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Keywords: Trams

  • AUSTRALIA

    #illridewithyou shows the kind of world that is possible

    • John Falzon
    • 19 December 2014
    36 Comments

    While the horrible tragedy was underway in Martin Place, a remarkable thing happened. We saw, and continue to see, a powerful sense of compassion in the 'I'll ride with you' spontaneous pledges. One one level it was a simple offer of human support. But it was also a deeply profound declaration of a vision for a just and inclusive Australia. 

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Wee Mary MacKillop minds the shop

    • Brian Doyle
    • 16 December 2014
    4 Comments

    I can tell you that Fitzroy always was and will be a wry wilderness; Every colour and ethnicity and language you can imagine lives there... And now I see wee quiet shy Mary MacKillop there, minding a shop. She is fourteen. Her people are Scottish. She will be legendary, later.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Refugee's march of thanks

    • Maureen O'Brien
    • 04 April 2014
    7 Comments

    Three members of Tri's family made it to the open sea in a wooden boat with 65 others. They encountered storms and shipwrecks, and pirates who raped the women and tortured and robbed the others. Eventually they were handed over to UN troops, who took them to a refugee camp in Malaysia. Tri's story is about trauma, but mostly his emphasis is on the welcome and kindness the family received in Australia.

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  • MEDIA

    The socialist with rosary beads

    • Ray Cassin
    • 26 June 2013
    6 Comments

    Paul Mees, who died last week at the age of 52, was a public intellectual in the best sense of the term; a scholar and teacher with an international reputation; an activist who never shrank from a fight. He was also a man of deep faith, though many who admired Paul ignored this or regarded it as an eccentricity.

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  • 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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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Mortality made articulate

    • Chris Wallace-Crabbe
    • 29 January 2013
    2 Comments

    For what, I ask you, was somebody called our saviour in the turbulent middle-east (still in trouble, of course it must be) two long Ks ago? Light flickered on dwellers in death's dark shadow yet those turbulent sandy nations truckle on, just where their ancestors ambled out of Africa toward the hideogram of history.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Grace and intimacy in Les Miserables

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 13 December 2012
    5 Comments

    Valjean betrays a priest who has been kind to him, and the persistence of that man's mercy despite this betrayal sets the tone for Valjean's journey. The compassion and generosity to which he aspires contrasts with the Old Testament sternness of Javert, who is both driven and tortured by a dedication to divinely ordered justice.

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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

    The trams revolt

    • Brian Matthews
    • 17 August 2012
    6 Comments

    Like a uniformed and undirected army, they queued end to end, an implacable wall of yellow and green. The trams seemed to squat somehow lower on their shiny rails — and all their lights went out. For more than a month they paralysed the city and everyone could see the government had entered its last days.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The opposite of Australian swimming hubris

    • John Honner
    • 01 August 2012
    10 Comments

    The Spit Baths consist of two swimming areas bounded by boardwalks built on piles sunk into Middle Harbour. At low tide there is barely enough water to swim in. Olympic medallist John Devitt does time trials in just a few feet of water. There is no black line on a sterile tiled floor, just sand and seaweed.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Dreams of pulling Australia out of its slump

    • Ian C. Smith
    • 31 January 2012

    Although most are probably long dead, they seem happy, even excited. Perhaps they will toss triumphant hats. The wind might favour their team, even steal tossed hats, but not hope.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Skating over Bali bombing remembrance

    • Vince Chadwick
    • 12 October 2011
    1 Comment

    Six years ago an inner city fountain was transformed into a memorial for the victims of the Bali bombings. Today, skateboarders leap onto the ledge and glide on their back wheels. Skateboarding is a rebellious culture, yet it seems fitting that a monument to peoples' lives be filled with life.

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