S.S. Nile on the bed of the Darling River south of Bourke, NSW, during a drought. The image was taken by the journalist C. E. W. Bean for the Sydney Morning Herald, circa 1909, (Australian National Maritime Museum on The Commons, object no. 00017014). This isn't a long post just a footnote about the Darling … Continue reading Where the crow flies backwards
Category: Aboriginal
A sampler of ‘Seen and Unseen: a century of stories from #Asia & the #Pacific’
Here is an overview of my book Seen and Unseen: a century of stories from Asia & the Pacific with a selection of images reflecting aspects of the stories that unfold in its pages. Both paperback and kindle versions of the book are available through Amazon. Further background on my book is also available on it's website.
Can Australia ever have sovereign borders? We never really have and the porosity is ancient.
A simple Google search reveals that as an adjective sovereign means 'possessing supreme or ultimate power. These words are also offered as synonyms: supreme, absolute, unlimited, unrestricted, unrestrained, unbounded, boundless, infinite, ultimate, total, unconditional, full, utter, paramount. Powerful as the invocation of sovereign might be the simple answer to the question 'Can Australia Ever Have … Continue reading Can Australia ever have sovereign borders? We never really have and the porosity is ancient.
Belonging places
Recently I posted this short clip of what I thought were Cockatoos, on Facebook. Then I was sitting over lunch with some friends visiting from Indonesia when they flew overhead in a cacophony of sound. Birds in flight from maximos62 on Vimeo. “Kakatua”, I exclaimed, for my Indonesian friends. Then my wife Catherine commented. “I … Continue reading Belonging places
A few thoughts on teaching about #Indigenous #Australia
A short while back I started reading The Greatest Estate on Earth - How Aborigines Made Australia. What a remarkable book this is. Its author, Bill Gammage, systematically deconstructs the convenient myth of Aboriginal backwardness in this excellent history. He accumulates layer upon layer of historical source material, drawn from the casual observations of European … Continue reading A few thoughts on teaching about #Indigenous #Australia
