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Encounters

  • Doctor Who & Gai Waterhouse The Online Monthly - subscriber only access
    Shane Maloney | September 2010 | Society & Culture | Encounters

    Sadly, only one of Australia’s 114 official National Living Treasures has ever appeared in an episode of Doctor Who.

    It happened in 1978 during the incarnation of the fourth Doctor, played by Tom Baker. Instantly identifiable from his curly hair, trademark...

  • Joe Lyons & Benito Mussolini The Online Monthly - subscriber only access
    Shane Maloney | August 2010 | Foreign Affairs | Politics | Encounters

    Herr Hitler was busy in the Rhineland so Joseph Aloysius Lyons decided to pay a visit to Signor Mussolini instead. It was 1935 and collecting dictators was de rigueur for Australian politicians on visits to Europe.

    ‘Honest Joe’, then in his second term as...

  • Douglas Mawson & Scott of the Antarctic The Online Monthly - subscriber only access
    Shane Maloney | July 2010 | Society & Culture | Encounters

    When Douglas Mawson turned up at Robert Falcon Scott’s London office in January 1910, Scott assumed that the 27-year-old geology lecturer from Adelaide had come to enlist in his forthcoming expedition to the South Pole. Eight thousand men had already volunteered and Mawson...

  • Count Paul Strzelecki & Lady Jane Franklin The Online Monthly - subscriber only access
    Shane Maloney | June 2010 | Society & Culture | Encounters

    Paul Strzelecki had itchy feet. The son of a minor nobleman, without land or title, he quit Poland aged 33 and headed for England. There, he pursued geology and began to style himself as count.

    Then it was Africa, then Canada and the US, Mexico and Cuba. Charm opened...

  • Allen Ginsberg & Wandjuk Marika The Online Monthly - subscriber only access
    Shane Maloney | May 2010 | Society & Culture | Encounters

    Allen Ginsberg saw the best minds of his generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix. Then he went to the Northern Territory.

    There, on a rainy evening in April 1972, the...

  • Kissinger & Burchett The Online Monthly - subscriber only access
    Shane Maloney | April 2010 | Politics | Encounters

    Wilfred Burchett was a tad wary when he presented his ID to the sentry at the White House on a foggy morning in October 1971. His passport was Cuban and his UN press pass restricted him to New York. But the marine waved him through and, sure enough, President Nixon’s national...

  • 600 Million Rabbits & Myxomatosis The Online Monthly - subscriber only access
    Shane Maloney | Environment | March 2010 | Encounters

    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...

  • Percy Grainger & Edvard Grieg The Online Monthly - subscriber only access
    Shane Maloney | 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...

  • Margaret Court and Martina Navratilova The Online Monthly - subscriber only access
    Shane Maloney | December 2009 - January 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...

  • Richard Casey & Mahatma Gandhi The Online Monthly - subscriber only access
    Shane Maloney | 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...