March 2019

Sydney moves to autumn without drumroll - surprising for this drama queen of a city | Paul Daley

Submitted by Paul Daley on

I’m celebrating a change of season whose signs I’ve come to long for and celebrate

Born on the second day of autumn, it’s little wonder I’ve always felt most at home in cities where that season celebrates itself with dramatic shifts of hue and climate.

Melbourne. Canberra. London. And Canberra again, where the Limestone Plains – and the hundreds of thousands of European trees imposed upon them – segue from verdant to every glorious variation of russet and gold, as the air sharpens under an ever more vivid, clear cobalt sky.

'A big jump': People might have lived in Australia twice as long as we thought | Paul Daley

Submitted by Paul Daley on

The result of 11 years of research suggests that human habitation could stretch to 120,000 years

Extensive archaeological research in southern Victoria has again raised the prospect that people have lived in Australia for 120,000 years – twice as long as the broadly accepted period of human continental habitation.

As the toll of Australia’s frontier brutality keeps climbing, truth telling is long overdue | Paul Daley

Submitted by Paul Daley on

The myth of benign, peaceful settlement persists today – even as historians reveal a far more sinister picture

• The Killing Times: the massacres of Aboriginal people Australia must confront
• A massacre map of the frontier wars – interactive