History

My name’s Lucy and I’m a Stratfordian. Okay, not really. That’s just a fancy way of saying that I think William Shakespeare was real.

That even though he was born to a middle class family, went to the local school and never set foot in a university - that he wrote every single one of his approximately 38 plays, 154 sonnets, and 2 epic narrative poems, with an unrivalled creativity, a wicked sense of humour and a serious passion for documenting the world around him.

It means that I think Shakespeare’s humble beginnings did not define him. That his quick wit drove his talent and his natural curiosity made him a star.

Continue reading "Shakespeare a fake? What fools these mortals be." »

For SA Premier Mike Rann, “school” ends today, and from 9am tomorrow, he is on holidays. This is earlier than he wanted, but the right-wing “shoppies” union gave him no choice. No wonder he has spent much of his last days railing against factional influence in the Labor party.

Mr Rann has had a long innings since taking over the Premier’s job on March 5, 2002. Not a record, by a long way. The Liberal and Country League government of Tom Playford set the record, from 1938 to 1965, a longevity which will probably never be beaten. Of course, he did have a heavily biased election system in his favour.

That long Liberal reign was followed by a Labor domination. Of the 46 years from 1965 until now, Labor has been in office for 35. And that period has been dominated by three Labor Premiers: Don Dunstan (1967 – 79), John Bannon (1982 – 92), and Mike Rann (2002 – 11). In those data is one reason for the Rann angst at being pushed out of the job early – he could have achieved the record of being the longest serving Labor Premier.

Continue reading "In politics it’s all just a little bit of history repeating" »

The Herald-Sun Tour is Australia’s oldest cycling stage race. As a child, I recall watching the Tour riders travel through the small country town of Rosedale in Gippsland where I grew-up. Sometimes there would be an intermediate sprint in the town. On other occasions we would watch the riders racing up the ridge adjoining our property.

The Tour marked the revival of competitive cycling after the Second World War.

For the first half of last century, track racing and one-day endurance events dominated the cycling calendar. Track racing was extremely popular, as thousands of people flocked to the wooden velodromes to witness closely fought races.

Continue reading "Australian cycling has a rich and exciting history" »

For the vast majority of people, images of the World Trade Centre in New York, and in particular its destruction, are permanently etched into their psyche. 

While we understand a great deal about why the towers collapsed structurally, and the political motivations behind the attack, curiously very little is known about their architect and architecture.

So who was the architect of New York’s World Trade Centre, and what did his building represent at the time it was built?

Continue reading "Symbols of dignity and humanity, long before 9/11" »

It’s a brave or foolish American who turns his back on God. But that’s what New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg has done.

He’s told security at the official 9/11 Ground Zero ceremony, on Sunday morning, to watch for an eccentric yet convincing bearded gent, possibly wearing flowing robes, who’ll be looking to crash the party.

It is a strange day when God is not invited or invoked at a day of national mourning or celebration in the US. But Bloomberg has decreed that no religious leaders will attend the ceremony, where the names of the 2,983 who were killed on September 11 will be read aloud by family members.

Continue reading "The day America said no to God" »

Apparently they found Ned Kelly’s remains today. Move along, nothing to see here.

While the discovery of a national legend’s leftovers would ordinarily be huge news, we’re not sold in this case. Why not? Because Ned has rarely been out of the news for the 130 years he’s been dead, that’s why not.

And Ned’s not alone. Many people in public life do their most productive and newsworthy work years after slipping from this mortal coil. We’ve come up with 10, but we invite you to add your suggestions.

Continue reading "Ten dead people who stubbornly refuse to die" »

When we think about the story of our nation and the way in which it is preserved and recorded, we rarely give a thought to the rich resource in our cemeteries.

In my home town of Geelong the Geelong CemeteriesTrust manages 13 cemeteries in Geelong and the Surf Coast and each are special and significant, not just as places of burial and solemnity, but as places to remember those who came before us and helped make our city what it is today.

For instance, the Eastern Cemetery is, in fact, Victoria’s oldest working cemetery. Its earliest burials date from 1839 when Geelong was barely a town.

