...The Nation Reviewed
Comment
John Clarke
Ray Parkin told stories, real stories, non-fiction, and he didn’t tell them to amuse or to entertain. He told them to record. Ray wanted...
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The Nation Reviewed
Sarah Has an Interview
Nicholas Shakespeare
In early July my beautiful 17-year-old niece arrived from Winnipeg, Canada, on her first visit to London. I’d assured Sarah’s parents I...
More ...The Nation Reviewed
Waking Up with Mr Jones
Kathy Marks
It is 7.17 a.m. in the Sydney studio of Channel Nine’s Today show, and Tracy Grimshaw and Karl Stefanovic are preparing to quiz a British...
More ...The Nation Reviewed
Aminata Keeps Running
Carmel Bird
Mount Wellington is a broad smudge of crushed rose silk glittering in the sunrise. The mountain seems close, partly by a trick of the light...
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The Nation Reviewed
"No Looking with the Hands"
Tony Wilson
“Job” is a terrific noun and an even better verb: I job, you job. It has its violent side – If you don’t shut your face I’ll job you one –...
More ...The Monthly Essays
Deserve's Got Nothing to Do With It: Kim Beazley has been charming mall-goers. And getting angry. And developing a knack for snappy one-liners. Is it too late?
John Birmingham
This spin doctor’s exasperation, causing her to abandon the content-free babble of modern political discourse for the more revealing pop-...
More ...The Monthly Essays
Drought Essay: There's Mud in Manangatang: It's raining at last in the bush, where there is no confidence, only hope.
John Harms
You should start in a place like Deer Park, where I find myself now, in a hire car so mass-produced that 45 minutes ago in the city depot I...
More ...The Monthly Essays, Poem
Drought Essay: Recognising the Derision as Fear
Les Murray
Death gets into the suburbs, but sleekturnover highrise keeps it out of mind and wilderness, wrapped in its own deaths, scarcely...
More ...The Monthly Essays
Drought Essay: Goulburn, NSW
E.M. Holdsworth
Conversation overheard between two men on Auburn Street, Goulburn:“Didya hear? Council’s lifted the water restrictions from Level 5 to...
More ...The Monthly Essays
Drought Essay: Cambrai, South Australia
Kerryn Goldsworthy
On a Tuesday in June, only a day or two before it finally began to bucket down, an article appeared on page two of the Adelaide Advertiser...
More ...The Monthly Essays
Drought Essay: Orange, NSW
Celina Riberio
“I’m going to die,” pants Jess Wright. “Good,” says Mrs Jennings. “Do it quietly.”It is a cold Friday night in central-western New South...
More ...The Monthly Essays, Poem
Drought Essay: A Levitation of Land
Les Murray
Haze went from smoke-blue to beigegradually, after midday. The Inland was passing overhigh up, and between the trees.The north hills and...
More ...The Monthly Essays
No Flowers: Boys don't cry, nor are they given over to soppy goodbyes
Neil Murray
It had been a gradual decline for my father until he could no longer do the things he loved. No wood to cut. No building to erect. No...
More ...Story
The True Daughter
Danielle Wood
“Kate,” says Faye, “is a mezzo soprano. For which I am grateful, actually.” There is opera playing and it seems, to Tamsin, to occupy Faye’...
More ...Books
A Dandy Comes a Cropper: It's a very Australian thing to glorfy the rich, famous and dead. And yet Rene Rivkin was never really one of us, was he?
Craig Sherborne
Rivkin Unauthorised? What a redundant title. Rivkin’s dead, and hardly in a position to authorise anything. Andrew Main’s book, one of the...
More ...Books
One in the Box. Twelve exposed men (and women): 'Secrets of the Jury Room' by Malcolm Knox
Julian Burnside
There is a famous story from the American trial bar concerning juries. The accused was charged with murder. The case was entirely...
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The Vanishing. It wasn't the time, but he was the leader Labor had to have: 'Loner: Inside a Labor Tragedy' by Bernard Lagan
Mungo MacCallum
For a movement founded on the principle of democratic socialism, the Australian Labor Party has thrown up a surprising number of leaders...
More ...Film
Heat & Fright. A quiet weekend in Adelaide: Sarah Watt's 'Look Both Ways'
Helen Garner
On a scorching summer weekend in Adelaide, while the news is dominated by the fatalities in a train wreck, a bunch of people confront their...
More ...The Nation Reviewed, Music
Red Rage in the Brambles: The strange and the strangely familiar lurk in 'A River Ain't Too Much to Love'
Robert Forster
Smog is Bill Callahan, a man of lyrics and a deep voice, a loner, a drifter, who notices the weather and is wise to past teenage trauma and...
More ...Television
Whiteboards and Orangemen: Slick meets ick in 'House'
Kerryn Goldsworthy
British actor Hugh Laurie, a gifted amateur athlete whose natural speaking voice recalls his old school Eton, has been nominated in this...
More ...Books, Noted
'Beyond Black' by Hilary Mantel
Inga Clendinnen
Alison is a professional psychic working a cluster of grim towns on the fringe of London. She is a woman of “unfeasible size” but onstage,...
More ...Books, Noted
'The Pearl: Steve Renouf's Story' by John Harms
Adrian McGregor
Standing on a property my daughter bought recently in Samford, half an hour’s drive north-west of Brisbane, I pointed across the valley to...
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