‘This saved my life’: the emotional alchemy bonding traumatised veterans and damaged racehorses
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In the NSW southern highlands, Horse Aid is working to ‘un-soldier’ former defence personnel and ‘un-race’ thoroughbreds
Articles
Tony Birch: ‘I got into a lot of fights. I was a very good street boxer’
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Life could have turned out very differently for Birch, who was twice expelled from school as a boy. The celebrated author reflects on masculinity, AFL and surviving domestic violence
Loving Collingwood is about the heart and not the head – and my grandfather’s story helped forge my emotional connection | Paul Daley
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My grandfather ‘played for Collingwood’ but my family is yet to fully untangle his tragic history
Every supporter has a unique personal story about why they barrack for their team. It might involve a special moment. Just as often it’s about where we’ve come from – geographically and genealogically, emotionally and sentimentally.
I quit Facebook and Twitter cold turkey – and I barely know myself | Paul Daley
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All of that humblebragging and oversharing – and my obsessive checking of it – was driving me insane. Why did I stay so long?
Quite how insidiously some social media had altered my brain wasn’t apparent until I kicked the habit.
Her Sunburnt Country by Deborah FitzGerald review – illuminating biography of Dorothea Mackellar
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The first authorised biography reveals the Australian poet’s fascinating contradictions, but has less to say on the wilful white amnesia of her work
Generations of Australians have become almost unwittingly familiar with Dorothea Mackellar’s poetic paean to the Australian landscape, My Country.
Using Neville Bonner’s politics to guess his stance on the voice seems an indolent misuse of history | Paul Daley
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What would the first Aboriginal parliamentarian have thought of the voice to parliament? None of us can ever know – not even George Brandis
The first Aboriginal person in federal parliament, the Liberal senator Neville Bonner, would have “hated the idea” of a constitutionally enshrined Indigenous voice to parliament.
‘We had to walk about all night to keep ourselves alive’: an Aboriginal soldier writes home from the Boer war
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Frank Sinclair’s letters from the front are the earliest known by an Indigenous digger. More than a century later, they – and his family – have been uncovered
The little-known political confidant who ‘helped steer’ Australia’s leaders is finally remembered | Paul Daley
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Driver to 11 PMs, including Sir Robert Menzies, Alf Stafford was a one-off. But history has overlooked him when gazing at the office of power – until now
During the decades I lived in and wrote about Canberra, perhaps the most intriguing person I came across was Gamilaroi and Darug man Alfred – “Alf” – Stafford.
In praise of short books: to start and finish in one sitting is a rare, unbridled joy | Paul Daley
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Writing a short novel is an enviable skill that, when pulled off, can be utterly transportive. Here are some recent favourites
- What’s the best short book you’ve ever read? Join us in the comments
In recent weeks and months, more by chance than planning, I’ve been reading more much shorter books than I usually do. A slow and careful reader, I take on average a week to finish a 300-page novel (I once read that most adult novels are between 70,000 to 120,000 words). Nonfiction books usually take me significantly longer.
Children must be protected from the influence of companies profiting from war | Paul Daley
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Primary and secondary schools are not the place for weapons manufacturers to be extending their reach
When you visit the southern hemisphere’s biggest aerospace weapons show you expect to see plenty of machines, worth billions of dollars, that kill lots of people and make companies obscenely wealthy.