Continue reading "Our cemeteries bring life to the dead" »

Sixty-six years ago today the face of civilization was changed forever, when a nuclear bomb almost incinerated the Japanese city of Hiroshima, instantly killing tens of thousands of people.

By the end of the decade that bomb – and another bomb dropped on nearby Nagasaki – had claimed the lives of half a million people.

This year on Hiroshima Day, 6 August 2011, Australian Red Cross begins a campaign to re-ignite the push for a ban on the use of nuclear weapons – calling on young Australians from all walks of life to finish what their parents started.

Continue reading "Australia should lead a global nuclear weapons ban" »

It was not until I recently heard an art historian visiting Australia to talk about Guernica – the iconic anti-war painting by Pablo Picasso – that I connected the dots of why the 9/11 attacks had such a penetrating impact on the global community.

Art historian Professor Timothy J Clark was explaining in a Sydney Ideas lecture why Picasso’s depiction of the world’s first terrorist air-raid continues to have political currency in the post-9/11 era, despite the existence of more “real” forms of media than existed in 1937.

Clark said that in essence Picasso managed to communicate what it is really like to be bombed. He told me after the speech that “Guernica wouldn’t have its continuing political relevance if it didn’t somehow manage to wrench the material reality of suffering out of that black and white virtual world”.

Continue reading "Cool heads are needed when horror is writ large" »

The Bible is renowned for many reasons, but its capacity to elicit laughter isn’t one of them.  Profound, boring, thought-provoking, out-moded, terrifying, censorious … take your pick.  But funny it is not. The American intellectual Jack Miles claimed recently that the Bible “is morally serious to the virtual exclusion of charm”.

Such sentiments are understandable. There’s no disputing that the Bible’s concerns are, at core, as deep and weighty as they come.  Even so, there is humour to be found within its pages.  For the most part, however, it’s not of the side-splitting or slapstick variety.

Almost all the intentional humour is in the Old Testament. Sarcasm, irony, punning, wordplay, humorous imagery and exaggeration – each were liberally employed by the ancient Hebrew authors. Like all the best communicators today, they appreciated that humour is an excellent way to win over an audience.

Continue reading "The bible’s old stuff is way funnier than the new stuff" »

They called it Tangentopoli. ‘Tangenti’ is one of the Italian words for ‘bribes’, and Tangentopoli summed up the idea that Italian politics had become a game of Monopoly fuelled by kickbacks.

I spent a lot of time in Italy in the 90s, starting with a story for ‘Foreign Correspondent’ in April 1993. Tangentopoli had convulsed the country, with magistrates uncovering vast swathes of corruption involving most of the leading political figures of the previous three decades.

My first encounter with the new reality came in a town in Abruzzo called Chieti. It was a sort of magnified microcosm of Italy, because almost every councillor on the local government had been arrested for corruption.

Continue reading "How Berlusconi blew Italy’s chance to come clean" »

I have long thought that historians have a role to play in Australia’s policymaking process. In particular, I have wondered about historians’ potential for warning political parties against bad policies.

Recently, I have begun to think that historians might be able to move beyond advice on good or bad policy, and also offer advice on good or bad politics. These are not random musings. I am an international historian teaching at the University of Western Sydney. An Australian citizen, I have only recently returned to Australia after spending ten years in Japanese academia. During that time, I spent much time wishing – admittedly forlornly – that someone in the Rudd Cabinet would seek my advice concerning Australian-Japanese relations.

Whaling seems to push mercifully few of PM Julia Gillard’s buttons. That has – thankfully – resulted in a smoother Australian-Japanese relationship than was the case during much of Kevin Rudd’s time at the top. It has also forced me to look elsewhere for bad policies and bad politics.

Continue reading "Hello, Mr Abbott? Ms Gillard? I can help you" »

The starting point for a national curriculum has to be that it improves upon each of the eight state-based curricula – some of which have been roundly criticised for many years, in fact for decades by some commentators, as being mediocre, too focussed on skills at the expense of knowledge and failing to generate excellence among Australia’s school students.

One has to ask the question – would we bother to invest in a national curriculum if it doesn’t meet that test?  The answer to that in my opinion is no.  As Education Minister, I would not sign up to a national curriculum that does nothing to improve upon what already exists.  It is not worth doing if it simply embeds under a national umbrella the failures that have been identified over many years at the state and territory level.

