Quadrant articles from January 2004

Quadrant archives from January 2004

Judicial adventurism and public debate.(Editorial)
January 1, 2004... IT CANNOT BE LONG before a party appearing before the High Court of Australia asks one or more judges to disqualify themselves from the hearing on the grounds of perceived bias and prior statements on a relevant issue. The number one target for...

Camus and Sartre.(Letter to the Editor)
January 1, 2004... SIR: I enjoyed M.P. Lamb's letter (December 2003) regarding Albert Camus and my essay "Sisyphus and the Meaning of Life" (October 2003), even though it charges me with perpetuating two common misconceptions about Camus and his work. First,...

The apocryphal gospels.(Letter to the Editor)
January 1, 2004... SIR: I refer to Chris Thomson's review of the book And, Behold, the Burning Bush by Bill Priest (November 2003). The oft-made assertion that apocryphal gospels and writings are just as authoritative as those contained in the New Testament, a...

The Curr despatch.(... an eighteenth century document contradicts evidence of the targeting of Australian aborigines)(Letter to the Editor)
January 1, 2004... SIR: I am writing in response to "Whitewash Confirms the Fabrication of Aboriginal History" by Keith Windschuttle (October 2003). The author makes a number of claims relating to a chapter I contributed to Whitewash: On Keith Windschuttle's...

Miyazaki and Japan.(... the work of animation artist Miyazaki Hayao is of interest to adult and child alike)(Letter to the Editor)
January 1, 2004... SIR: Timothy Harris (September 2003) sets out to do three things. While celebrating the magnificence of Miyazaki Hayao's new animated adventure story for children he casts some rather pointed barbs at others like himself who try to find...

When war came.(... Australia followed Britain's lead in 1939 without debate)(Letter to the Editor)
January 1, 2004... SIR: May I add an observer's footnote to Kenneth Minogue's "Does Australia Have an Identity Problem?" (November 2003)? Professor Minogue discussed the problem of policy faced by the Menzies government in 1939 when Britain declared war on...

The rise of Middle Eastern crime in Australia.(Society)
January 1, 2004... I BELIEVE that the rise of Middle Eastern organised crime in Sydney will have an impact on society unlike anything we have ever seen. In the early 1980s, as a young detective I was attached to the Drug Squad at the old CIB. I remember...

Change.(Poem)
January 1, 2004... CHANGE I heard the wind go roaring through the frail fullness of the trees, and as the curtains billowed inwards like a footloose sail a branch kept roughing out the same remark against a wall and underneath the...

The tiger and the terrier making the most of the US alliance.(Defence)
January 1, 2004... AUSTRALIA'S COMMITMENT to the War on Terrorism exposes a conundrum that lies at the heart of Australian defence preparedness. In a world dominated by the United States as the global hyperpower, how can Australia use its defence forces to pursue...

Convicts sentenced at Norfolk Island and Port Arthur, Tasmania.(Illustration)
January 1, 2004... Convicts sentenced at Norfolk Island and Port Arthur, Tasmania William Mansfield 30 September 1851 Wilfully 14 days solitary tearing his confinement ...

Beyond the judicial fairy tales.(Law)
January 1, 2004... THE RELICS of discarded empires present sad, even pathetic, spectacles. Once, when I was travelling through India, I came upon one of them in Ootacamund--"Ooty to the generations of British soldiers, civil servants and debutantes who served the...

Sydney's brush with Bonaparte.(History)
January 1, 2004... IT WAS NAPOLEON, stupid! Well, it would be nice to be so, confident about the events of 200 years ago, but it s hard to associate the stocky man with the triangular hat and hand on his heart with the suburban sprawl, maze of highways, housing...

Murder in the Cathedral.
January 1, 2004... IN THE FOUR MONTHS between their settlement at Freteval in late July 1170 and Thomas Becket's return to England, he and Henry II met twice. At one meeting they argued vociferously. The other was a social call, where Becket was received...

Morning tea.(Poem)
January 1, 2004... MORNING TEA Filling kettle from the square tank, scattering cats as buckets splash across the yard. Set on stove hissing black in the kitchen out the back; wouldn't burn the whole house down if the...

The history wars from a logical perspective.(Australia)
January 1, 2004... PROFESSOR Henry Reynolds contends that our white forebears murdered over 20,000 of our black forebears. Keith Windschuttle argues that this figure is grossly exaggerated, prompting a call from academics and others for all men and women of good...

Rubbing the lamp: the United Arab Emirates.(Foreign Affairs)
January 1, 2004... A nation's glory is measured by its past and present and its civilised development: perpetuating the memory of the past, the construction of the present and the planning of the future. --Sheikh Mohammed, Crown Prince of Dubai THE FIRST...

