History

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" »