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.
Selling the dream
AS THE FATHER of an inexhaustible four-year-old girl, I am frequently cast in the grueling dual role of wicked...
It felt like memory
HERE'S A FAIRY tale. It's the first one I remember.Once upon a time, there lived a mother and a...
Eat and be eaten
RED STOOD AT the corner of King Street, where one of the lanes broke off it, one-way and hazardously...
No more limp excuses
IT WOULD BE fascinating to know what Queen Victoria was thinking in 1893 as she penned her congratulatory note...
Crime scenes
RANGIORA IS A small (population around twelve thousand) country town twenty-five kilometres north of Christchurch. It has an interesting...
Off shore, near shore and unsure
THE SOUTHERLY BLEW seawater over the runway. Grey foam streamed down the rocks at Moa Point and our tin...
The New Zealand voice
EVERY so often we can hear recordings of famous New Zealanders of the past: Hillary at the conquest of...
The bottom of the pit
I ASSESSED OFATO in the visitor section of Silverwater jail in Sydney's western suburbs. Anxious, expectant relatives were directed,...
A special category
IN THE QUIET week between Christmas and New Year, sometimes even New Zealanders are newsworthy in Australia. Generally the...
A dialogue across the sea
RUBY: WE HAVE some disagreements, my mother and I, and not only about fairy tales. Mum says that I'm...
The princesses
I wanted a different storyline for these fairytale girls with their hair of sunshine gold and lips that shame the rose, and frankly not much else going on between the ears.
The elusive Australian fairy tale
JACK AND THE Beanstalk, Henny Penny, The Three Bears, and The Three Little Pigs were collected by the folklorist...
