Tag: history
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Slaughterhouse-Five
—Kurt Vonnegut When I first read this novel, back when I didn’t have grey hair, it was marketed as ‘a classic of Science Fiction’. I read it because I liked science fiction, without really understanding the context of the novella, and was bitterly disappointed. Stephen King, I will point out, was also marketed as ‘Science…
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Lenses on Lilac: Jacarandas in Ipswich
Where I live, in South East Queensland, there’s a saying that when the Jacarandas bloom, it’s time for students to sit exams. The trees themselves sit, so quietly, studiously, unnoticed all spring—such as spring is in The ‘swich—until one day it’s as if every single jacaranda throughout the city erupts with energetic fuchsia blossoms at…
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IN THE WAKE OF THE LONGBOATS
Holland America 22-day cruise from Copenhagen to Reykjavik The Context ‘I’ve never been keen on cruises and I’m on this Nordic diet,’ I stutter when my friend tells me she’s going on a Holland America cruise. ‘There’d be lactose, yeast and eggs in everything.’ Noisy bands, gaudy atrium full of ageing drunks and spas full…
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AN ENJOYER OF REMNANTS OF YESTERYEAR
As a ‘taphophile’, I’m a tad excited to be going to learn the stories around an icon of Brisbane’s southwest suburbs, Toowong Cemetery, this weekend on a ghost tour. Sprawling across forty-four scenic hectares, it’s the biggest boneyard in Queensland! Steele Rudd (aka Arthur Hoey Davis), Jack-the-Ripper suspect, Walter Thomas Porriot, and Mary Kelly (no…
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HASTE YE BACK: ISLE OF COLL, SCOTLAND
Scotland’s a land of monumental mountains and misty glens, castles with hidden stories, drams of whisky straight from the source, men in kilts, kelpies, selkies and Fay folk. It’s a mystical, time-shrouded lodestone which entices for many reasons, but the strongest for me is that my roots are tangled deeply in its rockiest, most wind-lashed soil: the…
Margaret R Kelly 