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.
Every path tells
WHEN I WAS in my middle thirties, I abruptly abandoned a long-term relationship and impulsively moved from Sydney to...
It’s scary but nobody cares
I’VE NEVER UNDERSTOOD why Australians bother with the drop bear myth. It’s like a morgue trying to freak out...
How to draw a tree
DEPENDING ON YOUR definitions, this particular essay has taken three months to write and the book of essays that...
The stories we don’t tell
EVERY MORNING I would press my nose against the glass and try to imagine what this place could be....
At home with strays, strayers and stayers
‘STRAYLYA’. THAT’S HOW I can remember first hearing it – stray-lya – as if it was a place filled with strays. I wasn’t...
In the same boat
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are advised that this essay contains references to deceased people. SWINGING IN MY hammock,...
Challenge of negotiation
THIRTY YEARS AGO, at Barunga in the Northern Territory, Prime Minister Bob Hawke promised a treaty. I was there,...
The infantilisation of Indigenous Australians
I GREW UP in the 1990s, the daughter of a white Australian and a Torres Strait Islander. I was...
Recovering a narrative of place
At the conclusion of the project, a group of young global citizens, many of them labelled ‘disadvantaged’, many of them previously silent or ignored, shared a common belief, one as simple and yet complex as the difficulties we face in dealing with one of the great challenges of our time. The students agreed that we must listen to those who have lived with Country for thousands of years without killing it, and in order to live with a healthy planet we need to tell stories of our experience with it, and our love for it.
Celebrating difference
I’VE EXPERIENCED THE transcendental power of switching from a toxic narrative of low expectations and negative stereotypes to a...
Postcolonial talkback
SHE HAS THE most recognisable face in contemporary Western history and she’s almost within my reach. The longest-reigning British...
Tales of the sea
and the bones are begging to be let loose with their drums and handbells, with their tales of the sea at...
