There is a persistent quote that stalks all music writers. Its provenance is disputed – Thelonius Monk? Clara Schumann? Laurie Anderson? Elvis Costello? – but it is widely held to settle everything: ...

I first learned of Captain Moonlite from the historian Graham Willett. In Secret Histories of Queer Melbourne, a book Willett co-edited, Moonlite features “as the bushranger most likely to qualify as ...

The Scott Morrison who claims that deterring boat people from ever embarking on the hazardous journey across the Indian Ocean ...

In his magnificent address to parliament in February 2008, it seemed as though Kevin Rudd had not merely parted company with Howard on the question of the Stolen Generations, but had sided with ...

Glyn Davis, vice-chancellor of the University of Melbourne, has on his shelves a copy of Microcosmographia Academica, the classic university satire, written by the University of Cambridge scholar ...

Just a short drive from the Portuguese university town of Coimbra, in Vale de Canas, a sea of eucalypts extends to the horizon in all directions. The tallest tree in Europe sprouted here 120 years ago ...

Paul Kelly and the Dots. Turns out they’ve got the residency, every Friday night at the Kingston Hotel. And Friday night rolls around fast, so before you know it you’re back there checking them out ...

That’s when I first heard the Gaza Strips. It says something of these four young men and one woman that their eponymous debut album announces itself with the left-right-left knockout punches of those ...

But this year, despite the fact that six Australian citizens were awaiting execution in Indonesia, the federal government chose not to voice its objection to capital punishment at the meeting of the ...

The children left behind by Australian sex tourists in the Philippines The sky bruises at the same time each day in Angeles City. Then the rain comes. The weather is so similar – steamy heat, then ...

One hot afternoon in February 2014, in the pleasant Victorian township of Tyabb, south-east of Melbourne, an 11-year-old boy called Luke Batty was playing in the nets after cricket practice with his ...