Above: Brendan Gleeson as Colm Doherty in The Banshees of Inisherin. Met the great Irish musician Paddy Moloney, leader of the legendary Chieftains, years back backstage at Dallas Brooks Hall. I was with another Irish legend, Melbourne’s Paddy O’Neill, who ushered me past a scowling bull of a security guard with a thumb over his […]
Remarkable to see the angst, stupidity, arrogance, and vengeful and avaricious behaviours attached to the Higgins/Lehrmann rape case. Not to mention the miserable failure of the judicial system to uphold either itself or the individual’s basic rights. Feral. The whole lot of it, start to unresolved finish. Nothing in there to really flatter anyone involved […]
It’s a while back now but I can still well remember when I spent almost every working night talking with media lawyers. Checking stories for potential defamatory comment, police and court reports for sub judice and contempt of court issues, suppression orders. Might need to check every so often that weren’t scandalising parliament. Yeah, it’s […]
Was a time when poetry was the last thing held any interest for this word-mangler. Too esoteric, too flowery, concepts too emotional and hard to plumb. More times than not, too cathartic and revealing. Hadn’t poets something better to do than sit around all introspective, navel-gazing and self-pitying? Who needs need to know their innermost […]
Poring over some old holey dollars recently. Not the real thing, unfortunately. Rather, some slick website images of the real thing. At up to $500K apiece, you want something that looks pretty schmick. Dripping with history, strange tangible aspect to them, intriguing artwork, high-end corporate nature to them. Hard not to love these things. Well […]
The Island, by Adrian McKinty, Hachette Australia Takes a fair leap of faith to convince yourself the premise for this story might reasonably be able to happen. It’s far-fetched and unrealistic but if you think people like Ivan Milat and Bear Grylls can exist then the leap into its treachery, cruelty and heroics isn’t so […]
Okay, so what came first, the chicken or the egg? How about the dinosaur? Well, so science seems to suggest, and largely the fault of a cute little critter jackhammered out of cliffs near Apollo Bay 30 years back. This came to mind when I learned an ancient Jan Juc whale is in the running […]
The Battle of the Bismarck Sea, by Michael Veitch, Hachette Difficult to think, from 80 years distance, just what a terrifying threat Japan once was to Australia. These days, it’s a nation more renowned for its sophistication, high-tech and extraordinary good manners. Mind you, it does upset some quarters with its whaling operations. Which might […]
Touch of irony to the latest Covid outbreak epicentre at Truganina, again, and the sad story of the so-called last full-blood Tasmanian Aboriginal, Truganini. Always been curious about Truganini because my grandmother grew up in the tiny rural hamlet that Truganina once was, out the back of Werribee half-way to Melton. Her French-born dad, […]
Don’t know if you’ve heard of the Dolls House Murders. Odd little story I read about the start of modern forensic science in the US. Yanks were late to the table as proper murder investigation bucked a good many vested interests. Heiress Frances Glessner Lee poured buckets of cash into Harvard to get a decent […]