Horse Dreaming.(Poem)
January 1, 2004... HORSE DREAMING 1. The horse is always completely innocent. Perhaps they do not dream. I would have to ask my mare. She would loop her neck towards her nearest neighbour and to her manger. She...

Comboyne harvest: language and character in New South Wale's.(Language)
January 1, 2004... QUEENSLANDERS make "eh" while the sun shines, South Australia has its OAFish ways, and nothing is more distinct than the buried cockney of Perth or the Toorakian Honk in Melbourne. What kind of regional accent and oddities of diction can be...

Where.(Poem)
January 1, 2004... WHERE Where the waves are tall as houses and the rocks are sharp as teeth, Where the beetling cliff falls sheerly to the seething sea beneath, There the dreadful Captain Thunder revels with his wicked crew, With his wicked...

Perennial philosophy's theory of art.(Art)
January 1, 2004... PHILOSOPHY is in the perhaps unique position of being able to claim that, as far as its own discipline is concerned, everything has been said by some philosopher at some time or other. This is the polite version of the assertion that there is...

Mesmerised by Goya.(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... ALAN MOOREHEAD, in many ways a mentor--and father figure--to the young Robert Hughes, gave him this advice in 1962: "Australia is an interesting place, but if you remain... indefinitely, it will remain interesting and you will become a bore."...

Respected Sir.(Poem)
January 1, 2004... RESPECTED SIR Respected Sir, your camels are on fire. Permit I douse them in these nearby streams. All is not lost, disastrous though it seems. See! I have many splendid beasts for hire. Hope is a Phoenix mounting from...

How productive was my pedagogies.(Education)
January 1, 2004... "WHEN I USE a word it means whatever I want it to mean!" the Queen of Hearts famously declared in Alice in Wonderland. Worryingly, it seems Education Queensland is dealing cards from the same pack, much to the bewilderment of anyone who tries...

Edgar Allan Poe at Lord's.(Poem)
January 1, 2004... EDGAR ALLAN POE AT LORD'S So Lenore and I got chatting; now she's here to watch me batting But the pitch looks pretty dodgy and the ball's been turning square. Though I know I didn't nick it (as you always do at cricket), ...

Air war, literature and compassion.(Literature)
January 1, 2004... A YEAR OR SO AGO, Germany's "conscience" and grand old man of letters Gunter Grass published his boldest novel in years. Crabwalk tells the story of the sinking, off what is now the Polish port of Gdynia, of the Wilhelm Gustloff, a converted...

A history of now.(the poems of Geoff Page address all facets of contemporary life)
January 1, 2004... GEOFF PAGE was awarded the Patrick White Prize in 2001 for his thirty-year contribution to Australian literature. His poetry publication includes sixteen collections and two verse novels (the second, Drumming on Water, is in bookshops now)....

Voices.(Poem)
January 1, 2004... VOICES Starting up, the old dog hears a voice calling from a long way off, familiar. Some day soon she will stagger down the path it beckons, head lifted to meet the warmth of hands she once knew well and words of...

Cafe.(Poem)
January 1, 2004... CAFE for Robert Gray A Clarence mist on lower reaches and Jerseys after milking; morning shadows easing back beneath the jacarandas; the dew as fresh as sugar sap along a sharp machete; the dented shine...

The Bride is Flying.(Poem)
January 1, 2004... THE BRIDE IS FLYING The bride is flying, 1910, her gown a kind of parachute though done with full-length sleeves; her veil, we see, already gone to flaunt her long black hair. The whiteness of her...

This Night.(Poem)
January 1, 2004... THIS NIGHT Feeling you gently shaking my arm I awoke and found you asleep

Peter Weir's Master and Commander.(Film)(Critical Essay)
January 1, 2004... DURING A PHONE interview with David Williamson nearly twenty years ago, he told me about the time he was scripting Gallipoli (1981) for Peter Weir. After submitting a final draft, Williamson did one last restructure and sent it to the director....

Country People.(Poem)
January 1, 2004... COUNTRY PEOPLE Country people give you skinned rabbits in newspaper blood leaking onto the headlines; tell you the corpses are kittens--young and sweet. They'll wake you at midnight just passing through ...

Them There Out There in Here Right Now.(Poem)
January 1, 2004... THEM THERE OUT THERE IN HERE RIGHT NOW There's a tickle in your nostrils like the taming of the milk, There's a swish across your fingers like the whimpering of silk, Like the flutters of a death's head, like the squitters of a...

