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.
Do your practice and all is coming
I’VE NEVER BEEN the sporty type – built for comfort rather than speed, more shot-putter than marathon runner. I...
From the outer sanctum
IT WASN’T UNTIL my young daughter asked why Sam Newman was calling me and the rest of The Outer...
Circling the city
FOR THE LAST two years I’ve been walking the streets of suburban Melbourne, armed with camera and notebook, a...
The challenges of achieving gold
BOTH NAOMI MCCARTHY and Duncan Free are Olympic gold medal winning athletes. Naomi was vice-captain of the Australian women’s water...
High expectations
AS AN NRL commissioner, one of my duties was to be at the 2015 Telstra Premiership grand final. It...
A landscape of stories
Winner of the 2015 Nature Conservancy Australia Nature Writing PrizeABOUT EIGHTEEN MONTHS ago, I started to spend time walking...
To everything there is a season…
NORWEGIANS WORK ONE HUNDRED days less per year than Australians. The whole country savours its precious few months of...
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...
