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Every stop is a story - Darwin to Adelaide River

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  Every stop is a story - Darwin to Adelaide River The Adelaide River Rupture (image to be uploaded - subscribe to be notified) The storm did not break over the Adelaide River plains; rather, reality tore open along the track. To the left, the familiar Top End landscape clung fiercely to its quiet melancholy. A lone gum tree stood sentinel over the charred scrub and dry earth, its leaves catching the last bruised light of a brooding wet-season sky. In the hollow below, the old fictional homestead crouched beside the rutted dirt road, enduring the heavy stillness that always settles before the atmosphere ruptures. Then came the tear. It began not with thunder, but with an overwhelming, luminous heat that shredded the grey overcast into molten ribbons. You could feel the vortex of raw energy sweeping through radiant ambers, searing cadmium oranges, and blinding celestial whites. The vortex descended like a folded dimension brushing against the earth. Where the atmospheric rift touch...

Anzac Day supports our continual efforts of invasion.

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--> ANZAC Day has ceased to be a day where we commit to 'never again'. Anzac Day has become a shallow glorification of Australia's capacity to make war. It is a celebration of Australia's capacity of invasion. In contemporary multicultural Australia Anzac Day is appearing as the last stand of our mono-cultural past. ANZAC Day should be a remembrance for the futility of war and to support efforts towards a pacifist Australia. It should not be employed by sporting leagues as a selling point to enable blockbusting displays of digger fortitude and bravery. Anzac Day is a celebration of protection, but what did the Anzacs protected us from? Who would have invaded Australia had Australia. What would have changed in Australia if we had not sent our military to Europe to be slaughtered. Why doesn't the bombing of Darwin gain more attention if Anzac Day is about the brave who stands by his mate? Anzac Day has moved from the regret of war to a he...

Bill Henson is Innocence

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Bill Henson is innocence I recently received an Art Monthly (Australia) April 2009 edition as a present. Whilst in the past I collected and read such publications avidly I now read them only by chance. Interestingly in the edition there is an article by Paul Rapoport on a book by David Marr about Bill Henson the photographer. Bill Henson has been a controversial artist not because of any overt behavior but because of his subjects and how he portrays his subjects. The subjects are pubescent boys and girls and their portrayal is both sensual and interpreted sexuality. Bill Henson's photographs are well supported by the 'cultured elite' and by state and federally funded galleries. The issues are; Henson does poach his subjects from primary schools for a photo shoot and the Prime Minister described one of his nude pubescent girls as 'absolutely revolting'. The article defends both issues. The primary school poaching was dismissed as a 'fear-mongering fabricati...