Quadrant articles from October 2002

Quadrant archives from October 2002

False refugees and misplaced compassion. (Editorial).
October 1, 2002... MORALITY FIGURES prominently in the debate about refugees, unauthorised arrivals and detention; so does compassion. Both terms have been appropriated as if by right by those who are opposed to the federal government's policies--but it is not at...

The unborn. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
October 1, 2002... SIR: As I began to read Russell Blackford's article, "The Supposed Rights of the Fetus" (September 2002), I entertained the hope that here we had a genuine Australian successor to Swift's A Modest Proposal. Alas! It soon became clear that the...

The Australian pygmies. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
October 1, 2002... SIR: Our critics (Letters, September 2002) miss the point of our survey of the unresolved controversies surrounding Birdsell's work. We made no claims to being scientific specialists; our journalistic account simply compared the views of rival...

One man's freedom fighter ... (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
October 1, 2002... SIR: During a recent visit to the Kimberley and the Northern Territory, my wife and I were intrigued by references in official signs to an Aboriginal man named Jandamarra as a "freedom fighter". It appears that he and at least one accomplice...

Conscious non-involvement. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
October 1, 2002... SIR: Alan Barcan's essay (July-August 2002) carefully maps out the landscape of student associations and clubs, both political and social, at Sydney University. From my own experience at the University of Melbourne (1994 to 1997), I can confirm...

Hearts, minds and immigration. (Immigration).
October 1, 2002... I'LL BEGIN by declaring an interest. I am myself an immigrant. Forty-seven years ago, I came as a young man to take up my first ever job, at Sydney University. I came from a monochrome, austere Britain where rationing had only ended the...

How not to think about immigration.
October 1, 2002... IN LAST YEAR'S Australian election, Prime Minister John Howard regularly brought down the house at election meetings--and, some would argue, won the day--with the line: "We will decide who comes to Australia and on what terms." He was, of...

The Celebrity God.(Poem)
October 1, 2002... THE CELEBRITY GOD In an alternative world like ours, which we know must exist, given that the universe is infinite and contains infinite possibility, God has allowed one of His scientists to prove that He is real. ...

The Road to Khe Sanh. (First Person).(Short Story)
October 1, 2002... THE PULL OFF Highway 1 and head west on a side road leading to the village of Sen near Kim Lien. We are on our way to the house where Ho Chi Minh was born. Our young guide, Mr Quang, glances at the map from time to time and feels obliged to...

Over the Hill.(Poem)
October 1, 2002... OVER THE HILL Her dough-cold hand in mine. Her eyes, filled with the framed sky, are bottomless. A glass of water shakes the room. And then she slowly turns the pages of an album back to her cottage...

Worlds.(Poem)
October 1, 2002... WORLDS A cold, winter morning in Gloucestershire... By looking down I see what lies above. A red sun unlocking the young year Hovers on the icy cattle trough, Where odd fish and robins fly high within, Unaware of...

A sculpture story.
October 1, 2002... THIS IS THE STORY of a sculpture and a song. It is also a story about a Viennese lady, and it extends from Vienna to the northern suburbs of Sydney. The sculpture, or at least a copy of it, which faces me across my desk as I write, depicts...

Je T'Adore.(Poem)
October 1, 2002... JE T'ADORE I worship you as I worship the darkening sky's great overarching vault, oh silent one, oh vase of sadness--and love you the more as you take flight, and as I see it's you, jewel of the night, ironically...

Meditation.(Poem)
October 1, 2002... MEDITATION Be a good child, Sadness, quieten down. You called for evening to come and it is here: the air is darkening, covering the whole town with peace for the lucky ones, for the rest, dull care. Now, while the...

The Oxygen Mask.(Poem)
October 1, 2002... THE OXYGEN MASK "I've lived too long." My father's voice is muffled by the oxygen mask he has to wear for most of the day, just to keep on breathing. When he takes it off, he falls asleep in mid-sentence, and...

Elias Canetti gives me insomnia.
October 1, 2002... THE KIDS in the village are swarming up and down my road tonight, setting the dogs barking. I turn on the porch light and send one couple, very drunk, back into the bushes. I don't want to be mean to them, but I am trying to work out in my...

Elegy for Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.(Poem)
October 1, 2002... ELEGY FOR HER MAJESTY QUEEN ELIZABETH II Your picture hangs in the Wingello Mechanics Institute Hall and will until the tallow wood floor, the out-of-tune upright, the tea urn, the trestles, the cups and their saucers, the...

