Looking, and Looking Away Jock Serong In a time of pandemic, there are obvious advantages to living in a wealthy democracy; one that is fantastically remote and has only sea-borders. As I look at a global infection-spread map, I see huge blobs of red obscuring east Asia, Europe and north America like blood splatters or perhaps the lethal residue of a sneeze. When I look at Australia, I see a couple of small red dots that indicate our giant continent has nothing more than a mild case of acne. These
Read More Blackened and Bewildered By Jock Serong Over January this year I received messages from friends overseas, worrying whether my family and I were threatened by the bushfires they’d seen on television. Their worry – for us, at least – was misplaced. We were fine. That is to say, we lost nothing. We did not have to flee our house. We live in a remote town – what Australians call ‘the bush’. In theory, we’re supposed to have a fire plan, so that in the event of a catastrophe we have
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