Eureka Street

Keywords: Henry Lawson

ARTS AND CULTURE

To be Frank: In conversation with Catharine Lumby
- Barry Gittins
- 24 November 2023
Catharine Lumby was a friend and beneficiary of Moorhouse’s mentoring and advice, and before his death, was approached by him to write a warts-and-all uncensored biography. In Frank Moorhouse: A Life, Lumby explores the life of this man of letters in all of its colour and contradiction.
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ARTS AND CULTURE

Wit, irony and the Australian vernacular: Remembering Brian Matthews
- John Schumann
- 15 June 2022
5 Comments
Most of us, when pushed, can name a couple of teachers who had a profound influence on our lives. For me, Brian Matthews was one such teacher. I enrolled in English at Flinders University in 1972. On asking the enrolling officer whether anybody was ‘doing anything about Lawson’, I was directed to the office of Brian Matthews, a recent appointment to the English Department. ‘I hear you know something about Lawson,’ I said, leaning in his doorway.
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ARTS AND CULTURE

The true quiet Australians: 10 of the best of Brian Matthews
- Brian Matthews
- 09 June 2022
3 Comments
Brian Matthews, academic, award-winning columnist and biographer, and Australia's foremost scholar on Henry Lawson and his mother Louisa, died last Thursday 2 June following complications related to lymphoma, at the age of 86. Brian first wrote for Eureka Street in February, 2002 and continued to contribute his monthly column for 20 years.
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ARTS AND CULTURE

True friendship
- Barry Gittins
- 04 February 2021
2 Comments
All three of us are parents, we’ve all been adversely impacted by COVID-19, and prior to that we’ve shared the usual rough and tumble dynamics of male friendships and bridal party affiliations. We have been in and out of each other’s good books, hard conversations, interpersonal dynamics and orbits. We’ve been through a lot as mates. COVID-wise, though, that affinity has been at a remove.
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ARTS AND CULTURE

The romance of the song
- Brian Matthews
- 06 October 2020
10 Comments
He came in, sat down, and we talked about Henry Lawson. He was well read in the field, having encountered Lawson not only in a small way at school but especially at home where his mother had given him an anthology of Australian stories and he’d come across ‘The Drover’s Wife’. We hit it off: he was pleasant, engaging and witty and we resolved to continue our talk in the near future.
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ARTS AND CULTURE

Headland daydreaming
- Peter Ramm
- 30 September 2019
2 Comments
This place is new to my son, who doesn't know that satin bowerbirds pilfer the brush ... He's busy tracing each scribble in each gum, and my hands are full of his hands, faintly heavy — faintly delicate. A towering deciduous fig hangs over us; its branches are neural pathways, thin at their tips the way memories thin in time.
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ENVIRONMENT

A crash course in climate literacy
- Brian Matthews
- 23 October 2018
3 Comments
Drought creeps, infiltrates, sometimes seems little changed day after day, then tightens its grip on this or that paddock, unveils the slowly splitting bottom of a never-before-empty dam ... Even still, according to many of the experienced, crisis-hardened men and women on the land to whom I've spoken, this drought is different.
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ARTS AND CULTURE

The snob who snubbed Australia's Indigenous imagination
- Brian Matthews
- 01 May 2015
14 Comments
Mrs Cowling was formidable. Her significant physical presence was accentuated by a commanding mien, impeccable English enunciation, and an impressive depth and breadth of literary reference supporting rock-firm opinions. All these years later, I wonder just how burdened she was in teaching literature to Australian students, which she continued to do into her 80th year, by her husband's notoriety.
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ARTS AND CULTURE

Homeless wonder on Victoria's plains
- Barry Gittins and Jen Vuk
- 14 March 2014
2 Comments
Moira, her kids Zara and Rory, her partner Shane and his brother Midge are the kind of people you wouldn't think to look twice at. Living on welfare and on the constant lookout for abandoned houses to either live in or raid, they're known colloquially as 'trants' (short for itinerants). These otherwise overlooked and forgotten people might be parochial, but they're never parodied. They might be uneducated, but they have a voice.
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AUSTRALIA

History repeats for powerful Australian women
- Brian Matthews
- 21 June 2013
14 Comments
On the face of it, life for a strong, talented and ambitious woman in 19th century Australia was much tougher than it is now. Yet even Louisa Lawson, a pioneer of women's rights who was grievously discriminated against and derided because she dared to excel, was never demeaned or personally debased to the extent Julia Gillard has been.
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ARTS AND CULTURE

My theatrical encounter with Don Dunstan
- Brian Matthews
- 24 May 2013
2 Comments
One of the great monuments to the 'Dunstan Decade', the Adelaide Festival Centre marks its 40th birthday next weekend. It was the first capital city complex devoted to the performing arts, before even the Sydney Opera House. For me the anniversary triggers a flood of memories, including a theatrical encounter with Dunstan himself.
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ARTS AND CULTURE

Teaching literature to rock stars
- Brian Matthews
- 01 February 2013
2 Comments
He appeared in the doorway of my study one day in 1971 and asked if I was the one who was starting a course in Australian literature. His voice was soft and melodic, his accent beautifully Irish. Born in Belfast in 1947, he had grown up amid the horrors of 'The Troubles' and would in later years refer to himself as 'a recovering Catholic'.
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Keywords: Henry Lawson