Photo Essay: When the rubber hits the road.
Every Australian small town has a place - or several - outside of town where the local hoons take stolen cars to lay their marks on the road in rubber. Sometimes - if the drivers have skill, a good motor and a nice new set of someone else's tyres - the marks left are almost abstract artworks. Other times, less so.
When Pot Was King In The NT: Chapter Two – The Wollogorang Station Crop of 1977
By late 1976 Csidei was in real financial and legal trouble, with debtors—including the Bartons—and corporate regulators on his tail. Around this time, while on one of his occasional trips to Sydney, Harald Paech, manager of Csidei's Wollogorang Station, suggested—half-heartedly and after a few too many drinks—that Csidei might investigate the possibility of growing a cannabis crop to raise some cash.
The Great Disconnect: Sustainable Housing and Energy Efficiency in the Top End
The recently-developed Darwin suburb of Muirhead is the model of an obesogenic suburb. It is designed around the car. There is little or no provision of public transport. Streets are meandering and there’s nowhere to go. There are no retail, commercial or social facilities or amenity. There’s no milk bar, there’s not even a pub!
When pot was king in the NT: Chapter One – the Batchelor crop of 1976
Darwin has always been a haven for desperados, chancers, carpet baggers and those trying to run away from the dark shadows of a previous life. I'll admit to being one of the latter when I turned up in mid-1984. From the long-lens-view of the populated south-east of the country, Darwin was an attractive bolt-hole, not least because it was about as far away as you could get from your southern ghosts. Not that there was any lack of opportunity for new troubles in the Top End.
Sun sets on NT edition of the Rural Weekly.
Over its four years, Rural Weekly NT emphasised news and views from the pastoral, mining, agriculture, land management and conservation sectors. Politically, it covered the 2016 election loss of former Chief Minister Adam Giles and the rise of Labor’s Michael Gunner. But other issues also rose to the fore, matters deeply affecting those in the bush, including health services, especially mental health and youth suicide, as well as the wind-down of the Inpex project, the impacts of climate change and the potential hydraulic fracturing (or fracking) of the Territory’s gas reserves.
What do the film Sweet Country, Warlpiri kinship and Johnny Cash’s “Peace in the Valley” have in common? Frank Baarda explains.
Everyone has others one is obligated to (has to care for) and others who care for one. No man or woman is an Island. ‘Skin’ classification guides the nature and intensity of relationships. A feature of the system that appeals to many ‘westerners’ is “mother in law avoidance” In former stricter times it was absolutely forbidden for one’s mother-in-law to be addressed or to be in the same room. It still happens that someone might wait outside a shop because “there is no room”.
“Uncle Bob” McGowan: a Life in Music
In his life and in his music -- most memorably as a member of Sydney bands The Original Battersea Heroes, later The Heroes, [1967-1973], then the band for which he is best known, Uncle Bob's Band [1973-77], followed by a brief foray with The Works [1978-79] -- Bob McGowan instinctively shunned the artificial and reveled in the real.
When pot was king. Cannabis cultivation in the NT: Part One – Introduction.
We'll never know with any certainty just how many crops were grown in the NT from the late 1970s through to the late 1990s but through my research over the past couple of years I’ve located reports - sourced from court reports, personal reports, NT Police material and of course contemporaneous media accounts – that indicate the Northern Territory was a hot-spot for cannabis cultivation during that period.
A new literary journal for the Northern Territory: The Borderlands project
Literary journals are an important component of Australia's literary culture and can help to foster a range of Indigenous, non-indigenous and multicultural voices. However, the Northern Territory has no such platform, and its lack is a significant shortfall in the artistic lives of Territorians.
“I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore.” 40 years on Sidney Lumet’s Network is a film for our times
'I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell: ‘I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not gonna take this anymore!’: Peter Finch as Howard Beale, Network