Wave to the Queen.(Poem)
October 1, 2002... WAVE TO THE QUEEN The last woman in the world to ride side-saddle smiled at me from the screen at the Kinema in Kilbirnie I stood for the neat brown gelding and the woman in the red coat and divided skirt ...

The return of Greenmantle. (Foreign Affairs).(Arab civilization)
October 1, 2002... WHEN THE SUN SETS on national power, there are those who dream of a restoration of the golden age. This craving often generates the myth of a powerful or even supernatural figure who will act as the agent for its restoration. The myth--in...

Garry Owen.(Poem)
October 1, 2002... GARY OWEN At four, the city's lights go black, the cliques Light their lanterns, shout and strike A city-wide unison. Carnival comes Once more to Basel, to the Gothic streets, to The Totentanzgasslein, to the...

An interview with Philip Nitschke. (Devine).(Interview)
October 1, 2002... WHILE DISAGREEING with everything the euthanasia evangelist Dr Philip Nitschke says, would I fight to the death for his right to say it? Certainly not. Paradox makes my joints ache. On the other hand, I am disconcerted by the way Dr...

Insecurity in defence. (Defence).
October 1, 2002... ALMOST TWO YEARS ago I left the army. It was a middle-distance career complemented by a middle-distance performance. My reasons for leaving were many. Among other things I felt that the passion and enthusiasm had left me. Unlike some officers I...

This.(Poem)
October 1, 2002... THIS It begins with little more than the turning Of a page, noticing the fridge humming, A flower in a glass, a ball of loose string On the sill, the drip of a tap left running. This sudden awareness of empty space,...

Surface nugget. (History).(Nugget Coombs: A Reforming Life)(Book Review)
October 1, 2002... THE CONTEMPORARY biographer faces new problems. One of them was called to mind in a recent remark by Andrew Stephenson in the Sydney Morning Herald. He was reviewing the valuable television series Australian Biography, by Robin Hughes....

To A Woman Passing By.(Poem)
October 1, 2002... TO A WOMAN PASSING BY Around me howled the deafening street. Tall and slim, in mourning, and with such sad majesty, a woman passed; rich with rings, her hand drew back the hem of her skirt. She was lithe and light,...

Almanach de Wagga.(the Tichborne Affair)
October 1, 2002... ALMOST EVERY conceivable development--or rather, in most cases, regression--of modern historiography should by rights have sent the Tichborne Affair down the collective memory hole. The recollection of it nevertheless widely lingers, like the...

Madrid.(Poem)
October 1, 2002... MADRID After a whole day of haunting the Prado my eye is so tuned that the glimpse of a breast in a grimy doorway somewhere behind the Calle de Hortaleza simply reminds me of the delicate...

Putting Down Cannibalism.(Poem)
October 1, 2002... ("To make doubly sure, I cut off the head and showed it to some twenty or thirty others, including some friendly chiefs."--Capt. Ogilvy, 1915, Rabaul) PUTTING DOWN CANNIBALISM Ogilvy cut Bowu's head off not out of malice ...

Summer.(Poem)
October 1, 2002... SUMMER Sundays, the priest is spoken for morning to night. Weddings and funerals seem to bracket baptisms (gentle hands cupping small heads) so the glowing bride and groom sweep out past the next shift's ...

Lucy.(Poem)
October 1, 2002... Lucy member of the Laetolil Ladies Club Olduvai Old School united by a rift and known from Afar by her homo descendants

Poet in a landscape: some reflections on Shaw Neilson. (Literature).
October 1, 2002... TOWARDS THE END of The Wind on the Water, Myra Norris's fine 1938 novel set in the interwar years, the focus shifts from a seedy and dilapidated pub to an old homestead situated on a small hill on the other side of an intervening lake. When the...

Letter to Holbein, the Younger.(Poem)
October 1, 2002... LETTER TO HOLBEIN, THE YOUNGER Holbein, how is it your Last Supper Compels me so? I'm no believer but I Look and, somehow, it doesn't really matter. Your worn blue sheet of Heaven stills on In its dusk, chilling to a...

