Category Archive: Australian Politics
O Happy Day
(image by Kaoz69)
January 26 – Australia Day Invasion Day, Survival Day, Moor-Your-Boat Day – an arbitrary dot on time’s spectrum was chosen as lucky little Australia’s modern, Gregorian, anniversary date. That’s when HMS Supply moored in Sydney Cove one choppy morning in 1788, Captain Arthur Phillip and a small crew rowed ashore, and claimed the continent in the name of Mad King George III. There are roughly three camps who pitch their tents on our National Day – those who hold 26/1/1788 sacred; those who hold it as profane, and the great silent majority who view it through the lens of beer and barbeques. The genuine and perhaps…
Continue Reading →The Fine Arts Party
A Fine Arts Party (Pieter de Hooch)
It being Friday 13th, The Varnished Culture will break from its traditional disdain of party-politics and weigh-in to the current imbroglio. There’s a federal election in Australia set for 2 July 2016, when we will have to watch the skies (it being World UFO Day as well). Recently, P suggested, innocently, that only a terrorist could enthusiastically, seriously, cast a vote for the Greens. Whereupon my two very reasonable and intelligent interlocutors informed me that they would be likely to vote for the Greens. (I am certain they are not terrorists). So ended my brief role as a pundit. Be that as it…
Continue Reading →Safety Last
Safety Last...Todd Russell 'clocks off' (checks in his personal safety tag)
9 May 2016 10 years ago today, Todd Russell and Brant Webb left the Beaconsfield mine in northern Tassie, where they had been trapped for two weeks. We honour them and their not-so-lucky comrade, miner Larry Knight, who perished far underground. However, their dramatic story remains ripe for political and commercial exploitation – there’s a TV mini-series in the offing, and a photo-opportunity has already availed itself on the campaign trail. See our updated link to Ace in the Hole for more details.
Continue Reading →Rampage at Port Arthur
28 April 1996 TVC has friends who were honeymooning in Tasmania on the above date. That morning, they had a lovers’ tiff: she wanted to go to Port Arthur, the pretty but desolate and spine-tingling remnants of early convict settlement, vividly recounted in Richard Flanagan’s Gould’s Book of Fish (although that is set elsewhere in Tasmania). Her beau, however, thought they should take advantage of the mild weather to climb picturesque Cradle Mountain, and his argument prevailed. It’s the kind of argument where you can never say ‘I told you so.’ For that day, a young (28 year old), well-to-do,…
Continue Reading →Damned Whores and God’s Police
Black-eyed Sue and Sweet Poll say goodbye (by Robert Sayers)
(by Anne Summers) (1975) (updated 1994, to 2000s and beyond) The title is a bit of a howler, for it derives from a statement attributed to someone in partial error. But it is still a great title, and it synthesizes the point of the book, which is to reveal and detail how the bifurcation, by colonial authority, of early Australian females into saints and tramps, has formed the nation’s bedrock and permeated the social fabric ever since. This is a difficult case to make. For instance, such ‘types’ are considered somewhat one-dimensionally cartoonish now. And wouldn’t the outlook change with the development of a free…
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