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
The Men of Perth
Cruiser: The Life and Loss of HMAS Perth and Her Crew, by Mike Carlton; William Heinemann, 2010, 706 pages, $55.
Cruiser by Mike Carlton was launched on Wednesday August 28 on board HMAS Sydney at Garden Island Dockyard. It is an heroic work of over 700 pages and tracks the two and a half years service of HMAS Perth and all who sailed in her from July 1939 until her sinking in the Sunda Strait on March 1. 1942. With Perth as its centre it is also an extremely well written account, both militarily and politically, of the significant events of the war.
Over many years of meticulous research, Mike Carlton has recorded many contrasting details from ships’ company diaries and interviews. These give a compelling insight into life aboard ship, particularly in the Mediterranean and in the harrowing years of Japanese cruelty to prisoners of war.
The story begins with the 500 crew for Perth leaving Sydney on March 13, 1939, in the Blue Funnel ship Autolycus bound for Portsmouth, England,…
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
