September 2019

Why a Hann Highway could be a monument to Indigenous genocide | Paul Daley

Submitted by Paul Daley on

History implicates the Hann brothers in terrible frontier violence. No highway should be named in their honour

Frank and William Hann are legends in the annals of North Queensland’s white colonial pastoral and settler history.

About 1862, having originally landed in Victoria from Wiltshire, England, the brothers moved to the Burdekin River district of Queensland, the new frontier of pastoral expansion and violent dispossession of Indigenous landowners.

We demean our history when we turn the Australian War Memorial into Disneyland | Paul Daley

Submitted by Paul Daley on

The Coalition’s $500m expansion plans deviate from the memorial’s mission, undermining what should be a space for quiet reflection

Brendon Kelson is a former senior career commonwealth public servant whose many jobs included directing the Australian War Memorial from 1990 to 1994.

He turned 84 last week. When I last saw him, he was fit and feisty, smiling, and his eyes sparkling with wit. But he has been crook of late, in hospital with pneumonia; Canberra’s winters become tougher the older you get.