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.
From soft drinks to soft politics
WHAT DOES IT say about a public’s appetite for change when even an iconic brand like Coca-Cola, with a...
On ‘The Seven Stages of Grieving’, by Wesley Enoch and Deborah Mailman
IS IT POSSIBLE to feel too much? For millennia, stories from around the world have had as their explicit...
On ‘Collected Poems’, by Les Murray
A poem…can be a message in a bottle, sent out in the – not always greatly hopeful – belief...
Tongues tied about tongue-tie
‘I HOPE WE’RE NOT boring you,’ I say politely to my friend’s husband. (Since boredom isn’t an option for...
On the abolition of Question Time
IN 2014, EIGHTEEN years after Paul Keating lost the prime ministership, a collection of his prize insults appeared in...
Taking credit
IN 2012 I was approached by Egon Zehnder, the world’s most successful privately owned executive-search firm, to write a...
Belsen
All images © Nadia Wheatley I VIVIDLY REMEMBER my reaction when I discovered that my father had worked at Belsen. This...
Staking a claim for peace
The stillness of the morning was broken by a terrific roar as thousands of guns spoke with a single...
On ‘Fox’, by Margaret Wild and Ron Brooks
FOX WAS A contemporary classic the minute it was published – an extraordinary picture book that has been acclaimed throughout...
Becoming Kalgoorlie
ON OUR FIRST day in Kalgoorlie, a local woman in her mid-thirties tells us that ‘Kal wouldn’t exist if...
Bali
IN 2013 A total of 429,000 Western Australians visited Bali, with more than a thousand arriving every day. Most...
Power to grow
THE PILBARA, THE mighty, resource rich, economic powerhouse in Australia’s far north-west, is breathtakingly vast and ecologically unique. It...
