Articles

Relief and reckoning: the first world war was over and Australia counted the cost

Patriotic fervour greeted Australia’s entry in 1914. By the time of the armistice on 11 November 1918, the country was marred by rancour

It was mid-afternoon on the east coast of Australia when allied commanders and their German counterparts, after meeting for several days at the forest of Compiègne in battle-devastated northern France, agreed to the terms that would end the first world war.

The $498m about to be blown on the Australian War Memorial could be spent better | Paul Daley

Did the expensive project just get the rubber stamp because of the magic Anzac cloak?

A few years ago the Australian historian and novelist Peter Cochrane wrote: “Drape ‘Anzac’ over an argument and, like a magic cloak, the argument is sacrosanct.”

Every time I go to Bunnings I feel like I’ve left a little bit of my soul behind | Paul Daley

Whether it’s the hardware store or Ikea – AKA the divorce factory – there are harsh realities to be confronted


I’m sure Bunnings is a verb.

As in, “It’s Saturday so we’d better do what half of Sydney does and Bunnings before the car park fills up.”

Related: I hope that by staying home I have shown my kids that there is another way | Paul Daley

'A presence on our terms': the Aboriginal Memorial is artwork and political statement | Paul Daley

Thirty years after its creation the memorial is more important than ever in its service of national memory

It is three decades since white Australia threw an exclusive party for itself to celebrate a bicentenary of European invasion and settlement that trampled on the sensibilities of this continent’s Indigenous people.

Etched in Bone – chronicling Australia's shameful trade in Indigenous remains | Paul Daley

A sensitive documentary shows the theft and eventual return of human bones to Arnhem Land

Early next month when the documentary film, Etched in Bone, is screened for the small west Arnhem Land Aboriginal settlement of Gunbalanya it will be almost seven decades to the day since an expedition of American and Australian scientists stole the remains of community elders and dispatched them to Washington.

As I prepare to watch my Magpies play, I ponder history and family, football and life | Paul Daley

Win or lose this Saturday, to me and thousands of other fiercely tribal Collingwood fans it will be about so much more than the game

Whenever I glance up from the desk here in Sydney my eye is drawn to two copies of century-plus-old faded and framed photographs on the wall of my study.

Related: AFL grand final fans: planes, buses and lessons learnt from nuns

Colonial Australia’s foundation is stained with the profits of British slavery | Paul Daley

A dive into the hidden histories of Australia’s early settlers shows the country wasn’t just built on the sheep’s back

As the decades shed ever more light on colonialism’s brutal treatment of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, Australia has sought reassurance that at least, unlike Britain and America, our history is not marred with the heinous stain of the Caribbean and African slave trade.

"Wholesale massacre": Carl Feilberg exposed the ugly truth of the Australian frontier | Paul Daley

The real ‘settler’ and pioneering stories of Feilberg’s Queensland were confronting and frightening

During his short life Danish-born Carl Feilberg risked more than any other Australian journalist or author to expose the brutality against Indigenous people on the ultra-violent Queensland colonial frontier of the late 19th century.

A death threat stuck on a piece of rubbish? That's too much even for the trash detectives | Paul Daley

Until I saw the note stapled to a rusty old drying rack, I had thought my neighbourhood was quite safe

A few weeks ago when I was walking down near the ferry terminal, a peaceful place where I like to go with my labrador Ronda and watch the boats, I saw this message attached to a piece of discarded household junk.

If you don’t move your rubbish from here
I know where you live
and I will kill you

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