Tag: Australian history
Sunday essay: a slave state – how blackbirding in colonial Australia created a legacy of racism
Image: Kanakas on a sugar cane plantation, Queensland c.1890. Public domain
In July 2021, Jack Dempsey, the mayor of Bundaberg, delivered an official apology for Northern...
Is Australian rhyming slang in a bit of froth and bubble? Let’s take a Captain Cook (spoiler: the billy lids may hold the key)
Image: Wes Mountain/The Conversation
Have you heard? Barry Crocker’s having a … well, Barry Crocker (“shocker”) of a time with those Reg Grundies (“undies”) people.
Karens everywhere can relate – they know it’s Jeffed up...
Paul Daley’s Jesustown: a novel of lurid, postcolonial truth-telling
Image: Shutterstock - Jesustown is a fictional mission in Arnhem Land
How can fiction contribute to the “truth” that the Uluru Statement asks us to tell? Allen...
Sunday essay: why soldiers commit war crimes – and what we can do about it
A member of the US’s elite counterterrorism force in Iraq, wearing a skull mask. Khalid Mohammed/AP
The following essay contains disturbing images and language.
In 2020, the...
Need to renew your passport? The weird history of Australian passports explains how they got so expensive
Image: Shutterstock
Now borders are open, Australians are applying for and renewing passports in droves. Wait times have doubled.
The cost of the Australian biometric passport and the rigour...
Sunday essay: ‘I said no’ – Nie’s refusal and the troubling question of Pacific slavery in Australia
Image: A Pacific island woman with a child planting sugar cane in a field, Bingara, Queensland, c 1897. John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland.
In...