Australian History
Colonial Casualties, Chinese in Early Victoria by Kathryn Cronin
Australia is not the science-fiction capital of the world; in fact we are probably not even on the map. This unfortunate fact would change if we could produce more writers like Paul Collins.
... (read more)Quite a few years ago, when the future was far more important than the days gone by and the past hadn’t acquired that elusively seductive voice to beckon me with the urgency that it does now, I tended to be rather flippant about the notions of ‘home’ and ‘homeland’. ‘Home’ simply meant where I was at any given time. To an extent such a shallow definition can be attributed to my early experiences of travel and the consequences of the constantly changing landscape which confronted a young backpacker who didn’t feel the necessity of a cultural anchor. I simply moved from one country to another, with the restless compulsion of the Wandering Jew, to satiate a curiosity sparked off by a trip to the exotic wilderness of the Khyber Pass when I was a child.
... (read more)Of the many pernicious legacies of colonialism, Australia’s servility in the face of Britain’s nuclear arms aspirations is one of the most under-reported and most consequential. In this week’s episode of The ABR Podcast, Elizabeth Tynan reads her essay tracing the clandestine history of, and fallout from, the agreements that allowed the British to test atomic weapons at various sites in South and Western Australia after World War II. By highlighting the Menzies government’s eager consent and the Australian media’s compliance, Tynan shows that far from being a passive victim, Australia was largely complicit in tests that wrought havoc on large tracts of land and on the Indigenous communities who lived there.
... (read more)When I was launching my book Atomic Thunder: The Maralinga story in 2016, one of the guests put it to me that the name Maralinga should be just as recognisable in Australian society as Gallipoli. This comment suggested that the British tests had a broader meaning that spoke to a national mythology and were not just interesting historical events.
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