In which I get intimate with history
Having lived all my life in country towns, I thought I had a solid collection of good old fashioned idoms and expressions. ‘I can’t, I’ve got a bone in my leg,’ is one example, used by my father when he’s asked to do something he’d rather not. ‘That wind would blow a sailor of your sister,’ is another. But when, for research purposes, I recently asked a group of Australians (via […]
I’m regularly disillusioned about things on a Tuesday morning. I blame ABC’s Four Corners on Monday nights. This week the disillusionment has leached into Wednesday. Last week it was the terrible reality that there is a rogue black market for the dumping of shitloads of rubbish in the Hawskbury region of NSW. Also that it’s far cheaper to buy new glass products than to recycle glass, and that there are […]
Something has been kind of trembling within my thoughts for a few weeks now, ever since a dinner party conversation afforded me some amazing news. I’ve been so astonished I haven’t quite known what to do with it. Just speaking in these grandiose tones is probably building it up way too much for everyone, but for me it is kind of huge. To explain why it’s so amazing to me, I have to give […]
Sometimes I hear or see little snippets of things that are really amazing and I think I want to follow that up and find out more but I just get busy and forget again and another amazing fact has disappeared, possibly forever. So lately I’ve been noting down keywords to remind myself of what I can go back an investigate. Today I have managed to sit down and inflate a […]
Recently my Mum gave me a box containing my grandfathers memories to wander through. I’ve been thinking about him on and off ever since. This morning the children and I have had another look through his things. I showed them the leather wallet he took to war in 1940 when he was 25. Inside it is the delicate silk map of the Middle East where he was posted and some […]
I used to know the ins and outs of the first world war, because Mrs Sullivan, my school history teacher told me all about it and had me write an essay about it. Now, while I still can associate stuff like Gallipoli and the Western Front and the trenches with WW1, I have forgotten all the important details, which makes me a bit of a wally during the minutes of […]
Realised during Sydney’s Muslim riots that I actually don’t know very much about Islam – and I should because the religion is so central to much of our news, not to mention the (according to the 2011 census), 476,300 Australians who identify as Muslim. To be honest, it wasn’t that long ago that I learnt that Islam is the religion whilst Muslims are its adherents. I just kind of thought […]
I know it seems a morbid subject, but ever since I found myself sitting on Tasmania’s memorial to the drowned (Tamanian Sefarer’s Memorial in Triabunna on Tasmania’s East Coast) a few years ago, I have thought a lot about the poor souls who have succumbed to the trap of water. Somehow – especially given my home is by a river on the coast of an island off the south coast […]
On Monday I went to the funeral of my great uncle, my grandfather’s brother and the last surviving Warner of his generation. His name was Denis Warner and he was something of a journalistic legend. He was awarded both an OBE and CMG (order of St Michael and St George) for his contribution to journalism. He lived and worked extensively throughout Asia and Australia, for many years as a war […]
~ I am ashamed to say that whenever the news headlines something to do with Israel, Palestine, Gaza, Hamas etc, my eyes glaze over and my brain switches off more than usual in the face of this bewildering world. But I did catch that yesterday (15th May) was the Palestinan’s Nakba Day, which marks the day they lost Palestine to Israel in 1948. Then I did a search on the […]
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