John Harms interrogates pub-owners and archbishops, stockmen and solicitors, in search of answers to the question: “Queensland. What is it?”

Robert Manne, in “Biff Goes Bang”, delivers the final word on Mark Latham, the person everyone is hearing but no one is listening to.

Simon Kuper, in “The Miracles of Guus”, profiles the new Socceroos coach, Guus Hiddink, and wonders if Australia can make the 2006 World Cup.

Kate Grenville, in “Comment”, reveals how a semantic sleight of hand of has hidden the horror of 19th-century violence against Aboriginal Australians.

Kerryn Goldsworthy spends a Sunday at the cashed-up Paradise Community Church, the cradle of the Family First Party.

Helen Garner on Russell Crowe and the art of violence: “Can this blundering naïf, this tormented whistleblower, be Russell Crowe?"

"Soft Touch": Robert Forster is spellbound by Nana Mouskouri’s farewell concert tour of Australia.

Plus, Andrew Stafford visits Maleny on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast: a small community resisting “clone town Queensland” in their fight against the building of a supermarket.

There’s also Ramachandra Guha on the great Keith Miller, Justin Clemens on the “St Petersburg 1900” exhibition, Edmund Campion paying homage to Donald Horne, Mungo MacCallum visiting the world’s oldest living creature, and E.M. Holdsworth on Tim Flannery’s dire new environmental prediction.