Every Morning, Waking.(Poem)
January 1, 2004... EVERY MORNING, WAKING Out in the zero velvet of the night swinging deep into left field the first interrogatory of the aubade. A startle of--Where was I? What! Then the anxious, enquiring flex, --And am I still...

When the jars of hot jam break.(Excerpt)
January 1, 2004... When she knew the end could be expected, Rizka accepted the offer from the fellow in the oral history unit, and a day or so later he called. She had made the effort to dress, and they sat in her front room with his portable player between them....

Meeting and parting.(Short Story)
January 1, 2004... There was the telephone. For twenty-five years she had thought about this moment, rejected the project as unbearable and impossible. How could she have decided so suddenly? She was trembling, and her stomach felt empty, nagging as it did when...

From "Huntingdonshire Nocturnes".(Poem)
January 1, 2004... FROM "HUNTINGDONSHIRE NOCTURNES" Summer nights, they used to sleep out in the field, these cottages get so hot: slate roof, no space between ceiling and timbers: homes for a row of mere husbandmen. To lie out looking up...

Travelogue.(Short Story)
January 1, 2004... "I'm taking a jasmine garland back to Susan," I say. "I'll buy it fresh, put it in a box with wet tissue paper and ask the flight attendant to put it in the fridge. Susan will open it and the perfume of India will invade Melbourne." I'm on...

Some Music in the Chiesa San Carlino.(Poem)
January 1, 2004... SOME MUSIC IN THE CHIESA SAN CARLINO The Geminiani has a gamin beauty, tilting over the aged marble, misbehaving notes play about Borromini's radical diamond space. And it is a young music, the players maybe twenty...

East of Trastevere.(Poem)
January 1, 2004... EAST OF TRASTEVERE The stillness of the TV antennae, low cloud making the Apennines go swim, the first dog of the Roman weekend bays at seagulls idling in the winter haze; this coffee is cold with whisky at the brim,...

Parker & Quink.(Poem)
January 1, 2004... PARKER & QUINK To write your email address with a fountain pen filled with ink like lighting a candle on the moon.

The Blue Light for the First Time.(Poem)
January 1, 2004... THE BLUE LIGHT FOR THE FIRST TIME The blue light shone the new negative idiom. In the Ladies Rest Room during a hail storm. My false teeth were unusual in the mirror as I searched for the water which ...

The novelist and the secret policeman.(Ignazio Silone may have acted as a double agent)
January 1, 2004... The Abruzzo Trilogy (Fontamara; Bread and Wine; The Seed beneath the Snow), by Ignazio Silone, translated by Eric Mosbacher, revised by Darina Silone; Steerforth Press, 2003, $47.50. L'Informatore: Silone, i commmunisti e la polizia (The...

When Liberia grows too boring.(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... The Shadows of Eliza Lynch: How a Nineteenth-Century Irish Courtesan Became the Most Powerful Woman in Paraguay, by Sian Rees; Hodder Headline, 2003, $32.95. WELCOME TO PARAGUAY, where (to adapt Esquire's epigram about subcontinental Asia)...

The dish to make your mark in.(The Indigo Book of Modern Australian Sonnets)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... The Indigo Book of Modern Australian Sonnets, edited by Geoff Page; Indigo/Ginninderra, 2003, $20. REVIEWING AN ANTHOLOGY of poetry is fraught with danger. Particular difficulties present themselves when it comes to discussing examples of...

Minds of Terror.(Inside al Qaeda)(Masterminds of Terror)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Inside al Qaeda, by Mohamed Sifaoui, translated from the French by George Miller; Granta, 2003, $21.95. Masterminds of Terror, by Yosri Fouda and Nick Fielding; Mainstream, 2003, $27.95. THESE TWO BOOKS cover the same kind of subject,...

The Heresiarch of Dreams.(Regions of the Great Heresy: a Biographical Portrait of Bruno Schulz)(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Regions of the Great Heresy: A Biographical Portrait of Bruno Schulz, by Jerzy Ficowski; Norton, 2003, about $40. BRUNO SCHULZ, the Polish-Jewish writer and artist, was born in 1892 in the Galician town of Drohobycz, then a part of the...

Remembering Saumlaki.(Ryan)
January 1, 2004... IT WAS A TRUTH splendidly stated by Swift, that to blast another's character, not a sentence need be spoken, nor a word written; nothing is easier than to "Convey a libel in a frown, And wink a reputation down." A satisfying character...

I Need.(Poem)
January 1, 2004... I NEED I need a man who'll change a nappy pronto, Who, shown a seam to sew, will sit and sew it, Who's faithful and obedient as Tonto; If there's a lawn to mow this man will mow it. I need a man who'll cook a...