Latest Articles
We are encouraged to rely more and more on government officials to do for us what we could equally well do for ourselves—and, maybe more importantly, not to do what might help us solve our own problems.
Sep 08 2024
10 mins
If we imagine a metric called the Pinocchio Scale, which measures the number of lies told by a politician as a percentage of his or her overall public statements, our current prime minister (for want of a better description), Airbus Albo, has moved well into uncharted territory.
Sep 06 2024
5 mins
Driving Out the Drover
When a newspaper columnist once suggested a popular contest for the best book ever written, I felt tempted to nominate the Fifth Book of the Victorian Reader series.
The Second World War was raging far to the north, but my fondest memory—and I am not alone—of Sandringham East State School in Melbourne’s southern sand belt in the 1940s is of the Reader and especially, the many ballads of Banjo Paterson, Henry Lawson and others of the Bulletin era around 1890. “Across the stony ridges, across the rolling plain, / Young Harry Dale the drover comes riding home again …” And “The Fire at Ross’s Farm”, “Clancy of the Overflow”, and Adam Lindsay Gordon’s “The Sick Stock Rider” (“Hold hard Ned and lift me down once more …”)
This essay appears in the latest Quadrant.
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Children loved reciting the rattling old versified bush yarns. These, as well as the stories of the explorers (Blaxland, Lawson and Wentworth, Sturt, Eyre, Burke and…
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
