Tony Abbott’s history of Australia comes as a surprise. It has a spellbinding verve which will beguile friend and foe alike. We don’t expect such narrative command from a former prime minister of Australia. In office, Abbott was a believer in the ‘lean and lift’ principle of civic life, with a marked preference for the
Elizabeth Harrower (1928-2020) became an Australian literary classic before she had fully established herself as an Australian writer. She had a rough childhood in Newcastle, New South Wales, and once contemplated lying on the road in the dead of night waiting to be run over. She described herself as a ‘divorced child’, saw her father
Sydney was at the edge of winter, with that crisp thin sunlight that can make the harbour city idyllic, when my friend Colin Oehring and I were there for the first Bill Henson opening since the one Kevin Rudd found ‘disgusting’ and which was closed down by the police despite getting a G rating from
It’s not hard to see why Robyn Nevin should have made such a beeline for Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking, or why the Melbourne Theatre Company should be hosting this production. This one-hander about the evolution of grief had been done with remarkable success in New York by Vanessa Redgrave, and it was