Rabbits are poor conservers of energy. They can’t adapt to drought. Their diet is not diverse. All in all, they are not well suited to the Australian environment. But when it comes to reproduction they can’t be bettered. Mating takes 30 seconds, courtship included. In a...
Encounters
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Shane Maloney
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Environment | March 2010 | Encounters
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Shane Maloney
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February 2010 | Society & Culture | Encounters
As a small child growing up in Melbourne, Percy Grainger devoured the Icelandic sagas, signed his letters “Grettir the Strong” and bounded up every available stairway. His adoring mother Rose, meanwhile, was showing him what happens to naughty boys who neglect their piano...
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Shane Maloney
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Dec 2009 - Jan 2010 | Society & Culture | Encounters
When Margaret Court walked into the locker room at the close of the 1973 French Open, Martina Navratilova tried not to gawk. Court was a figure of awe, the most successful player in the history of women’s tennis. Navratilova was an ungainly teenager competing in her first...
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Shane Maloney
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Foreign Affairs | November 2009 | Politics | Society & Culture | Encounters
On 1 December 1945, as British rule of India entered its tumultuous final phase, Mohandas Gandhi arrived in Calcutta. That night, he held the first of a series of meetings with the Raj’s local representative, Richard Casey, the governor of Bengal.
Dick Casey...
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Shane Maloney
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October 2009 | Society & Culture | Encounters
“A funny thing happened in Australia,” Frank Sinatra told a New York audience. “I made a mistake and got off the plane.”
The plane in question – the private jet of one of Sinatra’s Las Vegas casino connections – landed in Melbourne on 9 July 1974. Fresh out of self-...
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Shane Maloney
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September 2009 | Society & Culture | Encounters
In February 1904, Stella Miles Franklin – then aged 24 – received an admiring letter from a 60-year-old former bullock-driver named Joseph Furphy. He requested a photograph and proposed that they meet.
My Brilliant Career, Franklin’s semi-autobiographical novel...
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Shane Maloney
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August 2009 | Society & Culture | Encounters
Frank Zappa was no stranger to Australia and its wildlife. Inspired by a monotreme encountered during his 1973 tour, the avant-rock polymath composed a complex jazz-fusion instrumental entitled ‘Echidna’s Arf (Of You)’. Three years later, he came face-to-face with...
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Shane Maloney
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July 2009 | Encounters
Money was tight when Faith Bandler was growing up in Murwillumbah in the early 1930s, but her two older brothers managed to save a portion of their wages to buy records. Paul Robeson was a favourite and the family would all sing along. At 17, Faith sneaked away from a church...
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Shane Maloney
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June 2009 | Society & Culture | Encounters
One lunchtime in August 1948, Peter Finch was doing Molière on the shop floor at O'Brien's glass factory in Sydney when Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh turned up.
Olivier and Leigh were the king and queen of the British theatre. He had been knighted for...
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Shane Maloney
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May 2009 | Society & Culture | Encounters
Everybody wanted to be Nicolae Ceausescu's friend - the United States, Britain, China and the premier of Western Australia. To the Americans and the Chinese, the infamous Romanian dictator was a geopolitical thorn in the side of the Soviet Union. To Brian Burke, he was a...
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