Word: australian
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...landscape of "hearty little horsewoman" Lorna Shoddy is also transfigured by fire. "A bell of silence clapped itself down over the blackened trees and turf," writes Hall, "her world curling at the edges and noiselessly crepitating, little spits of silence dodging among the ashes." Stripped of her beloved Australian Waler horses, and without the support of family, Mrs. Shoddy is reduced, by all appearances, to madness. At 73 she finds herself straitjacketed in a country psychiatric ward where "the only freedom to move is in the memory." This returns in fits and starts, but is sustained by the rekindling...
...novel takes its name ("? as when the young bird-catcher/ Swept off his tall hat to the Squire's daughter,/ So let the imprisoned larks escape and fly"), Hall's dark vision is lit by a transforming lyricism, with bravura passages that can take the breath away. This is Australian writing worth caring about...
...might seem as eccentric as Mrs. Shoddy in this globalized age, but Australian literature is something Hall still cares passionately about. He rallied for the cause as Prime Minister Paul Keating's chair of the Australia Council for the Arts, but his most powerful argument in its defence is his own writing. From The Island in the Mind's 17th century Frenchman, who invents Terra Incognita as an opera, to The Day We Had Hitler Home's Audrey McNeil, who, with her hand-held camera, invents Europe as a movie, Hall's novels comprise what he calls "a seven-part...
...begin with a sprint in this year's half-marathon to the Lodge, Rudd declared on Jan. 23 during a speech at Melbourne University that the Australian economy needs an "education revolution." He issued a discussion paper that placed education at the center of the country's long-term economic future and Labor's historical devotion to fairness: "If the 19th century was driven by an industrial revolution, and the 20th century by a technological revolution, what is needed for the 21st century is an education revolution." Rudd pointed to a slide in workers' productivity. A decade ago, Australians' output...
...Memoriam In calling Steve Irwin the "Crocodile Preserver," Jay Leno may have understated the accomplishments of the Australian. He was an advocate for the right that all unpopular animals have to life and shelter. Irwin was a passionate conservationist and believed in promoting environmentalism by sharing his excitement about nature. He founded his own organization for species conservation, his zoo is breeding endangered animals, and he even bought large areas in the U.S. and Australia for the creation of parks. Despite his fame, Irwin always described himself as an "ordinary bloke." But how ordinary could he have been when Australian...