Featured Stories

The coward

Non-fictionAt the beginning of my research, I knew little about Anne. I knew that my aunt had been married to an Anglican reverend. I knew she was Dad’s half-sibling, from my grandfather Staniforth Ricketson’s first marriage. I knew that she lived in the country at Mount Macedon. The final thing I knew for certain: my aunt died a sad and violent death. She perished on 16 February 1983, the night of the Ash Wednesday bushfires. Her husband, the Reverend Bill Carter, drove away from their cottage without her. In his panic, he left his wife behind and saved himself as the flames closed in.
Stories of cowardice, unlike those of courage, make us deeply uncomfortable. Coward is a label we generally affix to those we call monsters: terrorists, paedophiles, predators. But cowardice does not just exist at the extremities of behaviour – it is both more quotidian and more human than that.

By Jonathan Ricketson

A metal teapot sitting on a shelf in an outdoor setting

A storyteller’s journey

GR OnlineYou produce content and people say, ‘Oh, you need to tell people about this, or the Stolen Generations, or the stolen wages.’ We’ve still got to repeat that story, which should have been told and embraced by Australia, as ugly as it is, so we can move on. So, I started telling my own stories for me and my people to remind us what a great culture we have. As human beings, we’re pretty deadly.

By EJ Garrett, Ruby Ingra

A concrete tombstone in a cemetery. Other graves are depicted in the background but are out of focus.

Unhappy pairings

GR OnlineArts, creative arts and humanities courses teach critical thinking, civic discourse, emotional literacy and storytelling. Most students are grappling with rent, menial work and advanced study. In a world that seeks to destroy their attention span, arts courses teach young people to read, think critically and provide historical context and sensitivity to complex issues.

By David Burton

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Here Be Monsters

Edition 89

Portent, symbol, metaphor: From the werewolf to the Pale Man, from Count Dracula to the (far more sinister) emotional vampire, monsters of all forms have offered us ways to express and exorcise our fears for thousands of years. This edition...

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Featured Collection

First Nations Perspectives

We've put together a collection of essays by leading First Nations writers, thinkers and activists that explore the long road to Indigenous representation.

These works are all unlocked and free to read.

Where truths collide

I AM SITTING forward, in nautical terms, looking astern at my awa, who is guiding us through reefs and straits on a moonless night. Above him are stars like phosphorescence in the squid-ink sky. Around his silhouette I see phosphorescence like stars in our small dinghy’s wake. I’m a young man excited to be going night-spearing for kaiyar, the painted crayfish.

By Thomas Mayo

Speaking up

The modern Australian incarnation of truth-telling that emerged from the Uluru Statement from the Heart in 2017 came not from dictatorship and civil war, as had truth-telling in the Latin American ‘radical democracies’ of the 1990s, which pioneered transitional justice. Instead, it derived from local people devising local solutions.

By Megan Davis

The power of the First Nations Matriarchy

I WAS BORN from the world’s most ancient womb: the sacred womb of a First Nations woman. The blood pumping through my veins is the life force of a long line of First Nations Warrior Women whose spirits run deep into this ancient soil. It is a privilege to be raised in a culture that understands the power of the First Nations Matriarchy.

By Teela Reid

When the heart speaks

I had in mind what Australia should be as I wrote the book, a gift to the peoples’ movement for legal, political and structural change in this country – the movement to establish a constitutionally enshrined First Nations Voice to Parliament, as proposed in the Uluru Statement from the Heart.

By Thomas Mayo

The heart of seeding First Nations sovereignty

The demand for treaty – or, more accurately, the demand for many treaties – must be driven by the cultural authority of each sovereign First Nation. This process must be underpinned by cultural protocol and custom that recognises the many tribal clans within the First Nations.

By Teela Reid

The long road to Uluru

Uluru is a game changer. The response of ordinary Australians to the Statement has been overwhelming…a rallying call to the Australian people to “walk with us in a movement…for a better future”.

By Megan Davis