Australian Public Intellectual [API] Network

Network Scholars

Home on 'The Block': Rethinking Aboriginal Emplacement

Ceridwen Spark
‘It is no accident that homeplace ... is always subject to violation and destruction’.2‘The block’ refers to a small area of Aboriginal-owned terrace housing bounded by four inner-Sydney streets, near Redfern railway station. Purchased by the newly formed Aboriginal Housing Company (AHC) in the early seventies, with money provided by the Whitlam government, the block has been described variously as a ‘dream for self-determination’ and a ‘shameless slum’.3 In 1996, the Australian newspaper called it ‘Sydney’s shame’.4 Recently, ...
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Network Review of Books

Greek Pioneers in Western Australia (2003)

Reviewed by Nonja Peters in the June 2004 issue.
Greek Pioneers is based on fine-grained historical study about the emigration (departure from one's homeland to a new country), immigration (entry into a foreign land with intent to settle), and chain migration of Greek pioneers -- mainly from Castellorizo, a small Greece-owned island located four kilometres off the Turkish coast but also from Ithaca and Kythera. It is written in language that makes it accessible to both a lay and academic reader. The inspiration for the book came in the mid-1980s from the Hellenic Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry who wished to take stock of the ... read more.

Fighting Films: A History of the Waterside Workers' Federation Film Unit (2003)

Reviewed by Rebecca Johinke in the April 2004 issue.
Lisa Milner has done an excellent job of transforming her PhD thesis into an entertaining and accessible read for anyone interested in film culture, the history of Sydney's wharf workers, or trade unions in Australia. Fighting Films provides an account of the Waterside Workers' Federation Film Unit (hereafter WWFFU), which operated in Sydney from 1953-1958. It was the first film production unit within a trade union anywhere in the world. The three members of the Unit (Norma Disher, Keith Gow and Jock Levy) made fourteen films before the WWFFU was dismantled. Milner describes the political and ... read more.

Friendly Street New Poets 8 (2003)

Reviewed by John Blahusiak in the Aug/Sep 2003 issue.
Friendly Street New Poets Eight presents three new poets, Elaine Barker, Tess Driver and David Mortimer, before the reader of Australian verse. As David Ad�s points out in his brief introduction to the volume, the term new is relative in its application, for these writers have each dedicated a large amount of time and energy towards finding their best practice for poetry. The three poets, for instance, have all been published previously, though not in collected form, and they have all collected higher degrees relating to the vocation. Reminiscences upon youth and the invocation of a ... read more.

The Irish in New Zealand: Historical Contexts and Perspectives (2003)

Reviewed by Dymphna Lonergan in the November 2003 issue.
The Irish in New Zealand is an exciting addition to the literature of the Irish diaspora. Edited by Brad Patterson, Senior Research Fellow at The Stout Research Centre, the book is a collection of eleven papers given at a multidisciplinary conference in Wellington in 2000. The title, The Irish in New Zealand, promises more than this collection could possibly offer but what is offered is enough to convince that Irish New Zealand studies is a rich resource for researchers interested in the study of the Irish diaspora. The Irish in New Zealand offers new perspectives in the field of ... read more.

If This Should Be Farewell: a family separated by war (2003)

Reviewed by Julie Ustinoff in the October 2003 issue.
Adrian Wood is the grandson of Ernest and Mary Hodgkin, a loving couple living in Singapore during the second world war who became separated through the events of war. In 1942, just prior to the arrival of the Japanese armed forces and the fall of Singapore, Ernest had managed to secure safe passage to Western Australia for Mary and their children. Ernest, however, remained behind. He became a civilian internee, and was first held at the Changi prison camp and then at Sime Road on Singapore Island where he remained until the close of the war. Wood's edited collection of letters exchanged by ... read more.

My Island Home: A Torres Strait Memoir (2003)

Reviewed by Clive Moore in the June 2004 issue.
John Singe, a school teacher in Torres Strait, Papua New Guinea and north Queensland since 1970, is an established author of the region, having published The Torres Strait: People and History (1979), Culture in Change: Torres Strait History in Photographs (1988) and Among Islands (1993). My Island Home, as its title suggests, a memoir of his years in the Strait, 1970 to 1996. It is the story of an ordinary graduate of Brisbane's Kelvin Grove Teachers' College in 1969, who chose to be posted to Queensland's most northern outpost and stayed on, marrying twice to Strait's women. The book has a ... read more.

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