Australian Public Intellectual [API] Network

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My Adventures in Queensland History

Beverley Kingston
This is a story of an adventure that began as adventures often do, on a slowly-moving train somewhere in Queenland in 1946. The train was in fact moving so slowly that my father was able to leap out break a piece off the giant sensitive plant growing alongside the track and climb back in to show us its pretty mauve flowers and how the leaves curled up when they were touched. I was just five and we were returning to North Queensland to live. I was to spend some years trying to capture sensitive plant for my collection of dried plants. (My best specimens were another noxious weed, noogoora ...
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Network Review of Books

Settlers, Servants and Slaves: Aboriginal and European Children in Nineteenth-Century Western Australia (2002)

Reviewed by Shirleene Robinson in the April 2003 issue.
Settlers, Servants and Slaves is an absorbing and important book that will potentially change the way people look at Western Australian history. It is only recently that Australian historians have begun to investigate the historical experiences of children and have recognised the way that their youth impacts on these experiences. With Settlers, Servants and Slaves, Penelope Hetherington has filled in a considerable gap in Australian social history. She thoroughly examines the exploitation of both Aboriginal and European children by the settler elite in nineteenth century Western Australia. The ... read more.

Aboriginal Australians (2002)

Reviewed by Jeannie Herbert in the August 2005 issue.
As an Aboriginal educator, I have used the successive editions of this book as a useful source of reference material over many years. I have been particularly interested in the way in which the updated versions of the text have reflected the on-going history of Aboriginal people in this country, particularly in relation to the persistence of racism within Australian society and the impact of racist attitudes upon Aboriginal Australians. This issue becomes even more critical when it is denied and, regrettably, there are many who argue that it does not exist, or that it is a thing of the past. ... read more.

Hope: New Philosophies for Change (2002)

Reviewed by Martin Leet in the July 2003 issue.
Two discourses often surround our lives, discourses which contrast starkly with one another. One is very hopeful in its emphasis upon the unheralded possibilities for new, pleasurable experiences and for boundless opportunities for progress. The other is quite despairing in its preoccupation with rising levels of inequality and conflict, and with falling standards of political life and participation. In general, the promulgators of these discourses are separated by differences in power. The hopeful discourse is put forward by vested interests which seek to consolidate support for the existing ... read more.

Bradman's Best (2002)

Reviewed by Warwick Franks in the December 2002 issue.
One of the idle pleasures of following sport is to indulge in the harmlessly futile exercise of selecting best teams. It's harmless because it's a pleasant way of passing the time but futile because of its subjectivity and the vastness of its scope. Cricket devotees in particular draw on the game's Victorian heritage in their mania for classifying, labelling and ordering the impact and skill of the great names of the game. Add a touch of the Elizabethan notion of the great chain of being and mix with millennial fever and we can understand where these books have their origin. Roland Perry's ... read more.

Under A Tin-Grey Sari (2002)

Reviewed by Marion Spies in the April 2003 issue.
This is a first novel by a writer who lives in Australia and has British and Pakistani family origins. Not surprisingly, these nationalities are represented in his book. The story is set in the city of Chittagong, East Pakistan, in the 1960s, portraying small lives during an economic boom, which is overshadowed by big events: Pakistan's hostility towards India, the impending creation of Bangladesh, and the Vietnam war. Khalid, the protagonist, is a young cook who invents a new kind of tandoor. His invention is stolen, however, and the oven is soon manufactured in great numbers by the ... read more.

Australia and Israel: An ambiguous relationship (2002)

Reviewed by Philip Mendes in the July 2002 issue.
Chanan Reich is an Israeli political scientist who has spent much of the past twenty years in Australia. His earlier PhD thesis, for example, analysed the role of the Jewish and Greek communities as pressure groups in the Australian political system. Reich's latest work explores the historical relationship between Australia, Australian Jews, and the State of Israel from 1915-1967. This was a period during which relations were largely assymetrical in that Jews in Palestine and subsequently the State of Israel consistently sought the political support of Australia, whilst Australia neither ... read more.

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