Category Archive: AUSTRALIANIA
The Fair Good Friday
(Glenelg v West Adelaide at Glenelg Oval, 2 April 2021) On May 7, 1921, Glenelg played its first game, against West Adelaide, on Adelaide Oval. West won (18.10 to 6.5). The newbies were hopelessly outclassed but kept on punching (you can read all about it in chapter 3 of Pride of the Bay). The Tigers wouldn’t win a game until 1925, but now, in its 100th year, it has a fair bit to roar about. 100 years later, almost to the day, The Bays met its first foe, this time at ‘The G.’ At least the Tigers failed to lose…
Continue Reading →Prison Journal
(Volume I: The Cardinal Makes His Appeal) (by George Cardinal Pell) (2020) The story is notorious, and you don’t require the gift of faith or have to hold a brief for the real victim to find it shocking. Pell was the leading Catholic figure in Australia, of a conservative bent, and detested by many Australians, who considered him a monster. The reasons for this seem to be that he was the leading Catholic figure in Australia, and of a conservative bent. His conviction for historical sex crimes saw a ‘pile-on’ of a magnitude only comparable with the demonisation of Lindy…
Continue Reading →Parody # 10: Australia, 2021
(with apologies to William Wordsworth) Tony Abbott! thou shouldst be with us at this hour: Australia hath need of thee: she is a swamp Of stagnant waters; dust, and rising damp, Our wealth for toil and sea-girt bower Have lost strength, their inner steel doth cower – We now are selfish, addled, multi-gendered dopes: Please raise us up, do restore our hopes; Let us not scare easily with each passing shower. Thy words could quite embarrass, yet ring clear; But never weasel words, never insincere …
Continue Reading →Thorngrove Manor
(January, 2021) Sometimes in this crazy epoch, you feel like heading for the hills. Fortunately, if you live in or come to Adelaide, the hills are 10 minutes away. And you don’t have to sequester yourself in some hut like Ted Kaczynski’s cabin: instead, take the M1 Freeway from town to Thorngrove, between Stirling/Aldgate and Mt. Lofty and the townlet of Crafers. The Manor is a Gothic Revival dream – a kind of Strawberry Hill – but with its own bespoke design features that make guests feel they are King and Queen of the castle. The angels are in the…
Continue Reading →A Different Anthem
[Thoughts toward a final reconciliation of, or reckoning with, the Australian peoples, written in dejection at the news Melbourne’s 2021 Australia Day parade has been cancelled due to COVID-19 concerns, whilst an “Invasion Day” dawn service will proceed, with the support of Melbourne City Council.] [We hope that the following thoughts do not fructify – Ed.] We have nominated our preferred date for Australia’s National Day of Celebration/Commiseration, and now consider possible alternatives to the current national anthem, recently adjusted by bureaucratic fiat to substitute “young and free” with “one and free” to suit the present generation’s designer mood. This…
Continue Reading →