Richard Holmes describes biography as a 'handshake across time', an 'act of human solidarity and in its own way an act of recognition and of love.' The RM books were motivated by a similar sentiment. Re-excavating the physical traces of labour history was, as we said in the introduction, an effort to 'provide a bridge between the struggles of the past and the people of the present'.

From Moree to Mabo: The Mary Gaudron Story Pamela Burton UWAP From Moree to Mabo is the compelling and readable biography of a remarkable lawyer. Although some of the detailed analysis of the key cases and political turmoils of Mary Gaudron’s time as Solicitor General of NSW can be overwhelming, it is hard to put […]

On Australia Day night the moon rose very late. On nights like that the sky is revealed as an event that the word ‘spectacular’ doesn’t do justice. The Milky Way with the Magellanic Clouds hanging off it gives the sky a profound depth. In daylight the farthest you can see is three-and-a-half minutes no matter […]

I wanna tell you a story. A story of a house and its history. A story of its building. Its problems. Issues. I wanna tell you a story of its rebuilding. Of the promises made. Of the restructuring and the re-checking. Of the new paint job that cost $10 000. Of the new kitchen and […]

Culture Crisis: Anthropology and Politics in Aboriginal Australia Jon Altman and Melinda Hinkson (eds) UNSW Press Labelling something to be ‘in crisis’ can be a fraught activity; when the motivation is to create a rethinking of the issue at hand, it often leads to bandaid solutions to quickly fix the crisis. In this collection of […]

The first thing that sticks out about Garma are the tents. Rows and rows of them set up in designated areas: artists, volunteers, cultural tourists, paying attendees, academics, forum participants – all the way across the other side of the bungal ground to the Yolgnu camp. It’s a mini-city that exists for five days all […]

A weed by definition alone says a lot In his books The New Nature and Feral Future, Tim Low writes about the adaptability of weeds and introduced species to thrive and transform the natural environmental of Australia. Through the stories of explorers writing about the Harpy-like crows, the endangered bell frog living in the old […]

The Western Australian Government’s proposal to develop, along with Woodside Petroleum, a $30billion liquefied natural gas plant at Walmadany (James Price Point), north of Broome, is a startling example of how capitalism and colonialism can converge to ensure cultural and ecological destruction. Walmadany is no mere speck on the map. It is certainly no ‘unremarkable […]

So far as I know, the only people who have analysed and criticised Justice Martin’s sentencing remarks on the white men who beat Kwementyaye Ryder are Chris Graham, and me. This case should provoke soul-searching. We should ask why it happened. We should ask how it could happen that a judge would respond in the […]

The story about the foundation of the first colony in Australia is well known; it was about water. None being available at Botany Bay, the First Fleet sailed north, and in a little cove halfway down Port Jackson they saw what was to become known as the Tank Stream. Its original name is now forgotten. […]