As you would have observed from many previous essays, I have had a long time interest in indigenous affairs and in particular the need for Australians to address indigenous disadvantage. Unfortunately we have made few inroads into addressing indigenous disadvantage. The reasons behind this are complex. But basically, although there are many indigenous families now […]

In my little book Augustus Finds Serenity, the sage Takygulpa Rinpoche has been asked to give advice to a religious community. Among other things he tells the assembled throng: Do not take life too seriously. The glue that holds our communities together best is made from shared joy and good humour. Just as we are […]

I thought that old age was supposed to bring us wisdom. But in my case it seems to bring more confusion. I must confess that I am dumbfounded by some of the social trends that I witness. Those of you that have followed my meanderings in my blog essays over the years would be aware […]

I suppose this is a sort of “trigger warning”. I intend my blog this week to be provocative. If you don’t want to be challenged best you continue no further! And what is the confronting issue I am going to attempt to deal with this week? It is parenting. Now I am not going to […]

It is interesting that today the use of the word “myth” has a pejorative nature about it. We call something a myth when it seems factually untrue and deliberately designed to mislead. To so misuse the notion of myth is to do it a great injustice. The ancient Greeks made the distinction between Mythos and […]

I suppose that viewing it now, my childhood home wouldn’t seem a very salubrious dwelling to many. But I thought it was wonderful! A hundred metres or so to the east ran the train line. But it didn’t worry us much because the trains were pretty infrequent. On the southern side was the station master’s […]

When Europeans settled in Australia in the late eighteenth century they had little knowledge of its prior occupants. Some of the Dutch and English seamen who had chanced by the shores of the Great Southern Land had encountered the indigenous inhabitants. Some of those encounters were amiable and some were hostile. But, by and large, […]

Most of us baby-boomers will remember that in the 1960’s a Canadian academic, Marshall McLuhan, whom we’d never heard of, famously declared “The medium is the message!” It was one of those iconic statements that few of us understood but seemed so right we could not help but applaud it. What did it mean? Some […]

It seems innate in human beings to have a sense of wonder. Being confronted with mystery however brings out different responses in people. The left-brain dominant determinists and materialists are uncomfortable when they can’t answer the questions of “why” and “how”. For that we probably should be grateful because such people have done the legwork […]

Malcolm Turnbull is no doubt justified in initiating a Royal Commission into the treatment of young people in the Northern Territory’s detention centres. The inmates of these facilities have been treated appallingly and we need to see that the welfare of the young men incarcerated in these institutions is protected. No civilised society should condone […]