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Paul Kelly

Andrew McMillan

One Last Deadline

By Chips Mackinolty
At around 6 am, on the morning after his fifty-fourth birthday and the day before New Year’s Eve, the Darwin writer Andrew McMillan typed on his laptop:   Now that the album’s almost out of the way I’ve started work on a new project as of last night: Andrew McMillan’s Last Ball Advantage: An Anthology. Short stories, poems, lyrics, extracts from Death in Dili, three old RAM stori
The golden age of singer–songwriters

Treasure in the Attic

By Robert Forster
As far as romantic professions go, it’s up there with lighthouse-keeping, lion-taming or jobbing as a private detective in Los Angeles in the 1940s. The hours are long and the chances of earning decent money low. The rewards are mostly received in private, although what you create is made to be shared. You will watch as people your age in other trades pass you by in their accumulation of wo

Comment: Ten Years After Tampa

By Peter Mares
John Howard’s stand on the Tampa is generally seen in retrospect as a political masterstroke that stopped the boats and helped him to secure the 2001 federal election. But to leaf through newspaper clippings from those intense days of late August and early September 2001 is to be reminded that his government took a high-stakes gamble and came close to losing. “Refugee Deal a Shambles” was the Sunday Age headline on 2 September. A
Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu’s 'Rrakala'

To the Heart

By Robert Forster
Elcho Island is 560 kilometres from Darwin, off the north-east Arnhem Land coast. A strong musical community there has produced members of Yothu Yindi, the lead singer of the Warumpi Band, George Burarrwanga, the country/gospel band Soft Sands, the Chooky Dancers and Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu. Gurrumul was born blind in 1970. He learnt to play a right-hand

'How to Make Gravy' By Paul Kelly

By Linda Jaivin
From little things, big things grow: asked to perform four nights in a row at The Famous Spiegeltent in Melbourne in 2004, singer–songwriter Paul Kelly came up with a novel idea. Over the four nights, he would play 100 of his songs in alphabetical order and
Paul Kelly’s "Songs from the South"

Thoughts in the Middle of a Career

By Robert Forster
It can seem futile trying to chase down biographical material on Paul Kelly because, just as he's ducked the glare of mainstream pop stardom, his self-effacement and unease with his past have left the songs to sketch the details, a situation he probably feels
Illustrations by Peter Hudson & Gurindji schoolchildren

'From Little Things Big Things Grow' by Paul Kelly & Kev Carmody

By Mungo MacCallum
This is the book of the song that has become the anthem of the reconciliation movement. A century after the birth of Vincent Lingiari and 20 years after his death, the walkout of stockmen he led at Wave Hill Station in 1966 and its triumphant resolution in 1975 remains

Jung at Heart

By Mungo MacCallum
A seldom-noted characteristic of the Australian political class is that almost all its members - participants, commentators and spectators - are fervent disciples of Carl Gustav Jung. Jung, along with Sigmund Freud, was one of the founders of modern psychology
Changing of the Guard

Comment

By Robert Manne
There are two distinct questions concerning the political events of late last year which it is important not to confuse. Why did the Howard government lose office? What does the Rudd victory mean?Attempting to find an answer to the first is the far easier task. The Howa
Why We Need a Change of Government

Comment

By Robert Manne
In the October issue of the Australian Literary Review, Australia's most influential political journalist, Paul Kelly, published an article attacking Australia's intellectuals. Kelly sought to turn Donald Horne on his head. Horne had famously described Austral

El Pollo Loco

By Mungo MacCallum
Some Australian examples

Political Courage

By John Hirst
My Australian collection begins early, at Sydney Cove in 1789, the second year of the convict settlement. The nature of this anomalous society is still not well understood. Since the population consisted of convicts and military it is assumed that the military controlle

Walk the Line

By Mungo MacCallum
King over all the children of prideIs the Press - the Press - the Press!Rudyard KiplingMark Latham's latest work, A Conga Line of Suckholes, takes its tasteful title from one of the author's own more memorable epithets. Boof was referring to Liberal ministers queuing to service the American president, but the line could equally be applied to any section of t
Writing ‘Ordinary People’s Politics’

The Contours of the Everyday

By Judith Brett
What happened in East Timor

Beloved Companheiros

By Mark Aarons

Comment

By Clive James