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.
Manna for the cassowaries
IN FEBRUARY 2011 Cyclone Yasi crashed, like Thor's hammer, into Far North Queensland's (FNQ) Cassowary Coast. Yasi was classified...
Fire words
To understand why our language about fire is so poor, it is interesting to look at a history of how this language developed.
Adapting for hope
THERE IS A single large tree on the wind-whipped salt-lake flats, the most marginal of marginal land. There are...
What does Fukushima mean?
'Harrisburg, oh Harrisburg, the plant is meltin' down, the people out in Harrisburg are gettin' out of town. But when the...
Ground cover
THAT WAS THE day the garbage didn't get picked up, and the day the house across the road burned...
Surviving peace
‘We should kill our pasts with each passing day. Blot them out, so that they will not hurt. Each...
Tragic intimacy
BY ANYONE'S RECKONING, World War I was an unprecedented, unmitigated disaster. Of course, it matters greatly who won or...
The day the earth shook
BEING IN THE middle of the Christchurch earthquake was the most frightening experience of my life. It was a...
A good sport
IT'S ONE OF the most powerful images of the twentieth century: the Black Power salute at the 1968 Mexico...
Diamonds, pearls and Kimberley girls
A DISTINCT AUSTRALIAN identity is developing in the west. It comes from the Pilbara as a product of the...
On being Australian
EACH TIME I cross the Victoria Bridge at the top end of Queen Street I see, in an involuntary...
The good war
'Little Fuzzy-Wuzzies,Angels in Disguise.The Christ-child's coloured messengers,Same as you or I.Colour doesn't matterIn the Saviour's Home.It's what you say...