Unfortunately, the proposed history discipline is found wanting.  It is not something that I would be prepared to accept as Education Minister.  If elected at the next federal election, it would be my intention to initiate a review of at least the history discipline in the national curriculum to ensure that it achieves the all important goal of filling young minds with the knowledge of why Australia is like it is today.  In other words, how did our society develop and from what well spring did we come?

Continue reading "Teaching history with no regard for civilisation" »

What do you think happened on Australia Day?

If you said it’s the day the First Fleet sailed into Sydney Harbour you would be right.  But a few other things happened on this day as well.

In 1808 the Rum Rebellion occurred.  In 1950 India became a republic.  In 1998 President Clinton denied having “sexual relations with that woman”.

Continue reading "This Australia Day, let us remember" »

While devastating floodwaters recede in the north even as they rise in the south, Australians are understandably shocked by what has occurred in the past few weeks.

The extent of the tragedy and loss of life, property and infrastructure is indeed numbing.  It is heartbreaking.  And it is incomprehensible to those of us not directly involved.

But the downpour, while rare, is not of itself unique.

Continue reading "History tells us floods are natural" »

Am I missing something here? I don’t Twitter, tried Facebook for about a week and found intelligent and literate friends were writing banal crud.

I know, I know, I’m a dinosaur. What do you expect? I started out communicating mechanically using a cordless, battery-less typewriter.

I now have a bracelet made of old Remington or Royale typewriter keys.

Continue reading "Facebook: putting readers ahead of the words" »

I always wanted to be Indiana Jones.

In addition to being the quintessential whip-cracking he-man, Indy got to dig up ancient relics and shiny physical memories of glories past.

Archaeology has always had a magical appeal to me. There’s a real romance to it that few other pursuits can match.

Continue reading "What would Indy think of Facebook?" »

It’s a balmy seven degrees in London today so it would be pretty chilly on the roof of St Paul’s Cathedral in Westminster. Good thing that there is a lot to think about.

A convoy of British fire trucks will take to the streets to mark the 70th anniversary of the “darkest day” of the London Blitz; when German forces dropped 10, 000 incendiary bombs on the city,  starting 1500 fires and adding to the already tragic loss of thousands of lives. 

Hundreds of people are expected to gather around the city to remember a very significant day in the nation’s history.

Continue reading "Remembering the London Blitz: 70 years on" »

Recently, much has been said about the death of the book. Perhaps more accurate though, is the death of words themselves.

Not that this is anything new. Oscar Wilde lamented Victorian England’s loss of meaning through an obsession with politeness, appearances and crustless sandwiches.

However, the difference now is that the meaning of words is decomposing because people use inappropriate synonyms to feel better about their insufficient vocabulary.

Continue reading "Lost words: the death of meaning in language" »

”…it is highly likely that every Australian either was, is related to, works with or knows someone who experienced childhood in an institution or out of home care environment.’ – Forgotten Australians, p. xv”

At 8.30pm tonight SBS will screen a documentary called The Forgotten Australians, timed to air on the first anniversary of the national Apology last year by then prime minister, Kevin Rudd, to the people who have become known by this term. 

Who are the Forgotten Australians – and why was the Prime Minister saying sorry? 

Continue reading "One year on, remembering the Forgotten Australians" »

I have listened with great interest to this week’s parliamentary debate about Australia’s involvement in Afghanistan, just as I have listened with great interest to this debate for the past nine years, since October 7th, 2001, when Operation Enduring Freedom was launched by the United States and its allies, including Australia, so that freedom so bravely won by the people of Afghanistan from communist oppression, and so cruelly lost over the following decade to civil war and Taliban misrule, may indeed return, and this time endure.

I have listened to this debate and heard many arguments that we should abandon our mission in Afghanistan. 

Some of these arguments are passionate, others cold and rational; some seem sincere, while others callous. And all of them are wrong.

Continue reading "Ending Afghanistan will aid a monstrous regime" »

The Punch will be live blogging the former Prime Minister John Howard’s appearance on the Q&A program this evening. You can join in from 9:30 PM AEDT.

