Image: Macassans at Victoria, Port Essington by HS Melville. Stunning new research findings by a Geelong academic suggest Indigenous Australians converted partially to Islam practices up to 600 years ago. Dr Dzavid Haveric, of Armstrong Creek, says Aborigines trading sea cucumber with Macassan fishermen from Indonesia blended Sufi-influenced Islam with Aboriginal Dreaming spirituality but the […]
Ice Remembers Water Marnie Dredge The ancients believed the human body and its multiplicity of positives, negatives, health, ailments, were all predicated on the balanced status of the four humours: blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile. Amazing how such complexities might be reduced to just four fundamentals but this proto-medicine held sway for millennia; […]
The propaganda war over Palestine continues unabated and largely unchallenged by Western media or politicians, as outlined here by Henry Ergas. In the controversy over Israeli settlements in the West Bank – as in every other aspect of that intractable conflict – the facts have disappeared in the dust storm. Plainly erroneous claims are endlessly […]
Errol Flynn: the True Story of Australia’s Hollywood Icon Patricia O’Brien Golden Age screen hero, silver-tongued charmer, tough-as-nails swashbuckling sailor, swordsman and horseman with a virtual patent on historic hero roles. Dripping with money, ridiculously handsome and a back story of real adventures – every woman wanted him, every man wanted to be him. So […]
The Summons John Grisham Nothing like second-hand bookshops to deliver the goods even if they’re so often full of pap, sap and crap. Grisham’s no stranger in these places, what with more than 50 runaway best-sellers and 50 million sales, and well worth a revisit. When lawyer Ray Atlee’s father, a well-regarded judge, falls off […]
Melbourne-Yass Nothing like tripping over your feet and face-planting the footpath going in to the pub instead of coming out. Scone, knee and wrist all debatable for a day or two afterwards. Punters looking out from inside no doubt chortling for a week. Someone lost their spirit level laying the pavement at Yass but the […]
Image: The Australian Something’s been iffy about Australian media coverage of the Middle East since the October 7 massacre of Israel’s Nova festival-goers by Hamas. Much more than iffy, actually, more a case of distinctly and disturbingly on the nose. Almost immediately, the hundreds of innocents murdered and kidnapped were somehow deemed deserving of the […]
Been hearing a mountain of stories lately about sick kids, hard-pressed parents, dedicated medicos and carers, and a fair tribe of corporate, trade and everyman supporters looking to help the old Royal Kiddies Hospital in Parkville. Lengthy family history with the place going back 40 and 50 years now; one that remains a bruise and […]
Coeur de Lion The Journals of Richard the Lionheart By Isla Tate Impossible to read Richard’s fictitious journals about his 12th century Holy Land warmongering without drawing parallels with the unholy oil wars in the Middle East as we speak. East versus West for possession of Jerusalem – ground zero of Islam, Christianity and Judaism […]
HOOKED: Former Skyhooks guitarist Bob ‘Bongo’ Starkie and Million Dollar Riff bandmate Laura Davidson. Picture: Joe Mastroianni GUITARIST Bongo Starkie’s colourful frill-necked lizard collar is one of Australian rock’s more curious 1970s images. But then, his band, Skyhooks, was not known for its shy, retiring ways. White suits and fedoras, mock Tudor vests and wimples, […]
