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Keywords: Redgum

  • ENVIRONMENT

    The true quiet Australians

    • Brian Matthews
    • 17 August 2023

    Red gum, this ‘smooth-barked large tree that gives watercourses all over Australia their Australian feel’, seemed intent on bobbing up in my life one way or another, sometimes as a result of sheer luck or coincidence. (From 2021)

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Wit, irony and the Australian vernacular: Remembering Brian Matthews

    • John Schumann
    • 15 June 2022
    4 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

    Climactic events in Royal Park

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 26 October 2021
    2 Comments

    These weekday mornings all is quiet. / I stroll across the highway, / a piddle of cars in the outbound lane, / a puddle at the distant lights. / Along the parkland trail / cowled figures walk alone, / measuring their distance. / From the rise above the railway cutting / Macedon stands burly in the smoke-free air.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    The true quiet Australians

    • Brian Matthews
    • 03 June 2021
    6 Comments

    Red gum, this ‘smooth-barked large tree that gives watercourses all over Australia their Australian feel’, seemed intent on bobbing up in my life one way or another, sometimes as a result of sheer luck or coincidence.

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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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  • RELIGION

    Jack baptised himself

    • Julie Perrin
    • 16 July 2019
    10 Comments

    The first time Jack came to the church he baptised himself. The font was new, the water inviting, and he dunked his ten-year-old head right in. The font had recently been installed in the foyer on a sculpted piece of redgum. The brief for the designers was to make it accessible to all ages. They were delighted to hear of its instant appeal.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    A poem for Agnes Bojaxhiu

    • Grant Fraser
    • 04 September 2017
    8 Comments

    Recently published letters have revealed that although Mother Teresa of Calcutta spent many years in her inspiring ministry, she felt, during much of that time, a profound spiritual emptiness.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Cronies of the nudge and wink

    • Grant Fraser
    • 14 May 2013
    3 Comments

    When ibis move, they do so in rosters of fastidious steps, each bird as polite as a grandad who is looking for the salt ... Stooped in twos or threes like patient skittles, they whisper quiet inventories of silvered figments and storied frogs.

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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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  • AUSTRALIA

    Truth? You can’t handle the truth

    • John Schumann
    • 14 May 2006

    Morag Fraser and John Schumann reflect on the crucial role of truth in our society.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Needlework

    • Brian Matthews
    • 23 April 2006

    Although a Delta Goodrem launch would no doubt draw a larger attendance, perhaps a celebration of Henry Lawson,  would be a more notable and important Australian event.

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