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Keywords: The Waiting City

  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    A time when they shared their drugs

    • Susan Adams, Peta Edmonds and Lyn McCredden
    • 18 June 2013
    3 Comments

    A man swims back to you like a friendly dog. Asks you for spare change. He hasn't eaten since Thursday and it's Sunday now in the city. You empty your wallet of all its coins. $2.70. The city is heavenly, full of karma. A kid with a snake tattooed on his wrist gives you two cigarettes.

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  • RELIGION

    Church and ordained ministry in the 21st century

    • Frank Brennan
    • 23 May 2013
    2 Comments

    Fr Frank Brennan's keynote address at the Archdiocese of Canberra and Goulburn Clergy Assembly, St Clement's, Gaylong, on 22 May 2013

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Watching as Iraq crumbled

    • Donna Mulhearn
    • 20 March 2013
    9 Comments

    I sat with my Iraqi friend in his photo store. I was his last customer, he said; the bombs would begin tomorrow. And then he began to weep. I remember thinking that his life, and the lives of others like him, would not be given a second's thought once the invasion started. The next day, the bombs began.  

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Vegemite interrogation on the Prague night train

    • Anne M. Carson
    • 19 February 2013

    Cash-strapped, post midnight. Transport police rifle our rucksacks, suspicious of backpackers. One prises open my Kodak canister, sniffs, says 'ach!', fires Czech questions at me. 'Vegemite fur frustuck,' I say, trying to convince Vegemite is not hash resin. I smile the smile of someone who doesn't know how bad it can get.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    What it is to be a woman in India

    • Catherine Marshall
    • 13 February 2013
    2 Comments

    Have the men in India been staring at you?' Audrey asks. Before I can respond she says: 'They've been staring at me, and I'm 84!' The trial of five men for the rape-murder of a young Delhi woman may prompt India to analyse the links between entrenched anti-female practices and the way women are valued today. 

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Best of 2012: The beauty that was Peter Steele's mind

    • Morag Fraser
    • 09 January 2013

    Peter Steele SJ – priest, poet, teacher, essayist, homilist, and friend – died on Wednesday 27 June 2012. During Eureka Street’s first months, in 1991, he gave its editor some riding instructions. Media magnate was not his style. ‘Publish the very best writing you can lay your hands on’, he said. That was it. But it was more than enough. Friday 29 June 

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    City rush hour adventures

    • Peter Bakowski
    • 20 November 2012
    3 Comments

    What a gift is hunger. Because of it your ancestors left their caves, explored plains, valleys, rivers, seas. Their adventures became stories, paintings, songs. There's the story of each person, on the trains, trams, street corners. How vulnerable you are, how strong you are.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Dreaming of redemption

    • 2012 Blake Poetry Prize
    • 13 November 2012
    6 Comments

    It's the alcohol that makes me white. The magic of intoxication suits my dreaming fine. I want to be civilised. The harder I drink the whiter I get. O how I want to imbibe like a gentleman ... I want God to make me white and rich and fat.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Feather on the breath of god

    • Mark Tredinnick
    • 18 September 2012
    5 Comments

    You, too, despite the false witness of the mirror in your mind, are part, a very small part, of a very old music ... Poetry writes the only prayers you feel free to offer these days. It is the glint in the eye of the god you stopped believing, when she started causing you all this pain.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The beauty that was Peter Steele's mind

    • Morag Fraser
    • 29 June 2012
    24 Comments

    Peter Steele SJ – priest, poet, teacher, essayist, homilist, and friend – died on Wednesday 27 June 2012. During Eureka Street’s first months, in 1991, he gave its editor some riding instructions. Media magnate was not his style. ‘Publish the very best writing you can lay your hands on’, he said. That was it. But it was more than enough.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    Warm bums and nuclear activism in Tokyo

    • Ellena Savage
    • 11 May 2012
    6 Comments

    I took the train into central Tokyo, my bum warmed by the heated seats. Each time we stopped, the train's engine shut down briefly, and the bum heater switch off for a few seconds. Over the loudspeaker I heard 'Setsuden chu', the catchphrase meaning 'We're currently using less electricity', which is posted all around the city.

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  • EDUCATION

    Best of 2011: Germaine Greer's Catholic education

    • Gregory Day
    • 06 January 2012
    3 Comments

    In trying to convince my atheist goddaughter to embrace her Catholic schooling, I found an unlikely role model. I'd never thought of Greer as a chip off the old block of a convent education. Now I realised that that's exactly what she was. Published 22 February 2011

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