The Red Dress of Poetry.(Poem)
October 1, 2002... THE RED DRESS OF POETRY It's short, shines in sun, is made of leather And fits like it's molded over her ass, The one the Muse wears when and wherever Our paths cross and it comes to pass That we pull off that very...

Dorothy Hewett.(life and work of Australian poet considered)
October 1, 2002... I MET DOROTHY HEWETT in Perth in the late 1960s when I was a student with literary ambitions. I had met two or three published authors before, but she was the first published poet. Knowing her was of huge importance for me and for other young...

Food for Risen Bodies.(Poem)
October 1, 2002... FOOD FOR RISEN BODIES A rare dish is right for those who have lain bandaged in a tomb for weeks: quince and quail to demonstrate that fruit and birds still grow on trees, eels to show that fish still needle...

Ascension Day.(Poem)
October 1, 2002... ASCENSION DAY In the Blue Lobster Cafe backyard, the head chef--arms outstretched-- bears what looks like a body, but conjures six cook's shirts, hot-laundered, pegged out, dripping in a drench of sun. ...

Edge of the World.(Poem)
October 1, 2002... EDGE OF THE WORLD Sand in the gale at low tide like smoke with a sting, and under it--half disinterred-- gold-scarlet razor shells, like countless open coffins. Their risen bodies--lissom, made of light...

Food for Risen Bodies.(Poem)
October 1, 2002... FOOD FOR RISEN BODIES On that final night, his meal was formal: lamb with bitter leaves of endive, chervil, bread with olive oil and jars of wine. Now on Tiberias' shores he grills a carp and catfish breakfast on a...

Insomnia and Charlton Heston. (Film).(film critiqued; memories of famous actor)(Movie Review)
October 1, 2002... AS AMERICAN film genres like the western and the gangster film and the police procedural have evolved, the closer they have come to classic tragedy. Not just the films that borrowed devices and plots from Shakespeare such as Broken Lance with...

Grandmother in Crete.(Poem)
October 1, 2002... GRANDMOTHER IN CRETE (1) In Hania's public garden where Old men sit out their days, I sense In shadows creeping round my chair My gran about to pounce, as once In childhood as I played in our Woodshed,...

The Lady from New Guinea, the Lady from New York.
October 1, 2002... Each as unlike the other as Queen of Hearts and Jack of Clubs, could these two ever be thought of as peas from the same pod?--as sisters from some same womb? Their sole seeming sameness: my brief acquaintance with one ended, my brief...

Someone Has Blundered.(Making Babies: Is There a Right to Have Children?)(Book Review)
October 1, 2002... Making Babies: Is There a Right to Have Children?, by Mary Warnock; Oxford University Press, 2002, $39.95. I DON'T KNOW how it is with poetry and novels but I do know that, while the puffs on the backs of academic books are written by...

Dangerous intimacy.(Literature, Technology and Magical Thinking, 1880-1920)(Book Review)
October 1, 2002... Literature, Technology and Magical Thinking, 1880-1920, by Pamela Thurschwell; Cambridge University Press, 2001, $140. IN HIS LATER YEARS, Henry James liked to dictate his books to an amanuensis rather than writing them himself. His last...

Bainbridge's Johnson.(According to Queeney)(Book Review)
October 1, 2002... According to Queeney, by Beryl Bainbridge; Penguin, 2002, $22. ACADEMIC BOOKS about Samuel Johnson are something of a minor industry. But an equally powerful indication of the enduring influence of the eighteenth-century critic, poet,...

Slow learners.(Student Radicals: The Old Left at Sydney University)(Book Review)
October 1, 2002... Student Radicals: The Old Left at Sydney University, by Alan Barcan; Melbourne University Press, 2002, $59.95. ONLY ALAN BARCAN could have written this book. Not just because he is an historian used to handling sources critically, or...

Children of Abrahams.(Australian Genesis: Jewish Convicts and Settlers 1788-1860)(Book Review)
October 1, 2002... Australian Genesis: Jewish Convicts and Settlers 1788-1860, by John S. Levi and G.F.J. Bergman (new edition); Melbourne University Press, 2002, $89.95. IN THESE TIMES there is a certain exquisite irony in picking up Levi and Bergman s...

Ocean of discomfort. (Ryan).
October 1, 2002... IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN the piracy--reports of pirates active in the Pacific, just north-east of Australia; or perhaps it was the elections--many killed, and thousands scared away from the polls as Papua New Guinea returned the government of Sir...