Quadrant articles from December 2002

Quadrant archives from December 2002

Religion, right or left? (Editorial).(Editorial)
December 1, 2002... THE SECTARIANS of yesteryear must have been spinning in their graves last October when the Anglican Archbishop of Sydney, Dr Peter Jensen, officially launched a supportive biography of the Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, Dr George Pell. Even...

Military philosophy and Lord Fisher. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2002... SIR: Leo Hogan's article ("Insecurity in Defence", October 2002) suggests that the Australian Defence Force lacks a clear and coherent understanding of its role and that the capacities of the Army (which is where he spent his service career)...

Vietnam and Kokoda. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2002... SIR: Two articles in the November Quadrant may tend to reinforce dangerously ahistorical mythologies. Trudi Tate's "Stop Whispering" claims of Vietnam: Why were we fighting for a South Viemamese government which was...

Life extension and its price. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2002... SIR: The elder Madame Bovary thought that her daughter-in-law's faults of character, and their appalling outcomes, were the result of reading too many novels. Readers of Russell Blackford's "Life Extension and its Enemies" (December 1999) may...

The Admiral Benbow. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2002... SIR: Ann Timoney Jenkin's rather desolate journey along the Mississippi (November 2002) is an excellent illustration of what A.D. Hope notes in his memoirs is the common fate of those who travel abroad alone: Cut off from your daily...

The historian as prophet and redeemer. (History).(treatment of the Australian aborigines)
December 1, 2002... THE CENTENARY of Federation in 2001 was ostensibly to celebrate one hundred years of independent, democratic Australian government. Given the very few other societies that have recorded such an achievement, the event should have been an...

Breaking Up Camp.(Poem)
December 1, 2002... BREAKING UP CAMP (Prophecy in a Supermarket) When nations clash at last, what will I do? I've never changed a washer or a fuse; I'll just get caught--like someone on the news-- Simply the worst, and out in public view! ...

The distinctiveness of Australian democracy.
December 1, 2002... DEMOCRATIC COUNTRIES have their democracy in common, but how democracy works and what it means to the people differ from country to country. The society in which democracy operates is different in each country and each country has its own...

In the groves of their academy. (Universities).
December 1, 2002... In the groves of their academy, at the end of every vista, you see nothing but the gallows. --Edmund Burke on the Jacobin intellectuals The University of Newcastle. 18 October, 2001 Dear Student, The destruction of the...

A Dialect History of Australia.
December 1, 2002... A DIALECT HISTORY OF AUSTRALIA Bralgu. Kata Tjuta. Lutana. Cape Leeuwin Abrolhos Groote Eylandt. Botany Bay Cook Banksia Kangaroo Ground Sydney Cove Broad Arrow Richmonds (seven) China Walls Sodwalls Hungerford...

On the Central Coast Line.(Poem)
December 1, 2002... ON THE CENTRAL COAST LINE When the magazine of rising suburbs slips off my face, our train has come down through shrubland a head ahead into a stone archipelago of forested gigantic oysters underlit to...

Melbourne Pavement Coffee.(Poem)
December 1, 2002... MELBOURNE PAVEMENT COFFEE Storeys over storeys without narrative an estuarine vertical imperative plugged into vast salt-pans of pavement and higher hire over the fiver ignited words pouring down live: there an...

There are worse things than war: an ethical enquiry. (Defence).
December 1, 2002... The real lesson to be learned from Rwanda is that no one gives a damn. The missing ingredient isn't a special force or better communications--it's political will, courage, morality. --Carol Off, The Lion, the Fox and the Eagle ...

Bit by Bit.(Poem)
December 1, 2002... BIT BY BIT ("Faith without Works is Dead") Are we made whole Bit by bit Through a faith Worth working with? His was a fanatic thing Kept close to his chest On a bus. Here, one moment. Hey, presto!...

Amina Lawal and the Islamic Shari'a. (Religion).
December 1, 2002... IN OCTOBER LAST YEAR, Amina Lawal, a northern Nigerian woman, was convicted of adultery after falling pregnant more than nine months after her divorce. Her sentence was to be stoned to death, but only after weaning her infant, the evidence of...