Continue reading "How honest is John’s version of history?" »

It’s pretty clear everyone with an indulgent boss is glued to the television right now watching the early stages of the extraction of the 33 Chilean miners who’ve been trapped underground for more than two months.

You’ve got to hand it to those Chileans - they know an occasion when they see one - and as gripping news moments go this one is a cracker. If you can’t commandeer a tele click here for live coverage.

If you rattle off a list of other must-see-TV news moments it’s pretty dire. September 11, the Victorian Bushfires, the Mumbai terror attacks, the Beslan school seige, the London Bombings, Bali, the Port Arthur massacre, the explosion of the Challenger rocket.

Continue reading "Finally, something on the news to feel good about" »

I was just fourteen years old when I first heard about Anne Frank’s chestnut tree - around the same age as the world’s most famous diarist, when she mentioned the tree in the poignant jottings that chronicled her experiences in hiding during World War II.

That tree, which Anne Frank viewed as a symbol of the freedom she would never recapture (she died at 15 in the notorious Bergen-Belsen concentration camp) has now fallen outside the Anne Frank museum in Amsterdam.

Back in 2007, I wrote a blog post after I received a couple of emails telling me the 150-year-old tree had been declared a safety hazard and was about to be cut down. But events progressed very quickly and a court injunction prevented authorities from bringing the tree down.

Continue reading "The tree that symbolised hope, fortitude and tolerance" »

Travelling in northern Europe, ‘the War’ is never far away: from the way that people feel about Germany’s performance in the World Cup, to the bullet scares on churches and town halls, the designs of cities such as Rotterdam that where flattened in air raids, to more in-depth conversations about identity and nationalism.

As an Australian who has not spent much time in this part of Europe until recently, this is quite surprising. Like most Australians, World War II feels to me in the distant past and rarely thought about, whereas here, its memory is alive and present.

A friend of mine highlighted an example of just how nearby the War is for many Europeans even of more recent generations.

Continue reading "How to learn from history while letting go of the past" »

Matthew Clayfield is a freelance journalist, critic and screenwriter travelling through the US and Mexico. He is filing weekly postcards for The Punch.

I am writing this postcard, my first dispatch as a freelance travel writer, from a bar in San Francisco. Arguably, this is the greatest workplace in the world for an alcoholic typist like myself: the gin is cold, the pianist’s songs are old, and the tips are necessarily low. The San Francisco Chronicler’s Charles McCabe, who died in 1983, was once asked:” If San Francisco is such a great place to live, “why does it have the nation’s highest rates of alcoholism and suicide?” McCabe responded almost instantaneously: “Why, for the simple reason it’s the finest place on earth to drink yourself to death.”

It’s also the finest place on earth to throw yourself into the ocean, as cinephiles everywhere are only too aware. In Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, Kim Novak famously throws herself into San Francisco Bay underneath the Golden Gate Bridge, only to be rescued moments later by Jimmy Stewart, who suffers from the film’s titular affliction. Vertigo contains a number of Hitchcock’s most famous scenes, not to mention some of cinema’s, but this one more than any other has always had an indelible effect on me. For many people’s money, Vertigo is the quintessential San Francisco film. For mine, Novak’s leap into the bay is the quintessential San Francisco scene.

Continue reading "Postcard from San Francisco: cocktails and suicide spots" »

I probably know as much as anyone reading these words about the life of William Shakespeare.

That’s not the boast it sounds like – it’s a statement about how little there is to know about the biographical details of the greatest writer in the language.

He died nearly four hundred years ago, and he’s been celebrated for at least three hundred, but the documentary discoveries about Shakespeare have been few and far between.

Continue reading "Disproving the porky that Shakespeare was Bacon" »

Have you ever loved anything as a child only to grow and have someone completely ruin it for you?

Well that’s exactly how I’ve felt when I saw Jake Gyllenhaal as the lead in the new trailers for the ‘Prince of Persia’ movie.  Now I’m happy to admit that I have an unacceptable level of personal attachment to the franchise - it being my favourite computer game growing up and being of Iranian or ‘Persian’ heritage myself. 

Seriously, when did a dose of bad spray tan qualify someone as being Middle Eastern?  And it’s not just the lead role, none of the principal cast members are of Iranian decent. This is despite the fact that Iran has a thriving film industry that is always exporting talented actors and creative types courtesy of its hardline government. 

