February 2020

Flinders (and his cat) get statues – so why not the Aboriginal man who sailed with them? | Paul Daley

Submitted by Paul Daley on

If we can spend $7m to commemorate a fictional Cook circumnavigation, Bungaree’s real one justifies a monument

Since 1996 a statue of a cat has perched on a ledge outside the Mitchell Library on Sydney’s Macquarie Street.

The cat, Trim, together with Bungaree, an Aboriginal man, sailed with navigator Matthew Flinders (whose statue stands before the cat’s outside the Mitchell) on his 1801-1803 circumnavigation of the continent he named Australia.

An unthinkable loss stops us cold – and then shocks us with love | Paul Daley

Submitted by Paul Daley on

In their grief, the parents of the killed children have shown the generosity of the human heart

At the fiery end of an Australian summer marred with fear, anxiety, and terrible human and property loss came the happening too dreadful to conceive of.