Entries by Noel Murphy

New home, new life, new hope

It was once the cradle of civilisation. These days, there’s little that’s very civilised about the country that hounded Milad Butrus and his family from their home. Bakhdida, in northern Iraq, became simply too dangerous for this Christian family, a Catholic family, and they fled to Jordan in 2014. It was a harrowing flight to […]

Rattling good yarns on the track to ’Rat

TRIPPED over an old map recently, showing Newtown’s Skene St as the road to Ballarat. You headed out Skene to Shannon, north to Autumn and up to what is now Hyland St, then down to Fyansford and onwards to the wild west goldfields. Loads of yarns are attached to the old Fyansford, first watering hole […]

Facts first casualty in the truth wars

If you think crying fake media is the first refuge of the scoundrel, you’ll be delighted to hear what might happen if you put artificial intelligence, revisionist history and political ultra-idealism all in the one room. Yeah, yeah, should you really care? Maybe not, this is fiction after all, loopy theory at best. And it […]