Pleasures of the country table
In The Australian Ugliness, published in 1960, the architect Robin Boyd remembered a meal in a hotel dining room in Yass, New South Wales, served by "a waiter with arms bare to the pits dealing out soup bowls like playing cards round the packed table and responding to my circumspect enquiry about the possibility of a glass of wine with the succinct phrase, ‘I think you’ll be stiff, mate.’"
If the book is ever reprinted – and it is among the best books about Australian life and culture ever written – one hopes the publisher will not allow this anecdote to stand unrevised. Everyone knows, thanks to publications like "Epicure" in the Melbourne Age and interminable television hash-slinging competitions, that Australia’s cuisine has come of age, and that the sunburnt country’s hotels and restaurants lead the world in culinary excellence, hospitality etc. Not only that, but they are awash with wine. Had he been travelling today Robin could almost have floated out the door on it….
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.
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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
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23 mins
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2 mins