Nativity Sydney
The Introduction to Pig Bites Baby! Stories from Australia’s First Newspaper (Duffy and Snellgrove, 2003).
This is us. In 1803, when George Howe began publishing the Sydney Gazette, most of our families had not arrived in the new homeland. But from the very beginning of our first newspaper its editor captured something familiar and typically Australian.
In Britain shoplifters, pickpockets, rapists who hadn’t been hanged, marines, military officers, sheep stealers, pig stealers, free settlers, wives and children, forgers, government officers, thugs, horse thieves, and reprieved highwaymen, were rowed out to tiny ships and exported to Port Jackson. Landed on a foreign shore they fell in love with the scenery, even sometimes with its wandering inhabitants, and set about creating a new homeland, and a thing that would be called Australia. This peculiar mixture of rogues and sluts and ladies and gentlemen carried with them a love of gardens, passionate yet tolerant politics, a strong…
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