March 2020

We face a pandemic of mental health disorders. Those who do it hardest need our support | Paul Daley

Ironically, there has never been a time when we need to be – metaphorically – in tighter social embrace

Yes, this is a frightening, deadly viral pandemic. But another plague, one we are not hearing nearly enough about from our leaders, will arrive in a wave just behind it.

That is the pandemic of severe depression and anxiety that will sweep over the world as the unemployment rate pushes into previously unseen digits, families who’d prefer to be socially distant are thrust together and young people are denied the certainty and structure of school.

Truganini's story has always been told as tragedy. She was so much more than that | Paul Daley

A new biography does profound service to this remarkable First Nations woman, whose life is so often reduced to tropes

Too many prominent Indigenous figures are recalled in popular myth and history as supposedly having slipped between traditional and European worlds.

Even when historians began affording greater texture to the Indigenous experience in the mid-20th century (novelists and dramaturgs would follow), popular distorted myths about some of the most important Aboriginal people of colonial times nonetheless persisted.

How Spanish flu nearly ripped apart Australia's fledgling federation | Paul Daley

A nation supposedly forged in the hellfire of war almost crumbled in the face of a virulent threat at home

Newly federated Australia, with its population not yet 5 million, was still enduring shocking fatalities on the European western front when its authorities began paying attention to the virulent strain of pneumonic influenza sweeping Britain.

Captain Cook's cottage – the place he didn't ever call home | Paul Daley

We’re about to be subjected to the frenzy commemorating the 250th anniversary of Cook’s arrival. We should get a few facts right first

As a child I often spent Saturday mornings in Melbourne’s Fitzroy Gardens.

A highlight was always visiting a curious, somewhat magical place called “Captain Cook’s cottage”.