Continue reading "Jake Gyllenhaal stole my identity and my video game" »

Doubtless, last Wednesday night you were struggling to get to sleep.

Having marked May 20 on the calendar weeks in advance the sense of anticipation can be intense when there is just one sleep to go. For me, circadian rhythms stood no chance in the face of the sheer excitement of Thursday’s dawn: the dawn of World Metrology Day.

For those who measure things this is a very important anniversary. World Metrology Day commemorates the signing of the Convention of the Metre in 1875 and the birth of the modern international system of measurement.

Continue reading "The exciting world of measuring stuff" »

Years ago, hosting an American, I was confronted with a challenge.

George Washington is clearly the great unifying figure of American history. So who is Australia’s equivalent? Wrestling with this idea overnight, the next morning I had the answer.

“Our great unifying person of history,” I declared, “turns out to be a horse – Phar Lap – and you people killed him.”

Continue reading "Showcases for nature and some sticky situations" »

I’ve never joined a political party: but a long time ago I did run as a political party candidate. For the space of two weeks, in a school mock-election, I tried to get the votes of my fellow-pupils for the British Liberal Party.

It was 1966 – the year England won the World Cup, the first year of Swinging London, the year of “Good Vibrations”, “Nowhere Man” and “Paint It Black”. Prime Minister Harold Wilson was running for re-election against the new Conservative leader Ted Heath, but I couldn’t have cared less.

I was a spotty fourteen-year-old, at school in central London. There were plenty in my class itching to stand for Labour or the Tories, but no-one wanted to be the Liberal, so I was “volunteered” to stand for the one party that was certain to lose.

Continue reading "Are we witnessing the strange death of Labour England" »

It worked for playwright Alan Seymour 50 years ago and it is working for historians Henry Reynolds and Marilyn Lake today. Having a dig at Anzac, that is.

Reynolds and Lake, fine historians both, are making ripples with their new book, the provocatively titled What’s Wrong with Anzac?  The questionmark is a fig leaf, as the book sets out, in emphatic fashion, what the authors think is wrong with our most cherished piece of national mythology. Their subtitle is The Militarisation of Australian History.

In short, Reynolds and Lake believe recent emphasis on our military past, and especially Gallipoli and its commemoration on Anzac Day, has distorted and devalued Australia’s true history. They blame governments past and present, which probably makes them long odds to go back-to-back in the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for nonfiction (they got the nod last year for Drawing the Global Colour Line.)

Continue reading "A dig at the diggers - what’s wrong with Anzac Day" »

The ABC drama “Curtin” put into focus the life of John Curtin – one of Australia’s greatest Prime Ministers.

Like so many people, alcohol was Curtin’s greatest challenge. He had grown up around it with his father running several pubs. But it was during his time as the Victorian Secretary of the Timber Workers’ Union that Curtin’s fondness for the demon drink grew into a major disability. According to his biographer David Day: “the culture of the male-dominated union movement was steeped in beer” and Curtin was steeped in the culture.

Suddenly in November 1915 Curtin resigned his post. He went briefly to work for the Australian Workers’ Union and then was appointed the organiser of the anti-conscription campaign being run by the Congress of Australian Trade Unions. The work was stressful and intense and his drinking continued and became worse.

Continue reading "Rehab 1916-style for a future Prime Minister" »

Next month the American Presidency comes to Australia.

For all that is written about the American Presidency one of the aspects which is most intriguing is that its history can be condensed into the lives of four people: three who are known, one to be identified. Each person knew the next in line and together they may have known all 44 Presidents from Washington to Obama.

John Quincy Adams, the eldest son of America’s second President – John Adams, led a truly remarkable life.

Continue reading "The American Presidency: four degrees of separation" »

I am concerned at the logic that because some jerks are treating Australia Day the way Liz Taylor treated the institution of marriage that we should get rid of the celebration altogether.

The structures of our society are no better or worse because of actions of a few.  Trend is not established by a few data points.

Global warming is not off because of a cold snap in the UK. The monarchy is no more appropriate for Australia because Will seems like a great bloke. And our flag is no more or less appropriate because some people (mis)use it.

