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Keywords: Mother Fish

  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Swapping stories with a barracouta sage

    • Brian Matthews
    • 13 September 2013
    3 Comments

    'It was a strange business,' he said in answer to my inevitable question about how he had come by his injuries. 'I'm a professional fisherman. I've fished the entire South Australian and Victorian coast line for barracouta for 70 years.' The 'strange business' happened on his boat. 'We weren't even at sea. Me and Albie were just cutting up some bait when my eyes just went up into me head and I keeled right over.'

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Exploiting Van Nguyen

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 25 July 2013
    7 Comments

    Many Australians feel ownership of Nguyen's story, who was executed for drug trafficking in Singapore in 2005. Khoa Do more than most Australian filmmakers has the moral authority to tell that story without being accused of exploitation. Yet it is hard not to sympathise with the objections of Nguyen's family to Do's SBS new miniseries. Which mother would want public property made of her private grief?

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Thoughts on the Apology from a Stolen Generations child

    • Melissa Brickell
    • 13 February 2013
    14 Comments

    When Kevin Rudd delivered the Apology five years ago today, the Stolen Generations and their supporters wept. But we should not dwell on the Apology while there is much to be done. The denial of natural justice through compensation for genocide is a selfish decision with moral implications.

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  • RELIGION

    Aboriginal Catholics' culturally enriched living

    • Frank Brennan
    • 02 October 2012
    6 Comments

    'It has been helpful to have the Pope offer the encouragement that there need not be any conflict between Christian faith and Aboriginal culture. But Aboriginal culture is often founded on religious beliefs which find and express God's self-communication outside of Christ and the Church's seven sacraments.' Fr Frank Brennan SJ's address 'Culturally Enriched Through the Gospel' at the NATSICC Conference on 1 October 2012.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Rudd's forgettery and the things that don't matter

    • Michael Mullins
    • 27 August 2012
    8 Comments

    Kevin Rudd’s mother had a saying: ‘Just put it into your forgettery’. It helped him cope with criticism such as his reported tantrums and harsh treatment of staff. Julia Gillard has had her own forgettery raided by ‘misogynists and the nut jobs on the internet’ and elsewhere. Political vindictiveness is not sufficient reason to retrieve unpleasant memories from a person’s personal trash.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Canary in a nursing home

    • Louise McKenna
    • 31 July 2012
    3 Comments

    At times the music holds him still, and a jonquil light beams through two pinholes in his brain, singing of a caged soul.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Little Adonis and the fruit box

    • Helena Kadmos
    • 11 July 2012
    21 Comments

    When my father was born his parents named him Adonis, but for the first few years he was called Adonaki, Little Adonis. I picture him standing in the classroom on a fruit box, with his dark curly hair. His hair is still curly if it gets long enough, but it is very soft and silvery. He listens as I read this story to him and he wants to set some things straight.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The beer jingle that saved Christmas

    • Brian Doyle
    • 22 December 2011
    1 Comment

    A hickory tree peed his pants. A striped bass assaulted an eggplant. A teacher cursed in Gaelic into her mic. Then my kid brother, Tommy, spontaneously stepped forward and sang that jingle. Some moments are unforgettable for reasons we can't articulate. My dad says he'll savour that one on his deathbed. 

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    After the floods

    • Josephine Clarke
    • 29 March 2011

    Below the waterline, a rufous mud dishevels the purpose. Above the waterline, struts and rooves stamp rectangle chequers onto the place where community can no longer gather. Two dogs look out from a corrugated raft.

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  • RELIGION

    Rethinking indigeneity in the age of globalisation

    • Frank Brennan
    • 01 November 2010
    3 Comments

    There is an emerging Aboriginal middle class. The contested questions in those communities relate to the expensive delivery of services including health, housing and education. The contested issue in the urban community is over self-identification as Aboriginal by persons of mixed descent.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Sharing the selfish illness

    • Helen Brake
    • 15 September 2010
    12 Comments

    As I grated the sandpaper across my face, the skin rubbed away but didn't bleed as I expected. Gooey plasma softened the paper's rigid surface. I picked another piece and tried again. Three weeks later I was diagnosed with major depressive disorder.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Putting border protection into perspective

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 05 August 2010
    6 Comments

    Mother Fish recreates the journey by sea of a group of Vietnamese refugees. During an election campaign where both major parties are trying to win votes with prejudicial rhetoric about 'border protection', a bit of truth and humanity is just what's needed.

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