© 2018 Greg & Sylvia RAY

Indigenous

Read more about the article Why I’m voting Yes to the Voice
Peter Dutton and His Master's Voice. By Peter Lewis.

Why I’m voting Yes to the Voice

An angry old white bloke had a go at me the other day. He didn’t like my “Free Assange” T-shirt. His reaction took me a little bit by surprise. I’d forgotten I was wearing that shirt. And I’d also forgotten about that other country, the alternative Australia that exists alongside mine but where things look different. Of course I visit that old colonial outpost every day, but I slip across the border like a ghost in disguise, conduct my business and head home again. “What do you mean, ‘Free Assange?’”, he snorted at me. I had…

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Read more about the article In memory of body-snatchers and headhunters

In memory of body-snatchers and headhunters

It's a tricky business, naming modern-day edifices after long-dead people. You might have an idea in mind that your candidate was a solid citizen with many outstanding virtues, but it's often worth checking just in case there's a skeleton or two in the closet. The John Hunter Hospital in Newcastle, NSW, offers a couple of examples. I was health reporter for The Newcastle Herald at the time the John Hunter Hospital was opened, and I recall a suggestion by the health board chairman that the hospital be named the "Johns Hunter". This was, I think, a…

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Read more about the article Notes from the frontier wars, NSW, 1848
Unrelated illustration from The Town and Country Journal, December 14, 1872. Indicates how white people viewed the frontier wars.

Notes from the frontier wars, NSW, 1848

Ten years ago I was loaned two fascinating letters, which I was told had been written from the NSW settlement of Stroud in 1848. The letters are of great interest since they bear very strongly on the conflict between indigenous people who had been living in the area near Gloucester and the white settlers who were moving into their territory to claim the land as their own private property. For a long time I had no idea who wrote the letters, having been told they may have been written by somebody named "Robert Scott". Since the…

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