From the Summit.(Poem)
December 1, 2002... FROM THE SUMMIT Let us seize it while it lasts. From here, every other mountain scatters across the plain, chased by storms. Quickly, every town and dwelling disappears in cloud. Here, the crowding bamboo grass ...

From this Earth.(Poem)
December 1, 2002... FROM THIS EARTH We leave our shoes at the door and enter this space barefoot to sit at the edges of the floor. Behind us, through walls, trees, clouds the monsoon rumbles like a thought too great to be said...

Blind metaphysical terrorism. (Society).
December 1, 2002... THE BALI BOMBING naturally stimulated discussion about its origins. Was it targeted at us because we had been backing the USA? Was it targeted at Indonesians or Australians? Was it directed at Bali as a heathen cesspit full of pleasure-seeking...

Towards a united theory of Australian anti-Americanism.
December 1, 2002... OUR VIEW of the world did indeed change on September 11, 2001. For a few months. But it's fine now and everything's back to normal. It's perfectly PC to resume the America-bashing. Many among Australia's media columnists and progressive...

Drowning.(Poem)
December 1, 2002... DROWNING Drowning off a safe beach is not difficult. Atlantic waves, a retreating tide, a sharp Belt of a body board, and lifeguards Swimming to a false alarm a lifetime away. It's all over in minutes, though ...

That pest, the editor. (Devine).
December 1, 2002... ONE OF the enduring mysteries of Australian journalism--although the number of memories in which it endures is not large--is why I was fired in December 1989 as editor of the Australian, after less than fifteen months in the job. "You've...

Study for the World's Body.(Poem)
December 1, 2002... STUDY FOR THE WORLD'S BODY (after the painting by R.B. Kitaj) It only looks like an embrace when frozen. In truth it is a dance; unaccompanied and slow. This house feels abandoned. How a couple came to be here...

Spinning Top.(Poem)
December 1, 2002... SPINNING TOP There were times, on a wet day, I had the run of the lino-floor, For a go with the top, to send it away: There was wishing in the pump, for absolute or more. The silver-twisted stem disappeared,...

Bark Soup Winter.(Poem)
December 1, 2002... BARK SOUP WINTER The people cover their bones with furs drink bark soup to tether them to life. Too many of us, for these times, gathered around the meaningless, low-burning fire. My fetish is housed in that one...

Why we should intervene in civil conflicts. (Foreign Affairs).
December 1, 2002... IT SEEMS THAT more and more often we find ourselves sitting in front of our televisions watching another refugee crisis develop or a famine induced by war play out its course. Instinctively, credit card in hand, we reach for the phone, to do...

James McAuley: literary criticism in the form of a memoir. (Literature).(Critical Essay)
December 1, 2002... I CANNOT CLAIM to have known James McAuley at all well, but more than two decades after his death, the large number of people whose lives were touched in some way by the living McAuley is shrinking year by year. So when I was invited to speak...

Containing the mass: new maps of Australian literature.(The Bibliography of Australian Literature )
December 1, 2002... MORRIS MILLER'S Australian Literature: From Its Beginnings to 1935 (two volumes, 1940) has been justly regarded as the flagship of our bibliography. Not as comprehensive as the compiler wished, it is nevertheless a monumental work, still...

An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump.
December 1, 2002... AN EXPERIMENT ON A BIRD IN THE AIR PUMP After the painting by Joseph Wright of Derby, 1768 An after dinner port and snuff diversion. This century of "the scientificate" is seriously right-in-front-of-the-children: even a...

The power of the short film. (Film).(Critical Essay)
December 1, 2002... SHORT FILMS and news reports are rarely if ever reviewed in the mainstream media. This is hardly surprising. Background material on news items is hard to come by, even when the "report" is really a documentary, while short films are usually...

