John Bryson

Making the sea passage south to Flinders Island, I began reading this while off-watch, hoping book and destination might augment, but tough weather cancelled free time until after a landfall sleep. I’ve not much enjoyed histories which cast these manuka and granite islands in dismal role, they are shockingly beautiful, but the crowded cemetery wails, the old lath church is empty of joyful song, ... (read more)

In Richard Beasley’s third novel, a friendship between three boys ends violently, and one of them is tragically implicated. The lives of the young teenagers – Jake, Robbie, and Rory – are filled out with street football, driveway cricket, billycarts, fishing trips, slingshot target practice, and the comedy of flatulence. Their world is Rose Avenue during the Adelaide summer of 1977. ... (read more)

A visitation of Kindly Death is recorded by the Law List in a glass cabinet beside the sandstone doorway of Court Four in the City Courthouse, the sole item for the day’s business, and for many days: Trial: R v Ali Bashir. (1) Murder (2) Assist Suicide. The second count, rather than the first, is the reason for the presence of a dozen people holding a protest across the busy roadway, where the ... (read more)

Australia’s feisty first female High Court judge John Bryson   From Moree to Mabo: The Mary Gaudron Story by Pamela Burton UWA Publishing, $49.95 pb, 511 pp, 9781742580982   H.V. Evatt, on the hustings during an election campaign, was asked by an eight-year-old girl, ‘What is the Constitution?’ and later mailed her a copy. The girl was Mary Gaudron, whose path to the High Cour ... (read more)