During his press conference on 28 June 2021, Prime Minister Scott Morrison was asked about Australia re-opening its borders, which closed March 2020. Morrison’s reply made it clear that this is not on the cards. He highlighted Australia’s ‘advantage at this point’ when it comes to Covid-19 and spoke about Australia’s ‘success to date’. Closed borders aren’t a partisan matter. Victorian Labor Premier Daniel Andrews called for a cap on international arrivals to allow the Government time to deal with the latest Delta variant and until a ‘critical mass’ of Australians had been vaccinated. Andrews proposed that the cap should… [Read more]
On The Death Of A Character Actor
Ned Beatty has died, at the age of 83. One of the greatest ‘hey, it’s that guy!’ character actors, Beatty starred in over 160 films, was nominated for an Oscar and two Emmys, and embodied each role with a deceptive ease that made you feel like you and he had just had a nice catch-up at a bar together, right before he sauntered on screen. From his shocking debut in John Boorman’s Deliverance (1972), to Robert Altman’s Nashville (1975), Elaine May’s Mikey and Nicky (1976), Alan J. Pakula’s All the President’s Men and countless others, Beatty was as much a… [Read more]
What I’m Reading
When Covid-19 emerged, my reading choices veered sharply to factual. I trained as an epidemiologist. Now, here was the disaster I’d been taught was inevitable. I pored over scientific papers about the new virus, trying to understand what was happening, as did my friend Peter whom I met at graduate school in Seattle, 30-something years ago. We began emailing each other critiques of public health responses to the pandemic, Peter from California where he’d retired, me from the Central Victorian bush. Peter approached the task with rigour, reviewing the modelling and preparing a summary ‘memo’ for me and his many… [Read more]
What I’m Reading
It might sound morbid, but I’ve been reading a lot of epitaphs lately. It’s because I’ve been spending a lot of time in a cemetery. Melbourne General Cemetery, to be precise. I go there most days, via the Macpherson Street gates. On entering, the road is flanked with contemporary graves. Many of these are Italian. Their epitaphs are mostly brief, though flush with sentiment. Beyond that stretch, the road diverts. I head right and curve toward the Princes Park side to one of many Roman Catholic sections. On the way, by the road, an especially eye-catching memorial. A bronze head… [Read more]
Meanjin Editorial, June 2021
The boundaries of the state are elusive and arbitrary. Beyond and between them is a void. The idea of ‘Australia’ ends just a few metres from where I’m writing, in an alley between this building and the next. From my workday window I gaze directly into several rooms opposite, the windows of a hotel now co-opted as a detention centre; a prison for men who fled one state under duress and are yet to find the comfort of belonging in another. Rain is spattering, the day is suddenly cool. There are lights on and men in their rooms. I walk… [Read more]
What I’m Reading
I’m always a little hesitant to speak about the books I’ve read. And that’s because there are so many books I haven’t read. Compared to a lot of authors I know, I get through an embarrassingly small number of books. The reason is that I read painfully slowly. Sentence by sentence, word by word. And I go back and re-read sentences just to make sure I’ve really understood and appreciated them. When I’m sure there’s no one listening, I like to read out loud, rolling each word around my mouth. And when I can’t read out loud, I read just… [Read more]
Dear Melbourne …
I love my city. I was born in this city. One day I’ll die here. I learned to love it by leaving it and now I grieve and sulk and rage with it. My vibrant, posturing, mercurial city. Flawed and cracked and verdant and roaring, now silent and sullen. Stupefied by yet another lockdown when we know we’ve already done enough. Done too much. The novelty wore off long ago. Bread makers and baking tins gather dust at the back of cupboards not cleaned out since the frenetic activity of Lockdown One. Yesterday I sidled past the long irritable queues… [Read more]
Gaza and the 20-year War on Terror
Last week’s Q&A farce did not surprise me in the way it could have. I was not surprised by the difficulty of Palestinians to get one voice on the panel, or that the two handpicked questions were by from Zionists.
Lockdown 4.0: A Conversation With Myself, Because That’s Where It’s At
Here we are once more, friends. We welcomed you back, neighbours beyond the ring of steel, now we say hooroo again. We haven’t used those words, this time, have we? There’s something less fortress-like, now, in the ambience. I don’t feel like being a warrior battling through, do you? There’s not much to write, this time. This is writing about nothing, because there is nothing to write, smothered in The Nothing. Our Neverending Story. Wish I had a Falcor to wrap me in shiny pink scales and give me hope as luckdragons are meant to do. My head is one… [Read more]
What I’m Reading
Last month, for the first time in more than a year, I slept in a bed that was not my own. At the foot of a ravine, on the bend of a river, I fed logs into flames and drank red wine. I poked coals and consumed Sarah Sentilles’ Draw Your Weapons until the evening turned charcoal. Then I settled under the star-shot sky to think about the connections she had drawn between art and philosophy, trauma and morality. Later I lay in bed and, through the bleed of rain down the wall-length window, read the constellations. To the sound of… [Read more]
