Eureka Street

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Catherine Marshall

"Up here I'm afforded a fresh perspective, one which helps to reorganise the map, incomplete as an ancient explorer's, stored in my brain."

David James

"Economically, military investment is dead money."

Fatima Measham

"Pop culture provides both a language and a map for figuring out who we are and what we want to be."

Random landings
- Catherine Marshall
- 26 April 2018
2 Comments
We're about to land, but I don't know where I'm going. The landscape spread below me is a tableau of muddy waters and tin-roofed houses poking out from palm groves. I thought I'd be flying direct to Paro, in Bhutan, but discovered once airborne that this Royal Bhutan Airways flight would be landing first at a place I'd never heard of.
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China, aid and the gift of interdependence
- Andrew Hamilton
- 19 April 2018
2 Comments
In recent months comment on international politics has been about taking sides and falling into line. Against such strident calls, two apparently unrelated pieces of speculation passed with little response: the prediction of a further cut to aid, and the assertion that China wanted to establish a military base in Vanuatu.
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Our flailing aid created a Pacific problem
- Eliza Berlage
- 19 April 2018
China and India are rising global powers, thanks to a burgeoning middle class, huge export markets and military might. So why wouldn't they take the western retreat from the Pacific as an invitation to dance? But their support comes with a crippling debt levels and the potential for a favour to be called in down the line.
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The rewards of reviving languages
- Sheila Ngoc Pham
- 27 April 2018
As someone who has a language background which will in all likelihood not make it past one more generation in my family here in Australia, I've long understood the way language loss can occur as a result of migration, to say nothing of acts like colonisation. These are great forces that are difficult but, as I've found, not impossible to resist.
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Imperfect score for Gold Coast's 'equality' games
- John Warhurst
- 24 April 2018
3 Comments
The number of medals available to men and women was equal. In this respect the games were better than the cultural norms of some of the competing countries. Integration of disabled athletes was also significant. Against this generally positive background the media persisted in an approach which was needlessly one-eyed.
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Thirst for righteousness over Aboriginal deaths
- Michele Madigan
- 24 April 2018
9 Comments
Commemorating the 25th anniversary of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, NITV re-screened Richard Frankland's 1993 documentary Who Killed Malcolm Smith? Watching it, it became totally clear to me about Manus Island and Nauru. Perhaps as a nation this violence, this contempt of the 'other', is in our DNA.
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Cities are people too
- David Ishaya Osu
- 27 April 2018
Whatever city development process is to be adopted, the spirit of community is key: landscape to networks to streets to public spaces to buildings. The approach ought to center on the fact that human needs and behaviours vary, and so cities automatically take the shape of the sensibilities of people.
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A parent's guide to pop culture diversity
- Fatima Measham
- 26 April 2018
2 Comments
The moment in Power Rangers when Cam Watanabe turned into the Green Samurai, I looked at my son's face and could sense what it meant to him. Pop culture validates or marginalises, depending on who is in the frame. Who gets to be seen and heard, and under what circumstances, are political decisions, whether consciously or not.
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Remembering my friend Beverley Farmer
- Gillian Bouras
- 26 April 2018
Australian writer Beverley Farmer died on 16 April. She and I had been friends, albeit usually long-distance ones, for more than 30 years. It seems to me now that we had so much in common that friendship was almost inevitable: it was just a matter of timing that first meeting.
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Cities are people too