Continue reading "Barbecuing zucchini is not un-Australian" »

Pride in Australia comes easily to Australians.  There’s nothing forced or contrived about the positive feelings we all have for our sun-drenched land or its egalitarian values when thoughts turn to Australia Day every January.

Perhaps it comes a little too easily.  Australia Day produces an almost Pavlovian reaction in most of us: instinctive, familiar, warm, but also static and unchanging. 

It’s an emotional response, rather like our feelings toward Christmas – we feel before we think. But the things we celebrate on Australia Day are very unlike those we celebrate at Christmas: the national values we celebrate are dynamic, changing, and sometimes confronting. 

Continue reading "National pride should not preclude hard conversations" »

It’s the kind of thing that would get you pelted with stones in the town square in less civilised countries. So as a celebration of our freedoms I’ll say it. Australia Day is a load of rubbish.

And it is increasingly celebrating the worst aspects of our national character, where rather than being a day for thoughtful reflection on our history and our values, it’s starting to look more a half-witted contest to see how much meat you can eat and how much grog you can sink.

This isn’t a wowser’s warning against barbecues and beer. Far from it. I’m a keen supporter of binge-drinking, I’ve never met a meat product I didn’t adore, and I think the likes of NSW Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione and federal Health Minister Nicola Roxon should quit their day jobs and seek formal employment as nannies, such is their enthusiasm for treating adults like babies and criminalising fun.

Continue reading "Why Australia Day is rubbish" »

This article was written for The Australian ahead of Australia Day last year and is reprinted here.

MICK Dodson invites us - civilly and without a trace of anger - to open a conversation about January 26. It’s an indigenous perspective one can grasp immediately.

Aborigines lived here undisturbed for maybe 60,000 years, until one particular January 26 began their dispossession, and the lesser-known story of their resistance. It has always been my view, though, that we can make this part of the commemoration. After all Anzac Day recalls a tragedy, yet is part of our big story. And we remember it with respect, nonetheless.

Why is January 26 worth celebrating? There are many reasons.

Continue reading "January 26 the only day to celebrate, understand, mourn" »

It would have been the 1880 equivalent of the confessional interview on A Current Affair. Ned Kelly, interviewed by The Age in Beechworth gaol was, if he was being accurately quoted, surprisingly well-spoken and philosophical about his run-ins with authority.

“I do not pretend that I have led a blameless life, or that one fault justifies another,” Kelly said, “but the public in judging a case like mine should remember that the darkest life may have a bright side, and that after the worst has been said against a man, he may, if he is heard, tell a story in his own rough way that will perhaps lead them to mitigate the harshness of their thoughts against him, and find as many excuses for him as he would plead for himself.”

The Kelly interview is one of the many nuggets you’ll find in even the most cursory of searches through Trove, an archiving service of the National Library which started this year and last week marked the one millionth newspaper page scanned into its archives.

Continue reading "Unleash your inner history buff this summer" »

It is often said the Labor Party glorifies its history, even its notable failures – and that is the only explanation that can be given for the glorification of the Whitlam Government, given it was tossed out in the biggest landslide in Australian history after only three years.

But one important anniversary in Australian politics has gone largely unnoticed. Last week was the 60th anniversary of the Robert Menzies-led Liberal Party defeating Ben Chifley’s Labor Government in 1949.

The victory of the newly formed Liberal Party over the Chifley Labor Government led to 21 years of Liberal Coalition government. And it is no overstatement to claim that this was the single most important election in Australia during the twentieth century.

Continue reading "Menzies: the most important election win in our history" »

Listening to ABC Local Radio a few weeks ago, I heard the former Minister John Brown saying John Howard should take a leaf out of the book of his predecessor Stanley Bruce who, when he lost his seat and lost government simultaneously in 1929, “had the decency to go and hide under a rock for the rest of his life”.

Now Mr Brown – a man who must sometimes be frustrated that his own political career tends to be summed up by the average punter as “had sex on his Ministerial desk with his wife, didn’t he?” -  really should have known better.

The National Archives of Australia are opening an exhibition about Bruce this week, and I hope it will do something to change the public awareness of a man whose post-political career was if anything more distinguished than his time at the head of government.

