So fuck your judgement, and fuck the stigma. I'm proud of every part of me, even the bits that I need a bit of help from these pills with. This is me.
Since then? Countless posters and street art paste-ups; illustrations, cartoons, newspapers, newsletters, magazines, catalogues and books; T-shirts, banners, murals, cassette and CD covers; business cards and letterheads—and the occasional fabric design.
An annual psoriatic itch that becomes inflamed mid-January before being soothed by the balm that is the public holiday. The debate distracts us from the real issues we should be considering and doing something about: child protection; an overloaded criminal justice system; the well-being of vulnerable people; adequacy of social services; international obligations; and the humanitarian crisis in Yemen. The list appears endless.
Every Australian small town has a place - or several - outside of town where the local hoons take stolen cars to lay their marks on the road in rubber. Sometimes - if the drivers have skill, a good motor and a nice new set of someone else's tyres - the marks left are almost abstract artworks. Other times, less so.
A look at all things northern... and some of the myths behind them.
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By late 1976 Csidei was in real financial and legal trouble, with debtors—including the Bartons—and corporate regulators on his tail. Around this time, while on one of his occasional trips to Sydney, Harald Paech, manager of Csidei's Wollogorang Station, suggested—half-heartedly and after a few too many drinks—that Csidei might investigate the possibility of growing a cannabis crop to raise some cash.
The recently-developed Darwin suburb of Muirhead is the model of an obesogenic suburb. It is designed around the car. There is little or no provision of public transport. Streets are meandering and there’s nowhere to go. There are no retail, commercial or social facilities or amenity. There’s no milk bar, there’s not even a pub!
Darwin has always been a haven for desperados, chancers, carpet baggers and those trying to run away from the dark shadows of a previous life. I'll admit to being one of the latter when I turned up in mid-1984. From the long-lens-view of the populated south-east of the country, Darwin was an attractive bolt-hole, not least because it was about as far away as you could get from your southern ghosts. Not that there was any lack of opportunity for new troubles in the Top End.
Over its four years, Rural Weekly NT emphasised news and views from the pastoral, mining, agriculture, land management and conservation sectors. Politically, it covered the 2016 election loss of former Chief Minister Adam Giles and the rise of Labor’s Michael Gunner. But other issues also rose to the fore, matters deeply affecting those in the bush, including health services, especially mental health and youth suicide, as well as the wind-down of the Inpex project, the impacts of climate change and the potential hydraulic fracturing (or fracking) of the Territory’s gas reserves.
Everyone has others one is obligated to (has to care for) and others who care for one. No man or woman is an Island. ‘Skin’ classification guides the nature and intensity of relationships. A feature of the system that appeals to many ‘westerners’ is “mother in law avoidance” In former stricter times it was absolutely forbidden for one’s mother-in-law to be addressed or to be in the same room. It still happens that someone might wait outside a shop because “there is no room”.
In his life and in his music -- most memorably as a member of Sydney bands The Original Battersea Heroes, later The Heroes, [1967-1973], then the band for which he is best known, Uncle Bob's Band [1973-77], followed by a brief foray with The Works [1978-79] -- Bob McGowan instinctively shunned the artificial and reveled in the real.