My aunty had become terminally ill. The recently found melanoma had spread and was now rapidly taking over her body. I flew up to Queensland to see her with my family, not knowing then, it was to be the last time I would ever see her again.Bundaberg was hot. I felt...
‘We’ve received reports of a suspicious individual conducting surveys and photographing people’s boarding passes around Terminal 2 of Domestic Airport.’ Two Federal police officers approached me. Both are Anglo-Australian men almost twice my...
The review of the School of Culture, History and Language, which commenced in 2013, was an opaque process. It began with a shambolic retreat in which academic staff were invited to come up with ‘blue sky’ thinking about how the School could become great. The event was...
I firmly believe that universities and academics have the potential to do good; to contribute to a more just, sustainable and peaceful future for our world by advancing public knowledge and understanding. Universities should cultivate the ability in our students to...
How can I ever tell you what is really like? How do I explain the will necessary to get up each day, to go and work somewhere that I know doesn’t value me? How do I explain the impact that those bemused looks have when I encounter yet another obligatory bureaucratic...
SOS is Students of Sustainability, a unique, social and environmental justice gathering held every July by the Australian Student Environment Network (ASEN). It started in 1991, in Kamberra (Canberra) with a small group of ANU undergraduates. Since then it has taken...
In the aftermath of the 2009 Urumqi Riots in Xinjiang, I realised at the age of 10 what the Chinese label of the event meant; merely four simple characters: ‘hit, smash, snatch, burn’. Yet I could not fathom what would possess Uyghurs, my people, to harm...
I’m knee deep in my newest purchase: a giant maze of unique fingerprint arabesques spread out before me that delineate Namadgi and Brindabella National Parks. I couldn’t be more thrilled. While focusing almost obsessively on the complexities of the map I can already...
In my life, art and pop culture have helped me understand and navigate the confusing world around me. There are few things more intimate than reading, watching or hearing something that resonates with your interior world, but for many of my formative sexual or...
That child’s hand above your head; the hand of a little girl long dead. Kakadu. Djidpi Djidpi. Two blocks of ochre. One grinding hollow. A grinding stone. Five moments of pressure. Thirty reed brushes. Voices echo off the high sandstone ceiling: thirty young lilts and...
