Letters to the editor

David Day’s excellent review of Madigan’s published diaries from Antarctica (‘From Cecil with Loathing’, March) neglected an important facet of the relationship between Mawson and Madigan. Not only did Madigan serve under Mawson in Antarctica, he spent most of his career as a lecturer in the geology department led by Mawson at the University of Adelaide.

The relationship continued to be difficult, as discussed in Kristen Weidenbach’s book Rock Star, though both went on to make significant contributions to Australian geology...

What great reading you have provided over the past few months. The February offering on David Walsh (‘The Gambler’) increased my understanding of him and his MONA in Hobart, just visited.

‘Fat City’ (March) was educational and horrifying. Karen Hitchcock conveyed her experiences of working with this tragic phenomenon of obesity with honesty and compassion.

And thanks to Robert Manne for his superb overview (‘Tragedy of Errors’) of asylum seeker policy. When will they ever learn?

Val Campbell
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An overweight friend recently claimed that, far from being a “petrol guzzling car”, he was doing his bit for the environment as a carbon-sequestration unit. He, and countless others like him, were tying up millions of kilos in carbon with their extra padding and a global fat-loss program might well precipitate catastrophic climate change. Maybe next time Hitchcock is faced with a recalcitrant overweight patient she could take them aside and thank them for saving us all from certain doom. It seems more likely than them doing the same for themselves.

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My son turned 25 two weeks' ago. At 21 he made a decision, almost too late (ten minutes, he says), that saved his life. Four others made the only other choice and died.

The intensity of the fire at Traralgon South on Black Saturday, was in places so great, that the only way of surviving would possibly have been in an underground, sealed bunker with a fire door protected from radiation. The only other choice was to leave. The house, where the four died, burned with such intensity that brick walls crumbled to rubble and the alloy bonnet of one of the cars melted and...