21/1/15 The blessings This summer evening has been one of distractions. It is my turn to make dinner. I have read and made sharp ripostes to the e-mail material coming in from my colleague-sceptics on the Climate Change wrangle. I have sent off suitably witty birthday greeting to an old love. How take pause? How […]

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Land that was once open fields filled with nonchalantly grazing cows and the occasional horse is now covered by tarred roads and tile-and-brick villas. Slim Dusty once agisted his team there. Suburbia has usurped the flat flood-plain I once roamed as a budding Robin Hood. It is sad to see it vanish without a requiem. […]

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20/5/06 The very joy I’ve now appraised nearly all the dossiers I must read for our June Literature Board session. This will be my seventeenth meeting and penultimate appearance for the appointment which I reckon to have been a fair call on my time, where I have been able to give back to my patrons […]

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It was perhaps providential that the Diocesan Book Society closed when it did, rather than see it forced to adapt and accommodate the modern world of book merchandising. It was nice to know that you could look at books for hours and no one seemed to care whether you bought anything

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All that remains to me are memories of the violets' scent, an abiding admiration for my grandmother's strength and courage, Sin Yung's utter joy in his work and, of course, Jack from the humpy by the creek who left no footprint on the earth that he trod

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3/1/15 Saturday makes review palaver From today’s reviews the poets get two reprimands. First I learn … … that our loveable envoy, Clive James, is unhappy with Australian poets because he finds them oafs regarding their expertise in prosody. Largely he’s right, and certainly to practise poetry as a craft in Oz is to live […]

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There was political correctness when I was young. We stood in the cinema when the King’s image appeared, for example, and I have watched the shape and character of PC change over time. I didn’t much like it when I was young, and like it no more today

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The capacity to see the bigger picture is a prerequisite amongst those seeking elective office. The paradox lies in the fact that to be elected also requires that you persuade the majority of average people vote for you -- people who may not be capable of seeing the big picture at all

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As I’ve grown older, and as my own artistic skills have developed in various directions, I now see that I have often made the mistake of looking for validation from people who were not able to give it. The monomath sees only his own reflection

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More and more people will discover the Aborigine in themselves in the hope of something-for-nothing, even if in the end their only reward is the moral satisfaction of having been among the oppressed. Such is the lure of privilege that it turns minus into plus

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