Author: Warwick McFadyen

“The gift of time in reflection has provided some clarity …” It reads as the opening words of a philosopher, sitting in a bower, contemplating life and offering to the trees and sky an essence of what he or she now would utter on something important, something of a distilled universal nature. But no, not

Terror comes in waves. The first is the bullet, knife or bomb. Then, the maiming or the death. Then there is the grief. The third drops into lives like a large stone dropped into a lake; it radiates out, slams into those directly affected and touches others with fainter ripples. Sometimes, it drowns those over

The race that stopped the nation stopped the horse. So death becomes us, becomes even more part of our culture, but not in a way that grasps us by the throat and sends us into gasps of grief. No, we say it’s tragic and move on. Culture’s collateral damage really. It’s not as if a

The storm in the teacup that was the proposal by Virgin to publicly laud Australia’s war veterans with priority boarding and onboard announcements to other passengers of their presence seems to have faded into the ether.  Which is where it should stay and from where it should never have arisen. After a barrage of criticism,

In a secondhand bookshop, a remarkable discovery has been made. An exercise book, yellow-paged and time-worn, would seem to be an alternative, and abandoned, version of the classic novel Lord of the Flies.  This one, say those who have read extracts, appears to be set in the early 21st century. Adults have replaced the boys,

A park bench. It is spring, the earth is returning to life, a faint warmth can be felt in the air. Two friends are discussing their finances. Rosencrantz: We need a plan no one has thought of. We need a plan to make money that is so original it is startling in its simplicity. We

Life is truly strange. One can be blissfully walking the dog when, out of the light blue of morning, a question flashes before you like a comet piercing the sky. It is this: how to decide between a lump of coal and six days. Granted it is not a comparison of like with like. One

There’s a shortage of rain. There’s a shortage of public housing. There’s a shortage of hospital beds. But now, perhaps indicating the frightfully dire state of this nation, we are learning there is a shortage of au pairs. How else to explain the surfacing of the compassionate actions of the Home Affairs Minister, and onetime

At the end of a week of blood and carnage a phrase from insurgent Tony Abbott skewed the whole sorry chaotic mess into another arena. As Abbott was leaving the executioners’ room in which Scott Morrison had leapt out from the barricades and ambushed rampaging Peter Dutton, slain his ambitions, and thus part of those