Welcome to GR Online, a series of short-form articles that take aim at the moving target of contemporary culture as it’s whisked along the guide rails of innovations in digital media, globalisation and late-stage capitalism.
Re-thinking animals
Recognising that animals have consciousness is a huge step for humans, and dangerous, too, as it might well undermine not only traditional thinking but our traditional means of survival – that is, what we eat.
Sustaining a nation
WE VISITED OUR relations in spring last year. They raise their living from the central western plains of New...
Trouble at dolphin cove
IN A STORY by Ryunosuke Akutagawa called ‘The Spider Thread', the thief and arsonist Kandata is writhing in hell...
Fishing like there’s no tomorrow
IN THE CITIES and the suburbs of the affluent world, the fish are waiting. Across the cold counters of...
Food in the age of unsettlement
I HAVE THREE personas: designer-educator, sustainment theorist and forest farmer. The farmer came first. My grandfather was a market...
Food security in the Arctic
IN 1847, FOUR years after being stood down as lieutenant governor of Tasmania, Sir John Franklin died at the...
Feeding the world
NEVILLE SIMPSON IS not your typical cotton farmer. He doesn't hold a university degree, nor does he command tens...
Creating sustainably productive cities
THE SCHOOLBOYS LAUGHED when they were told apples grew on trees. ‘Well, where do you think they come from?'...
Backyard gardens
WE RARELY TALK sensibly about food – the throwaway line ‘food for thought' is about as close as we...
The other charge of the Light Brigade
LATE ON A February night in 1916 Ernest William Keefe, a trooper training with the Sixth Australian Light Horse...
Out of the ordinary
THE LUCKY COUNTRY by Donald Horne is among my treasured Australian books. When first tempted to open its covers,...
Inside the tent
IN 2009 I ATTENDED two large sixtieth-birthday parties. Each celebrated a senior woman academic who had attained considerable recognition...
