There is a brotherly bond between the men I am speaking to, forged through shared experiences of the most intense kind, that is palpably strong and unintentionally exclusive. It is like sitting with war veterans. As I listen to them I sense depths to the conversation that I will never ...
I wanted to start a conversation with educators, writers and performers. So, I asked Narcisa Nozica, a high school teacher who toured the US studying youth poetry slam movements, to join me in a written dialogue. This led to chats with writers in various spoken forms, poets turned novelists, event ...
One summer holiday, I got hold of a real page-turner. A John Grisham lay abandoned on the coffee table as I devoured Fermat’s Last Theoremby Simon Singh. This is a book about pure mathematics and on surface value would not seem to be the stuff of which ripping yarns ...
This is a book that I shouldn’t have had to write. It’s about taking the foods that are native to our land into our homes and cooking with them. The fact that it needed to be written, and that non-Indigenous readers need to be told how to source ...
History shows that Anzac commemoration has always filled an emotional rather than an intellectual function in the Australian psyche. In its original manifestation up until the 1960s, Anzac commemoration was primarily an outlet for mourning and remembrance. It endured a period of apathy and hostility from that decade, because it ...
Australian women’s football has never been in better shape. The first Matildas, Australia’s national women’s side, were recognised for their efforts on the 40thAnniversary of their first match against New Zealand. The current crop of players joined the celebrations. They are one of the world’s top ...
I did not plan to write a history about the lives of the unknown Australian settler Caroline Kearney and her children. When I first uncovered evidence of the dilemma that she faced as a widow I was researching the significance of property, marriage and inheritance in four white settler colonies ...
I have been involved in criminal justice in one way or another for 50 years. In that time I have often been faced with very determined members of the public whose views about the criminal law differed from mine and I have spent much time in earnest discourse with them.
In early September 2019, when I heard the ABC had produced a documentary looking at Australian identity through the prism of the pool, I couldn’t believe the incredible timing with the imminent release of my book,The Memory Pool: Australian stories of summer, sun and swimming.
