Keywords: The Waiting City
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INTERNATIONAL
- David Holdcroft
- 05 November 2010
9 Comments
Zimbabweans have been coming to South Africa for reasons such as political violence, displacement due to land reform, and the collapse of the economy. After initially turning them back at the border, South Africa moved towards a pragmatic 'special dispensation' that was more compassionate, even if the future of the country's refugee rules now remains uncertain.
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INTERNATIONAL
- Catherine Marshall
- 13 October 2010
3 Comments
Raw earth passed by, centimetres from my eyes. Light seeped away, and all that was left was the sound of my breathing. Then a beam of light from a miner's hat reached towards me. A voice greeted me and a hand helped me to climb out. I did an interview, there in the dark, with the faceless person before me.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Vin Maskell
- 13 October 2010
7 Comments
'Excuse me,' the young man says. I meet his brown eyes. Pondering how many coins I have in my pocket I note his tidy hair, olive T-shirt, well-fitting jeans, coloured sneakers. Maybe he just wants to ask about the next train. He is perspiring a little. 'Can I talk to you?' he asks.
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INTERNATIONAL
- Antonio Castillo
- 14 September 2010
24 Comments
At least those of us who survived Chile's 9/11 didn't have to stomach the phoney sombre Australian journalists 'live from New York' or the sight of a former Prime Minister crossing the Brooklyn bridge wearing an ACB tracksuit. But more than 30 years on, the Chilean people are still waiting for the United States' admission of guilt.
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INTERNATIONAL
- Catherine Marshall
- 13 September 2010
4 Comments
'The world is a book and those who do not travel read only a page,' said St Augustine. Drunk, libidinous and scantily-clad tourists unleashed on idyllic
locales were certainly not what Augustine had in mind when he spoke so
eloquently of the virtue of travel.
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EUREKA STREET/ READER'S FEAST AWARD
- Nigel Pearn
- 18 August 2010
3 Comments
The book was banned after parents complained about its anti-authoritarian attitude: 'Wanja [the dog] loved to chase the [police] van ... to bark at the van ... to bite at the wheel. The police van would drive away.' Like Jewish humour, Aboriginal humour is a response to a history of oppression.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Tim Kroenert
- 15 July 2010
3 Comments
Sydney filmmaker Claire McCarthy spent two months working among
Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta. Like many Westerners with egalitarian pretensions, the characters in her film The Waiting City arrive in India bearing a
tourist's naivety.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Peter Steele
- 30 April 2010
1 Comment
Feed and clothe this Australian poet and lodge him in a library attached to a music venue, and remarkable things would happen. He made of London a country of the mind, its vices, virtues, constant features and mutability there to be inspected and eventually portrayed.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Ruby Hamad
- 27 November 2009
13 Comments
It may be a box office boon, but critics have slammed the Twilight series, and feminists complain that lead character Bella is a subservient drip and the vampire she loves, Edward, is a stalking patriarch. Why are smart films for women in such short supply?
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Roger Trowbridge
- 25 March 2009
2 Comments
Dennis was the neighbourhood character. Full of good humour, he had a capacity for quipping his way through life — no one out-quipped Dennis. One day Dennis went to the Grand Prix. That evening he did not come home.
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AUSTRALIA
- Reuben Brand
- 23 March 2009
5 Comments
The streets of Rawalpindi were now relatively empty, an eerie feeling
in a usually bustling city. After slipping past police checkpoints I noticed the city was not completely still. Groups of men roamed the streets, patiently waiting for the call to action.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Tony Smith
- 20 February 2009
In contrast to tabloid
television coverage of fires, Lohrey's writing explains much of our relationship to the bush. Like plaques in town halls honouring fallen soldiers, the task of rebuilding devastated communities is embedded in the national psyche.
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