Australiana

Once, exasperated news hounds might shake their heads and marvel at how life imitates art. It was stranger than fiction, they exclaimed. Nowadays it’s just “You can’t make this shit up.” And though headlines grow

Oh, down at the catching pen an old shearer stands, Grasping his shears in his long bony hands Click goes his shears; click, click, click. Wide are the blows, and his hand is moving quick

An old friend reflected on his experience during the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing. He was employed by Australia’s Postmaster-General’s department (PMG)  – you know it today as the privatised gouging entity, Telstra. In those

As The Cigar waded through the stream of anguish, the unfolding tragedy at Kew TGS – Trinity Grammar School’s “Haircutgate” – the hilarity of it all grew unendurable. In this leafy walled garden of Melburnian

Throsby has a theory on elections and coin tosses. Experts on chance proffer the counter-intuitive fact that each coin toss has a 50-50 chance of being heads or tails, no matter how many times either

Voters in the Victorian federal electorate of Batman were a little nonplussed at the huge number of Greens supporters roaming the streets on March 17 election day. Throsby can’t be sure if punters knew how

Never get between an Australian Liberal (conservative) and a piece of public property. Behind every Liberal-run government lurk deep pockets and acquisitive eyes with a ready case to make this or that infrastructure “profitable” and

A teenaged Throsby recalls listening to Parliament on the unidirectional non-buffering broadcast pre-Internet. Ming’s Liberal pollies presented as a sharp well-spoken crew and Arfur Caldwell’s a mob of buffoons. That same mind finds today’s political

Noely @YaThinkN has knickers rightly in a knot after a tsunami of Bondi wave proportions beat down upon her tweeted enquiry, why wasn’t Bridget McKenzie short listed for Nats leadership? “She’s a senator, stupid” was

Throsby can admit but awe and humility at the leader of the National Party’s overwhelming command of retail politics. Barnyard – or Beetrooter, as we have come to cherish him in so short a time