Michael Winkler
Michael Winkler reviews 'Lowitja: The authorised biography of Lowitja O’Donoghue' by Stuart Rintoul
In Recollections of a Bleeding Heart (2002), Don Watson wrote that Lowitja O’Donoghue ‘seemed then and has seemed ever since to be a person of such transcendent warmth, if Australians ever got to know her they would want her as their Queen’. Robert Manne, in the first-ever Quarterly Essay (2001), portrayed her as ‘a woman of scrupulous honesty and great beauty of soul’. These qualities gleam in Stuart Rintoul’s handsomely produced biography.
... (read more)Michael Winkler reviews 'Pathfinders: A history of Aboriginal trackers in NSW' by Michael Bennett
The Aboriginal tracker is a stock character in certain Australian films, employed as set dressing, catalyst, curio. Although fictional trackers have been celebrated on celluloid, few real trackers have been given life within the national memory. Some people may recall Billy Dargin and his role in locating and shooting Ben Hall. Others might think of Dubbo’s Tracker Riley, or Dick-a-Dick, who found the missing Cooper and Duff children near Natimuk in 1864 when they had been given up for dead.
... (read more)Michael Winkler reviews A Stolen Life: The Bruce Trevorrow case by Antonio Buti and My Longest Round by Wally Carr and Gaele Sobott
Philip Larkin famously suggested that ‘they fuck you up, your mum and dad’, but the alternative is usually worse. Twenty years before Larkin wrote ‘This Be the Verse’, his compatriot John Bowlby published Maternal Care and Mental Health (1951), which described profound mental health consequences when ...
... (read more)Michael Winkler reviews 'Tracker: Stories of Tracker Tilmouth' by Alexis Wright
In Alexis Wright’s novel Carpentaria (2006), Girlie claims, ‘If you ever want to find out about anything in your vicinity, you have to talk to the mad people.’ There are a lot of mad people in Wright’s biography of Aboriginal activist, thinker, and provocateur ‘Tracker’ Tilmouth. He is probably the maddest of all, in the ...
... (read more)Michael Winkler reviews 'Australian Gypsies: Their secret history' by Mandy Sayer
In the Australia of my childhood, the Gypsy skirt was fashionable, ABC Radio played Django Reinhardt, ‘The Gypsy Rover’ was in school songbooks, peripatetic players were called ‘Gypsy footballers’, the Gypsy Jokers were a feared bikie gang, and nefarious Gypsies were stock villains in children’s books. Gypsies – or Roma – occupied cultural terrain, but ...
... (read more)Michael Winkler reviews 'The Mind of the Islamic State' by Robert Manne
One of the many contradictions of Islamic State, as exposed in Robert Manne’s latest work, is that a mob seemingly dedicated to deeds rather than words is in fact logocratic. For all of their murderous antipathy towards the People of the Book, Islamic State has relied not on speeches or policy platforms, but on a succession of books.
While some trace the g ...
Michael Winkler reviews 'Losing Streak: How Tasmania was gamed by the gambling industry' by James Boyce
Gambling is part of Australia’s self-definition. The way we like to tell the story, lads at Gallipoli went over the top with a two-up kip in one hand and a rifle in the other, while exchanging tips for the Melbourne Cup ...
... (read more)Michael Winkler reviews 'From the Edge: Australia’s lost histories' by Mark McKenna
There is a well-meaning musician who performs intermittently in Central Australia. When he plays his hit song, he tries to augment the lyrics by chanting the ...
... (read more)Michael Winkler reviews 'Position Doubtful: Mapping landscapes and memories' by Kim Mahood
At the bottom of one of Kim Mahood's desert watercolours, she scrawled, 'In the gap between two ways of seeing, the risk is that you see nothing clearly.' A risk for ...
... (read more)2016 Calibre Essay Prize winner
Wednesday, 25 May 2016M