Continue reading "Uncle Bruce, the former PM who made a life after politics" »

The Liberal Party’s 42 to 41 vote to strip the Opposition leadership from Malcolm Turnbull and hand it to Tony Abbott was a split decision in more ways than one.

The Liberal Party is now so badly divided that a distinct possibility exists that a group - possibly led by Malcolm Turnbull - will leave to establish their own party.

A split party is the price that is sometimes paid when ideology prevails over moderate, pragmatic politics - just ask anyone who was in the Labor Party during the 20th century.

Continue reading "Splitsville: could a new party result from Abbott’s purge?" »

In 1957 a little girl’s life was changed forever.

She was three years old when her family was torn apart, when she was separated from her brothers and sisters and sent to St Catherine’s Orphanage, in Geelong.

For the next thirteen years she lived in constant fear of being punished for every minor indiscretion and with the empty feeling of a childhood deprived of love.  She wouldn’t see her brother again for forty years.  Hers is one of half a million stories.

Continue reading "For Leonie, for Vera, for everyone who suffered" »

- This is the speech given by Labor MP and Punch contributor Richard Marles this afternoon on the Forgotten Australians. The Punch will run some of the MPs’ addresses this week.

Today we have heard just a few of the half a million stories of the Forgotten Australians, each as sad and as powerful as the last. Collectively they represent a well of pain and a great wrong which today our nation acknowledged.

Among those are the stories of the co-founders of Care Leavers Australia Network (CLAN) - Joanna Penglase and Leonie Sheedy. These two were the driving force behind the original Senate inquiry. They have been the driving force behind the National Apology.

Their shoulders have provided support for a multitude of Forgotten Australians. Their ears have heard a thousand stories and in the process provided relief. They are great Australians.

Continue reading "Acknowledging the anguish of those we forgot" »

I remember the jokes. They were usually about one of two things: hardship or fear.

It’s been strange, this week, to reflect that most people will never know, as I did (albeit as a visitor) what it was really like in the old Soviet Bloc. But the jokes used to tell the story.

An American dog, a Polish dog and a Russian dog are talking. The American dog says “Where I live it’s good. You bark loudly enough, and they give you meat”. The Polish dog says” What’s meat?” The Russian dog says “What’s bark?”

Continue reading "Recalling communism through its black jokes" »

Near Sydney’s Circular Quay sits the Hitler Bar. The door sign has Hitler’s name in Germanic script on a swastika background. Similar nazi era iconography decorates the menus.

Alright, not surprisingly, there is no Hitler Bar. Instead what overlooks Sydney Harbour is the Lenin Bar, replete with the nostalgic/ironic hip communist hammer, sickle and Soviet star kitsch.

This is strange because in overall scope, communism presents as a greater man-made humanitarian catastrophe than nazism, or almost certainly any other ism.

Continue reading "Communism isn’t cool, and never has been" »

One of the best jobs I’ve had was at the British Museum in London.

Trapped behind the counter of the downstairs gift shop it wasn’t selling over-priced plaster replicas that I enjoyed the most but the two hours a week spent roaming the museum as part of my training.

The Elgin Marbles, Egyptian mummy tombs and the glittering Cartier jewellery collection were among my favourites. 

Continue reading "Museums should be allowed to keep their artefacts" »

Kokoda has claimed more Australian lives this year than Afghanistan.

During the last week two trekkers died on the Kokoda Trail, a couple more were evacuated by helicopter and fourteen went down with food poisoning.  Yesterday a campsite that took years to build at Ofi Creek was burned to the ground over an argument between two landowners.

Land disputes now block the wartime trail over the ‘golden staircase’ and Iorabaiwa Ridge – the closest the Japanese army got to Port Moresby in 1942.

The Kokoda Trail, which held so much potential as a model for sustainable eco-tourism in Papua New Guinea is beginning to choke on its own success.

Continue reading "Consultants are killing the Kokoda Trail" »

As iconic movies go, you’d be hard pressed to find many that would top the Wizard of Oz.

But can you believe that some of the key Munchkin characters are still alive with their memories of the movie and love for Judy Garland still intact.

Watch this incredible interview with five of the remaining Munchkins now all aged between 85 and 90 years of age.