The Cleared Country.
December 1, 2002... THE CLEARED COUNTRY An ocean of gums dribbles down gullies, round dams, along ridges. Barbed wire stitches a patchwork of paddocks that tumble into creek-beds. Watercolour browns slur into splotched greens a...

The Photographer.(Poem)
December 1, 2002... THE PHOTOGRAPHER for John Doig At the drags, his eyes dart around-- not with a meaningless scurry, but with the same intense concentration I had as a child, when I carefully watched Coyote devise a clever plan...

Maisie Sebright's war.(Excerpt)(Fictional Work)
December 1, 2002... A fortnight before the outbreak of war in August 1914 two of the Wilbraham brothers persuaded Jesse into a partnership in a bakery near the Elephant and Castle. The business had belonged to a German called Eislinger, whose name in a horseshoe...

The Western burka.(Short Story)
December 1, 2002... How selfish he must think I am, she thought irascibly, ragging her long slender fingers through her hair to unravel the lacquered knots. The woman leaned further forward onto the dressing table, examining her young features and the fine...

Wangangu.(Poem)
December 1, 2002... WANGANGU In Warumungu country the people walk barefoot, their leather soles uncut by thorn, or flint, or broken glass. Brown, broken glass that winks from chip and shard; a sharp unflinching glitter...

The Burqa.(Poem)
December 1, 2002... THE BURQA See the burqa woman shackled by a shroud her character blanked out. Woman, know your place a space more cramped than any locked cell for solitary confinement for madness. Your cries are...

The Pangolins.(Poem)
December 1, 2002... The Pangolins for Mulaika Throwing the I Ching by the northern wall (Mountain over Water: the cataract clears), rereading the dubious message in dubious light, dusk there is as brief as thirty years. The dogs were...

Birth Control.(Poem)
December 1, 2002... BIRTH CONTROL I want no more children, Walter, my grandmother said after her third was born. And he never touched me again my dear, from that day to this. Thirty years without touching, not...

Apportioning gilt.(Elwyn Lynn's Art World by Patricia Anderson)(Book Review)
December 1, 2002... Elwyn Lynn's Art World, by Patricia Anderson; Pandora, 2002, $49.95 (see next page). THIS BOOK is a fascinating introduction to taste, fashion, gossip and criticism in the Australian art world during the three decades from 1960 to 1990....

The Windschuttle thesis.(The Fabrication of Aboriginal History: Volume One: Van Diemen's Land 1803-1847 by Keith Windschuttle)(Book Review)
December 1, 2002... The Fabrication of Aboriginal History: Volume One: Van Diemen's Land 1803-1847, by Keith Windschuttle; Macleay Press, 2002, $49.95. MOST REVIEWERS will ignore this book. Or, if they do notice it, it will be only to rubbish it. I hope I am...

Pain as a pencil sharpener.(In the Land of Pain by Alphonse Daudet)(Book Review)
December 1, 2002... In the Land of Pain, by Alphonse Daudet, translated and edited by Julian Barnes; Cape, 2002, $32.95. ALPHONSE DAUDET (1840-97) is a neglected writer these days, even in France where, in his heyday, he was as well known as Maupassant,...

The depth in a day.(In Your Absence by Stephen McInerney)(Book Review)
December 1, 2002... In Your Absence, by Stephen McInerney; Indigo/Ginninderra Press, 2002, $18. IT HAS OFTEN struck me as odd, even perverse, that so many people seem to feel the need to impose upon the world of everyday experience, this world, adscititious...

The weaving of memories.(One Man's Bible by Gao Xingjian)(Book Review)
December 1, 2002... One Man's Bible, by Gao Xingjian, translated by Mabel Lee; HarperCollins, 2002, $29.95. WRITTEN IN PARIS between 1996 and 1998, One Man's Bible interweaves the years of Cultural Revolution and the narrator's life in the West. Through it...

The revolutionary Heydons. (Ryan).(Column)
December 1, 2002... RARELY DO JUDGES offer writers a rich source of riveting copy; they are not to be held at It for that. Just as Doctor Johnson maintained that a man could seldom be more innocently employed than when he was making money, so a judge is most...