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The Monthly Essays

  • The Wild Frontier: The Child Gangs of Tweed Heads The Online Monthly - subscriber only access
    Mandy Sayer | The Monthly Essays | March 2010 | Society & Culture

    Martin climbs off his bike and walks through the piles of rubbish towards the verandah. It’s then that he sniffs a deeper, ruder stench: his front door and its handle are smeared with shit. He lets himself into the house, grabs his shotgun and loads it.

    Gun in hand, he...

  • Dangerous Precedent: The Melbourne Model The Online Monthly - subscriber only access
    Margaret Simons | The Monthly Essays | Business | March 2010 | Politics

    Davis mentions the book when I ask him why, at a time when the higher education sector is more stressed than ever before, he is trying to introduce radical change. “There are always arguments for doing nothing,” he says. True, higher education is badly underfunded by...

  • The Better Self?: Germaine Greer and 'The Female Eunuch' The Online Monthly - subscriber only access
    Louis Nowra | The Monthly Essays | March 2010 | Society & Culture

    I was the first person in my family to go to university. I had a chip on my shoulder about having been brought up on a Housing Commission estate while my fellow students belonged to the middle class. One day when I was loading trucks to earn money, I had to pick up goods from...

  • The Whirling Dervish: Tony Abbott
    Louis Nowra | The Monthly Essays | February 2010 | Politics

    The two days I spent in emergency, I whiled away my time trying to block my ears to the cries of angry injured drunks and moaning victims, and listening to conversations from the other curtained-off beds. A nurse came in to tend to a fellow opposite my cubicle. A news item...

  • The Biggest Loser: Harry Kakavas and Problem Gamblers
    Paul Barry | The Monthly Essays | Business | February 2010 | Society & Culture

    This occurred in November 2004, shortly after Kakavas was spotted at the tables in Las Vegas by Kerry Packer, who rang Crown’s chief operating officer, John Williams (son of Lloyd, the casino’s founder), to ask why Kakavas wasn’t losing his money in Melbourne instead. By this...

  • Ebony: The Girl in the Room
    Anne Manne | The Monthly Essays | February 2010 | Society & Culture

    An ambulance officer looks around the room and breathes in the smell. It looks more like the bleakest of prison cells than a little girl’s bedroom. There are no toys or furniture – just the mattress. The window is boarded up entirely. There is just one decoration, a poster of...

  • The Outsiders: Art & Mental Illness
    Sebastian Smee | The Monthly Essays | February 2010 | Society & Culture

    I had been allowed in as a young art critic on assignment. I was there to see the results of the prison’s art program. I was warned to remain alert – there had been a recent incident in which an inmate had struck a visitor from behind. But in the men around me, who were...

  • Failed State: New South Wales
    John Birmingham | The Monthly Essays | Dec 2009 - Jan 2010 | Politics

    You cannot blame them, because Perry’s restaurant, located in a grand old insurance building, does soar. To stand in the entry foyer is to find yourself unable to resist craning your neck to gaze up into the vast high spaces, artfully lit by two illuminated working sculptures...

  • From Mop Tops To Moustaches: The Beatles Remastered
    Robert Forster | The Monthly Essays | Music | Dec 2009 - Jan 2010

    The Beatles were formed in 1957 when John Lennon invited Paul McCartney to join The Quarrymen. Soon after, McCartney got his mate George Harrison into the band too. It’s important to remember, and Lennon never let the others forget, that he asked Paul and the others to join...

  • Nowhere Near Hollywood: Australian Film
    Louis Nowra | The Monthly Essays | Film | Dec 2009 - Jan 2010

    I set out to watch most of the Australian films released this year because I wanted to grasp the condition of our industry. On a practical level, it was often hard to find these films; they seldom stayed in the cinema long enough. I became used to tracking them to small...