Australia loves a winner, but not with the same affection as we love a loser.

Our entire national psyche is built on it. Triumph over adversity is great, but what is more important is effort.

Ned Kelly fought the law, and lost, and we loved him for it.

Continue reading "A red hot Aussie go:  a brief history of our love of losing" »

Reading history books about your youth makes you feel old. The discovery that archaeologists have got to work on the period you regard as your salad days makes you feel positively ancient.

That’s how it was when I read this article in the London Times, about an archaeological team digging up a nineteen-seventies camping site in southern England.

The camp site opened in 1971, when I was studying in England at the age of 19. This apparently makes it (and presumably me) a fit subject for digging up and turning over. What next? Palaeontology?

Continue reading "Digging up the past: Colvin and the Spiders from Mars" »

Those people with strong religious beliefs tend to think graves are better left undisturbed. People with strong non-religious beliefs share this view.

“Let the dead rest” is a universal sentiment that is only ever challenged when foul play or mass executions are suspected.

There is no good reason to dig up our Diggers. Nothing will be gained by identifying those members of the 31st Battalion, and others, who died at Pheasant Wood in France, in July 1916. We already know what happened.

Continue reading "Let the Diggers rest" »

With the current kerfuffle about binge drinking, you might be inclined to think that drinking copious amounts of alcohol is a fairly recent phenomenon. The truth is that the history of Western civilisation is soaked in alcohol. 

In the spirit of informing the current debate — and helping policy makers and public health officials to see what they’re up against — The Punch presents the following comprehensive* history, spanning over 2500 years of drunkeness.

360 BC — Plato. The history of binge drinking in the West begins in Ancient Greece with the philosopher Plato who compared drinking parties to going to the gym. Just as going to the gym temporarily weakens you but makes you stronger in the long-run, drinking parties, he argued, can make you stronger.

Continue reading "The complete* world history of binge-drinking" »

An old newspaper can work like a telescope into the past, the details sharp but the whole picture a little shaky and blurred, and the newspaper on my wall is like that. It’s the front of the Melbourne Argus for Sunday, September the third, 1939, and it contains only one story, told in a series of blaring headlines.

BRITAIN AT WAR
DECLARED AT 8.20 P.M.
‘OUR CONSCIENCE CLEAR’ – MR CHAMBERLAIN
LONDON, TO-NIGHT
A DECLARATION THAT A STATE OF WAR EXISTED BETWEEN BRITAIN AND GERMANY WAS MADE BY THE PRIME MINISTER, MR CHAMBERLAIN, TO THE NATION FROM NO. 10 DOWNING STREET TO-NIGHT.

Continue reading "70 years on, how Australia too was at war" »

Aboriginal reconciliation hit the headlines again this week with an extraordinary call for all non-indigenous Australians to make restitution for the crimes of theft and genocide – or leave the country.

Dr Peter Adam said that atoning for the sins of the past required such a radical solution.

‘‘No recompense could ever be satisfactory because what was done was so vile, so immense, so universal, so pervasive, so destructive, so devastating and so irreparable,’’ Dr Adam said in a speech to the NSW Baptist Union.

Continue reading "The priest who turned back the clock on reconciliation" »

It’s not exactly a cheery Tuesday morning photo, but there is an intriguing mystery surrounding this skull that washed up on a Sydney beach.

It’s 700 years old, but the trouble is it’s not Aboriginal. So where did it come from? The Manly Daily has the full story here.

As you’ll see from the report, police are appealing for the owner of the skull to come forward. He or she is described as being between four and six years old and having no head.

What do you think is the story behind the skull? Tell us in the comments. Some background on what was going on in the 14th century is here.

In the town of Caen, in Normandy, is one of the most remarkable museums I’ve ever visited.

I went there in 1994, the week of the fiftieth anniversary of D-Day, and what I remember most clearly about the Memorial de Caen – the Caen Peace Museum – is the long spiral ramp down which you must walk to enter it.

You can read about it here: or if your French is up to it, take a virtual tour here: but nothing will really reproduce the experience of walking in person down the spiral of history that led to world war and genocide.

Continue reading "Remembrance of things past: history without an airbrush" »