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.
Capitalism in conference or democratic gridlock?
THE WORLD TRADE Organisation (WTO) suddenly gained notoriety in Seattle in 1999 when demonstrations against it appeared on every...
We need to talk about the northwest
IT HAD BEEN raining the first time I visited far northwest Tasmania. Which isn't unusual. Rain, that often-fickle decider...
Tasmanian utopias
OVER THE PAST three decades, the green hinterland beyond the population centres of the state has held an increasing...
The dancing man
I NEVER MET the dancing man. I watched him plenty of times in a Hobart mall, but not once...
Tasmanian gothic
SOME DARK SECRETS run so deep that they slip from view. The hole left in our collective conscience is...
A raid
TASMANIA WILL ALWAYS be a prisoner of its Vandiemonian past, hostage to its ugly penal and ethnocidal histories. It...
More than two stories
A FRIEND ASKED me what drew me to live in Tasmania on and off for the past thirty years....
Canary in the mine
ON 18 JANUARY 1788, Captain Arthur Phillip and his small fleet finally entered Botany Bay, before making their short...
China in the Tasmanian imaginary
THE SHARP CHILL of winter has settled upon southern Tasmania and I now rise at the same time as...
The cost of hubris
THE DEMISE OF Gunns in the spring of 2012 was as much a psychological shock to Tasmanians as it...
Obstacles to progress
FOR MOST TASMANIANS a darker reality lies behind the seductive tourism brochures showcasing the state's pristine wilderness, gourmet-magazine articles celebrating its burgeoning food culture, and newspaper stories gasping at a world-leading art museum.
Churning the mud
PREJUDICE, IGNORANCE AND shallowness characterise the current national debate on Tasmania and its future. On the political right the...
