Just before 10am on 19th February 1942, 152 bombers and a fighter escort of 36 Mitsubishi A6M Zeros appeared above Darwin Harbour. A second wave arrived two hours later. To this day, nobody knows exactly how many people were killed in the bombing of Darwin. A report the following month found at least 242 died, but much higher estimates have been offered. There is a widespread, but probably untrue, belief that the wartime government covered up the extent of the destruction. Early newspaper stories and official statements gave very low death tolls, but these reflected the figures Canberra had at… [Read more]
On Hope
These days rattle against a sense I’ve always prized, of some certainty in life. Something to count on. Beyond dying of course, though that now seems a part of this greater chaos. It is hard to muster hope. Harder still to plan in a way that might encourage it. But we push on. Work—if we are lucky enough to have it between times cities lock shut, dashing jobs like shattered glass—seems a strange half shadow of itself. Similar motions, to similar ends, but hollowed from the core as we sit at home no longer in creative company. Going through the… [Read more]
Argit: On Applying for Grants
I’ve done what I love doing most of my life. I’ve been very fortunate in this way. When I worked as a journo and photographer, I found my calling working with NGOs. I could work without a translator as I speak at least four languages fluently, and I had great connections, also known as ‘fixers’, who took me where I wanted to go without having to worry about who was picking up the tab. Like most journos, finding time to apply for funding is hard, to say the least. Although grant applications to fund journalistic work aren’t as complicated as… [Read more]
What I’m Reading
In June of this year I moved back, temporarily, to Sydney. I say moved ‘back’ because I lived in Sydney as a teenager and in my early twenties: 12 of my 38 years, with the remainder spent in regional Victoria and Melbourne. But Sydney marked me formatively. It’s brutal and beautiful. I feel nostalgic for it but I also remember how it felt to struggle here. I remember why I left. I haven’t moved back to the Sydney I remember. In some ways that would be impossible; more than 15 years have passed and cities, particularly ones you have nostalgia… [Read more]
I Went to the Shops to Buy Milk in Pyjamas and Ugg Boots
The lampoons of Number Five came rapidly rapidly on Thursday after the announcement, Dan, Jeroen and Martin Foley sporting muscle t-shirts and guns in a Fast Five movie poster, Melbourne Lockdown Number 5 lyrics to the tune of Lou Bega, the Shovel doing its usual funnies, a Chanel No.5 bottle ‘No. 5 LOCKDOWN MELBOURNE: EAU DE FARKED’. And then we stopped and we fell silent because it hit us we are farked. And even the blue rain streaks falling from the clouds on the ABC 7pm News Weather Report froze life on hold. And the skies opened and Melbourne wordlessly… [Read more]
Winners Announced: Meanjin University of Melbourne Student Poetry Competition
We are delighted to announce the winners of our first ever poetry competition, held for students of the University of Melbourne. The winning poem will be published in our Spring 2021 print edition, and the two runner-ups will be published on our blog. Without further ado, the winner is: The Diet Coke Side of the Moon, by George Cox. George Cox is currently completing an honours thesis about I. A. Richards and aesthetic education. His poems have become a bit more affective, recently, but he’s hoping it’s just a phase. The runners-up are: Noctiluca… [Read more]
What I’m Reading
Anne Enright hides her books in the basement. ‘Books are like knives,’ Enright says as she sits on her couch in County Wicklow, swatting away questions about her reading habits. ‘I don’t like people picking up my books and saying “what’s this like?” … People do nothing but boast about their books, nonstop … But I can’t. They are too personal. They are too much part of my machine.’ It is the only time in the interview that she turns away from the camera, her profile firm and still. The image of books stowed below ground loops in my mind…. [Read more]
Armed and Vaxless
What about this for a story of an under 40 trying to get vaccinated in Australia. So old mate Morrison says late June 28 that under-40s can seek out the AstraZeneca jab via their GP. The following morning I call my GP. Receptionist tells me they don’t administer the AZ vaccine at their clinic. I call the GP I was seeing prior to her—they do administer AZ but my particular GP is on maternity leave. Thumbs down. Meantime, a shitshow of a week is unfolding. Medical experts are publicly squabbling with each other over Morrison’s off-the-cuff comment. CHO’s are dishing… [Read more]
What I’m Reading
This is one of those columns that I read semi-regularly especially when friends and colleagues are giving their response, but it’s not one I ever thought I’d be asked to do. It’s uncool to admit you’re excited to be asked, isn’t it? I’ve never been cool: am absolutely thrilled! Truthfully, since developing chronic c-PTSD symptoms in 2019, my reading isn’t as voracious as it used to be: do people with PTSD in disciplines where they are expected to consume a lot of information in various media talk about the brain fog? I’ve cut down from reading maybe 1.5 books a… [Read more]
What I’m Reading
I find it hard to concentrate. I repeat myself more often than I’d like. It’s the internet; it’s the pandemic; it’s the doom clouds above in another Victorian winter. I wonder how scatterbrained we would seem to my grandparents, their parents. In another decade I read Don Quixote in Berlin. I was by myself and staying in a quiet hostel that had once been a hotel. It was far too nice for a hostel and it was empty and I didn’t know why. Suspicious elderly East Germans glared at me and my long grey hair when I walked past. I… [Read more]
