Welcome to Eureka Street

back to site
Forgot your password?
Subscribe

Keywords: Wattle Day

  • AUSTRALIA

    When it comes to Australia Day, wattle stop the arguments?

    • Stephen Alomes
    • 25 January 2025

    With debates around Australia Day continuing to divide, might shifting the national celebration to another day, rooted in resilience and renewal, offer a fresh start? By embracing a new unifying symbol, Australia could move beyond the pain of the past toward a national day that reflects unity, hope, and shared values.

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Seasons move and the Earth is reborn

    • Warwick McFadyen
    • 21 August 2024
    1 Comment

    In my part of the world, the earth has begun to awaken from its winterlong sleep. The colours of the day are changing and the earth and its attendant branches of family are blooming into beauty. 

    READ MORE
  • ENVIRONMENT

    If life were a walk in the park

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 03 November 2020
    17 Comments

    These last weeks the possible re-election of Donald Trump has been one of the dark birds that visit many of us in the night. As with other such epochal events, of course, how we might react internally to it is of vastly less weight than its effect on the world. Neither early morning wandering nor anything else we can do will change that. But it might shape our response.

    READ MORE
  • ENVIRONMENT

    Climate science for the birds

    • Brian Matthews
    • 01 November 2019
    3 Comments

    The scene I have described was more than purely peaceful. In these iron days, to write about or seriously discuss the world of nature and its phases and complexions can be a political act, 74 years after Orwell wondered about that very same point in 'Some Thoughts on the Common Toad'.

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Pro bono prodigal

    • Ian C. Smith
    • 15 July 2019
    4 Comments

    Wandering out of sorts around the lake, my thoughts backward now there is more past than future, I see a boy and girl on a school day wearing uniforms I recognise from when my son arranged his to resemble the garb of an urchin.

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Bush week in my tin kingdom

    • Kit Kelen
    • 13 May 2014

    Everything green wants up, a drought and you, position the head right under the tap, ancient propellors over the land, guess who cast them? This is the month of Sundays 

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Clean, bright, efficient death

    • Kristin Hannaford
    • 11 February 2014
    1 Comment

    The abattoir to the left funnels steam into the night, a long slow drag exhaled by a thousand beasts, also travelling tonight. Poor cattle, horses, and pigs. Some days, the air is so bloodthick it hinges at the back of the throat, a glottal of rusty muck. Not tonight though. The air is winter clear, glassy.

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Kinglake undone

    • Jordie Albiston
    • 21 June 2011
    5 Comments

    Prayer has not prevailed. She sits silent without lover or friend: she slumps in her blackened skirts: she slumps in black dust: she slumps in her black that was green.

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Where children used to play

    • Vin Maskell
    • 09 February 2011
    4 Comments

    After she died — her mind went first, then the rest — he moved across town, where he lived in a different type of street. A busy street with traffic and noise. No place for a street party. Once a year, though, he returns to see the next generation of neighbours. New leaves on old trees.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Why Wattle Day should be our national day

    • Paul W. Newbury
    • 23 January 2011
    37 Comments

    Indigenous antipathy to Australia Day is deeply entrenched. Wattle as a symbol offers an alternative because it is native to this place, and it is not a memorial of our ties with Great Britain. 

    READ MORE
  • RELIGION

    Zen Christmas

    • Sarah Kanowski
    • 22 December 2008
    3 Comments

    Silent breakfast in a still-dark zendo, mist rising on the mountains, has been replaced by a scramble against the clock, one eye on the newspaper, one hand reaching for the Weet Bix, our toddler clambering, garbage trucks screeching outside. How to find silence here?

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Auctioning Jane Austen's hair

    • P. S. Cottier
    • 16 September 2008

    Do they stroke it with avid fingers, this palm tree lock that once grew from the full head of quietest genius? .. Scalping would be too much, headhunting too tropical .. but buying the hair of a dead woman you can't know .. is quite the thing

    READ MORE
Join the conversation. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter  Subscribe