Australian Indigenous languages use a fascinating array of expressions drawing on body parts to describe emotions. Here is a guide to some of the most intriguing ones.
Many Australians believe in the existence of the soul. Here is a brief guide to how the five major world religions imagine the soul’s origin and journey.
What happens when the distant frontier takes up residence in the family home? How are we to remember our flawed ancestors? A new book grapples with these questions.
Every day, the internet fills up with more and more dead people while our ability to reanimate them grows. The dead are more robust and more vulnerable — and we’re not ready for any of this.
Group of Aboriginal people with shields and spears, by Joseph Lycett, circa 1820.
National Library of Australia
The widespread conflict that accompanied Australian life for 140 years was arguably our most important war. We need a museum telling this story, funded on a par with The Australian War Memorial.
Rosaleen Norton works in crayon in a converted stable in Kings Cross in Sydney, 1946.
News Ltd/Black Jelly Films
An artist and self-proclaimed witch, Rosaleen Norton defied cultural norms in Menzies-era Australia. Reviled by the media, she was a powerfully unconventional woman.
A haulage truck at Rio Tinto’s Weipa operations in northern Queensland.
AAP/Rio Tinto, Joanne O'Keeffe
Before the goldrush, Indigenous people told stories about how the bronzewing pigeon seeded precious minerals across the land. Europeans stole not just land, but the value deep within it.
Darug women Leanne Watson, Rhiannon Wright and Jasmine Seymour at Dorumbolooa.
Avryl Whitnall
It was once thought the Aboriginal names for the Hawkesbury had been lost forever. But after a remarkable find in the Mitchell Library, almost 100 place names will be restored to Dyarubbin Country.
This wooden dish from Broome, pre-1892, was made by Yawuru people, collected by police and later presented by the Commissioner of Police, Colonel Phillips, to the WA Museum.
Courtesy of the WA museum
A spear-thrower, a shell, a bowl, a vase, a bucket. Five very different items tell us much about the history of collecting, the role of Indigenous experts and the shadow of colonial violence.
Will the newest batch of books about the climate crisis change minds? Reading about the problem can help us understand it, but it’s political action that is needed now.
Pardalotes are quintessentially Australian birds, industrious, beautiful and strange. They have adapted to our environment but we are corroding the places in which they live.
A new book by participants in the controversial ‘Grievance Studies’ hoax critiques the rise of an ideology they call Social Justice Theory. But the authors overstate their case.
Alice Pung’s family escaped Pol Pot to settle in Australia. In suburban Melbourne, as her mum worked in the dark, back shed, she discovered books — and what the world could be.
A new Greta Thunberg biopic has drawn criticism from those who don’t see the value in the stories of young lives. But children’s voices matter — and Thunberg’s is potent.
Honorary (Senior Fellow) School of Culture and Communication University of Melbourne. Editor in Chief, Design and Art of Australia Online, The University of Melbourne