Tag John Stapleton
This is not your standard white-girl-in-Africa tale. I fed no babies, I built no schools, I saved no rhinos. Self-discovery came a distant second to self-preservation on this particular adventure. So says Kirsten Drysdale, who is better known as a… Continue Reading →
Luminously intelligent, gifted with a great eye and a startling, incandescent love of beauty, the already celebrated Maria Popova has finally put out a book. Figuring, is now available. For twelve years now Popova’s weekly newsletter Brain Pickings has dazzled,… Continue Reading →
Sydney’s Great Eccentrics Not every famous person has a name. And almost no one knew the name of Sandor Berger, one of Sydney’s best known eccentrics. For many years notices appeared on telegraph poles across inner-Sydney: “Psychiatry is Evil, It… Continue Reading →
Russell Shakespeare is a multi-award winning Australian photographer. His professional work, while at times a fascinating high pressure roller coaster ride, has its decided restrictions. This series explores the artistic side of one of Australia’s most accomplished lensmen. The Commute… Continue Reading →
He could feel the interest gathering; there to be used and reused and discarded, a threat that could neither be eliminated nor controlled. He was trying to make alliances, there in that place, there in those hours, while his dying… Continue Reading →
The onslaught of Covid incompetence came at a time when the nation itself was on rocky ground. Those who would doubt Australia’s democracy were spread far and wide. Trapped in circumstance, Old Alex was reliving his own version of The… Continue Reading →
Old Alex was alive to the whole End of Days narrative for multiple reasons, including his own childhood. Having grown up in a Christian cult, members of his family were preparing for the end of the world way back in… Continue Reading →
Very early on in the Covid drama the country’s commentators were straight out of the box slamming the government for mismanagement. There was no rallying behind the flag. From leading independent news site Crikey a story titled Ship of Fools: … Continue Reading →
Alex’s barrage began with a story titled “Covid-19: Pundits Queue to Criticise the Prime Minister” and subtitled “Australia’s Collapsing Democracy: A Deficit of Trust”. OK, warming up. “Experts have long warned that with the extremely poor quality of government which… Continue Reading →
There was a torrent on the water surface but Old Alex was hidden in the deep matting on the bottom of the sea. That’s the way it felt. There was a tumultuous effect. There was a spiritual component. There were… Continue Reading →
The single most fascinating thing about Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison is: He Shows No Guilt. Not a shred of remorse at having thrown millions of people onto welfare thanks to his absurd misreading of the Covid Scare. Not for… Continue Reading →
An Extract from Dark Dark Policing. Featuring the Photography of Dean Sewell. There is an encyclopedic array of scandals swarming around Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison, with journalists already forming a queue to label this the most corrupt government in… Continue Reading →
Part IV Unfolding Catastrophe Already by the Australian autumn of 2020, following straight on from a Christmas of bush fires and extreme loss, the warning signs should have been entirely clear to anyone who cared to look. An uneducated public… Continue Reading →
None of it would last, or so Old Alex believed, retaining as he did a naive faith in the natural, healthy scepticism of Australians. Surely none of what was happening made any sense at all. There had been weeks of… Continue Reading →
The thing he remembered most starkly about those early months of the so-called “pandemic” were empty trains churning through the night, a sense of dread as everything was altered, military helicopters hovering over an empty Sydney Harbour, empty streets, silent… Continue Reading →
How It All Ends Part I For years the biggest story in the country has been the slow motion collapse of the Australia of old. Now, with the country only slowly stumbling out of lockdown and insane levels of social… Continue Reading →
Unfolding Catastrophe For days, or was it weeks, he could feel the ships hovering overhead, across time, across space, terraforming as they settled on that picturesque part of the South Coast. There was everything to be said. We have a… Continue Reading →
PRELUDE: UNFOLDING CATASTROPHE PART ONE NAIVE FAITH: UNFOLDING CATASTROPHE PART TWO AND SO MUCH MORE: UNFOLDING CATASTROPHE PART THREE NOTHING MORE PERMANENT THAN A TEMPORARY MEASURE: UNFOLDING CATASTROPHE PART FOUR SEQUESTERED: UNFOLDING CATASTROPHE PART V BARRAGE: UNFOLDING CATASTROPHE PART VI… Continue Reading →
Death triumphs over the mundane. An army of skeletons raze the Earth. All life is extinguished. The background is a barren landscape in which scenes of destruction are still taking place. In the foreground, Death leads his armies from his… Continue Reading →
Extract: Hideout in the Apocalypse by John Stapleton “You must heal yourself, no one else can, no one else should,” reads one of the placards posted around Buddha’s birthplace, Lumbini in Nepal, where he had spent several months not so… Continue Reading →
Guantanamo Bay and A Bigger Picture The publicity blurb for the shortly to be released book A Bigger Picture by former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull makes the claim that he “stood up to Donald Trump”. Really??? But thereby hangs a tale…. Continue Reading →
Extract from Dark Dark Policing The sorry Covid-19 saga says a lot about Australia and the churn at the top of the pile, the Prime Minister Scott Morrison. None of it complimentary. We have seen in the past few days… Continue Reading →
Desperate to distract attention from his spectacular mismanagement of the Covid crisis, the destruction of the national economy and the devastation his idiotic policies have wrecked on the lives of millions of people, this week Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison… Continue Reading →
Many books by foreigners about Thailand include romantic or dissolute tales of alcoholism or substance abuse in the enervating heat; accompanied by a colourful caste of local prostitutes, gangsters and police, with virtually all the characters on the take in… Continue Reading →
The Tartan Pimpernel Walter ‘Whacky’ Douglas looked like he was having a fine old time when he was arrested and deported from Thailand in 2014. Douglas, known as “The Tartan Pimpernel” and once described as one of Britain’s ten wealthiest… Continue Reading →
ONE BELONGS TO THE WHOLE WORLD, not just one part of it, Paul Bowles once told an interviewer. Gifted annually with a round-the-world free ticket courtesy of my father’s job as a Captain on Australia’s national carrier Qantas, for a… Continue Reading →
Extract from Dark Dark Policing Everyone felt like a stranger now. The announcement came, the legendary Kidman properties, spanning three states and the Northern Territory, reportedly some 2.6 per cent of the nation’s land area, 101,000 square kilometres, was being sold… Continue Reading →
It’s not every day you get to interview one of the world’s most famous authors, someone who created an expression which entered the English language. Catch 22. The Oxford dictionary defines a Catch 22 as: A dilemma or difficult circumstance… Continue Reading →
Phfen Shock. The words kept repeating through his head, although he could find no definition, no logical reason. That was the sensation, he discovered, when you arrived at a new place expecting welcome, the village beyond the veil, only to… Continue Reading →
The Tartan Pimpernel Walter ‘Whacky’ Douglas looked like he was having a fine old time when he was arrested and deported from Thailand in 2014. Douglas, known as “The Tartan Pimpernel” and once described as one of Britain’s ten wealthiest… Continue Reading →
Reincarnation, Tim Johnson and Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri. The Vizzard Art Collection. Maintain radio silence. There is a Rat. While the rest of us have been waiting for this. Entropy in decaying forms made the mission, well this mission, urgent. From… Continue Reading →
It was the least expected consequence of hyper-connectivity. I need you to do something for me. No one could have predicted any of it. There had always been the rumours. They had always walked amongst us. Down the millennia, spilling… Continue Reading →