Old Times in the Kimberley
The new generation of Australian business pooh-bahs proudly call themselves social justice warriors but as such they can’t hold a candle, let alone a spear, to the indigenous warriors of our very recent past. Stamp their little feet as they do, shriek shrilly and appoint as many Behavioural Awareness Officers as they wish, but indigenous men and women as recently as the first quarter of the last century would have left them battered, or dead, in the dust and in some instances might even have eaten them.
Life in Australia pre-settlement was a bloody affair, even around the home campfires, with physical conflict a constant and magic an ever-present menace. The savages may have been noble, in the Rousseauvian mould, but they were brutal.
One of the best accounts of tribal life is to be found in the memoir of Kimberley leader Albert Barunga, an elder of the Worora tribe. Among the many gifts he left the nation is the story of his life, written up as a book by the noted West…
Madam: Archbishop Fisher (July-August 2024) does not resist the attacks on his church by the political, social or scientific atheists and those who insist on not being told what to do.
Aug 29 2024
6 mins
To claim Aborigines have the world's oldest continuous culture is to misunderstand the meaning of culture, which continuously changes over time and location. For a culture not to change over time would be a reproach and certainly not a cause for celebration, for it would indicate that there had been no capacity to adapt. Clearly this has not been the case
Aug 20 2024
23 mins
A friend and longtime supporter of Quadrant, Clive James sent us a poem in 2010, which we published in our December issue. Like the Taronga Park Aquarium he recalls in its 'mocked-up sandstone cave' it's not to be forgotten
Aug 16 2024
2 mins