When I was a kid I always thought that the times I was living through were the ‘boring’ times of human history. I felt that feeling of those times that history had really ‘ended’, just as Fukuyama had declared a year after my birth. When I flicked through an illustrated history book that my grandmother gave me and my brother, I figured that all the world had already been explored, all the world’s ancient cultures had already been dug up, all the big wars already fought, all the depressions wrought.
Comrade Gough
Over the past week so much has been said of Gough Whitlam’s tumultuous life, and so many fine words have given voice to all the silent tears of those whose lives he radically changed. There is not much more to be said of the man himself, least of all from someone who was born nearly 20 years after his sacking, but there is, I think, a lot we can take from his brief time in office that is relevant to the situation we face today. Continue reading “Comrade Gough”
Getting to Know Calwell
The first time I came across the name Arthur Calwell was in a high-school History and Civics class, where we were taught of Calwell’s time as Australia’s first Minister for Immigration during the Ben Chifley Labor government of 1945-1949 Continue reading “Getting to Know Calwell”