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Finding Light Four Storeys Underground
From Sydney transit chaos to underground hope in Mike Hewson’s ‘The Key’s Under the Mat’ An unsettling entrance The day before I visited The Key’s Under the Mat, Sydney seemed to be quietly malfunctioning. A Telstra outage had crippled the train network on our way from the Southern Highlands. When we finally arrived, we’d seen…
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Health Communications with Human Clarity
Health information shouldn’t feel clinical. It should be elegant, persuasive, and a pleasure to read. No problem. I’ll also make it accessible, insight-driven, and Ahpra-aligned. General practice patient education Good patient education builds confidence. Through MVMM, I’ve developed evidence-based patient education articles for general practice, translating complex medical information into clear, practical guidance for patients.…
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Tár: Unless You’ve Seen the Film Twice, You May Have Misread It
Todd Field’s film, Tar, required more than one viewing for it to make sense. It’s a critique of cancel culture and the corruption of power, as well as a homage to Tarkovsky.
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The Extraordinary Ritual I do Every New Year’s Eve
The most effective personal goal-setting ritual I use every year to achieve my life goals. Mind, Body, Heart and Soul.
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For some people, getting vaccinated is scarier than getting COVID
The stakes are high for the vaccine-hesitant on religious grounds. But this has a history much longer than Covid. How do we convince them it’s not the ‘mark of the beast’?
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Why is My Son Obsessed with Trains?
My son is obsessed with trains and it is all my fault. What to do? Feed the obsession. Clothes, books, toys, experiences
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The Choke by Sofie Laguna: Review
The Choke by Sofie Laguna is a superb piece of writing. Structurally well-crafted with prose that’s full of the vigour of youth, the nasty resourcefulness of degrading poverty.
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Simple life advice for my children
I hope it helps to know what I thought were the guiding principles of a good life.
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Walks with Margaret and Jonty
Personal essay on time spent with a neighbour through the stages of cancer during coronavirus.
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Zen & the Art of Washing Dishes
They say life is a series of imperfect facts with many things we can’t control. But the sequence of washing dishes is not one of them. Glassware first.
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Bush Medicine: a quick look at some medicinal and useful native plants
About nine of us, including kids, got to touch, smell, crackle and rub our way through an interactive two hours of fascinating local treasures hidden in plain view.
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Goes down easy and explodes at a pre-set level
It isn’t from the depths of his immersion in computer and VR technology that his revelations unfurl. It is, rather, from a detached overview, looking down, high on the heady fumes wafting up from the cooking circuitry below him, that he is able to make his prognostications.
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Powerhouse PJ Harvey on Hope Six Tour
It’s loud but nuanced. Polly’s vocals are masterful and she soars over the industry sounds and the male voices to pierce the rafters—pitch perfect, every note. One forgets what an extraordinary vocalist she is.
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Military Blunders in the War Against Terror
Archival: LANDMINES I recently saw a Super 8 video filmed by an acquaintance at a Cambodian hospital. The subject was a young man who had to have three men hold him down so that gangrene could be scraped from the inside of his amputated thigh. It is easy to be caught in a western fog…
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The Natural Way of Things: Review
Review of The Natural Way of Things, Stella Prize-winning novel by Charlotte Wood
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You probably know someone with MS who is keeping it secret
This World Multiple Sclerosis (MS) Day, you may spare a thought for those affected by this chronic, debilitating disease. You may not realise, however, that there are people you meet every day with MS who are keeping it secret from you.
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Things I Never Knew Until I was a Parent
Last time I did a VIA Institute personality assessment, my score for self-consciousness was off the chart. Now I sing in the street.
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The Fracture & Other Shorts
The Fracture and other short stories by Danielle Spinks-Earl
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Reckoning by Magda Szubanski
There is no gloating or syrup. There are therapy sessions, and a belief that trauma may be genetically carried from one generation to the next through nightmares and imagery.
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Panic Hour
It’s eight in the morning. An escalator pulls me down from the street into the intestinal darkness. Streaks of lightning blue rush past my left shoulder, Photoshop motion-blur. Same in orange on the opposite wall, like this is an immersive internet advertisement. This tunnel is the cable. We are the particles. A unitary quantum…
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Inside the Kings Cross Medically Supervised Injecting Centre
When Courtney Love kicked off her tour of Australia last month, I took a tour of the Medically Supervised Injecting Centre.
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The Man Who Loves Music
He launched Kate Bush, The Rolling Stones, and Queen, started Ticketek, Sonart, and now EOS. Meet Les Hodge–the Man who loves music.
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The Benley Acquisition
Money is tight in regional New South Wales. How do two competitive shires deal with paltry funding and generations of rivalry respond to the challenge? A comic and quintessentially Australian short story.
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Food, Big Pharma & Multiple Sclerosis
Clad in a tablecloth and fitted with a face cage and helicopter headphones, I am strapped to some vinyl upholstery and remotely rolled into the tube.
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Bad Feelings on Good Friday
I hear a lot of people bemoan the secularisation of religious holidays. The Crucifix has been passed in for a chocolate rabbit. Children worship Santa, the deity of consumption, rather than baby Jesus.
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Melbourne Street Art
Street art musings from Melbourne, Victoria.
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Storm
Lying on a white bed in a wooden room listening to the silence watching her read and there is an inkling of a rumble.
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Versailles of Relief
The gardens seem to run to the horizon. The scale is monumental, breathtaking, intricately beautiful. I have a sense that it isn’t quite real. I’m within a period drama, and it just feels so right. Despite my costume of scarf and denim jeans, the feeling of being in a film is enhanced by the baroque…
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From the Village to the Brothel
After nearly 30 hours of flights, the city of Kathmandu was awash with blood and there were headless carcases of horse-sized beasts on every corner. In my shock, I sent a sarcastic email to family saying that the entrails lining the streets to herald my arrival was an absolutely lovely gesture.
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Mining Industry Propaganda
The recent Australian mining industry campaign (not shown above) certainly looks impressive. The soulful, worried faces of mums and dads, average looking, average people. It seems so believable and important. Even if the statistics are the result of heavy-handed play with definitions as basic as “tax”.
