Essays & reportage
20 May 2025
How a new moral consciousness began to stir in Australia
Essays & reportage
6 December 2023
Australia’s fatal firestorms have a distinctive and mainly Victorian lineage, but the 2019–20 season was frighteningly new
Essays & reportage
24 November 2023
What guidance for the challenges facing the planet can we find in the words of one of Australia’s greatest prime ministers?
Essays & reportage
8 September 2023
A new kind of history is called for in the year of the Voice referendum. Here’s what it might look like.
Books & arts
15 November 2022
Steve Morton’s Australian Deserts — winner of the 2022 Whitley Medal for an outstanding publication on Australasian wildlife — highlights the rich diversity of…
From the archive
18 October 2022
With rigorous science and inspired humanism, archaeologist Mike Smith — who died this week — imagined the other side of the frontier
Books & arts
16 December 2021
An insider’s account of the Black Summer bushfires of 2019–20 exposes the wider failings of the Morrison government
Books & arts
30 October 2021
This precious ecosystem yields more of its secrets to forest scientist David Lindenmayer
Essays & reportage
6 August 2021
Mandy Martin, Australian artist
Books & arts
27 March 2020
“I would like to be read by the people I went to school with,” said the historian Ken Inglis. “And by my parents. And by my children.”
Summer season
8 January 2020
The Australian bushfire has its own fine-grained local languages
Essays & reportage
3 December 2019
George Seddon helped his readers see Australia from the inside
Essays & reportage
26 November 2019
The author’s compelling yet curiously old-fashioned account of Indigenous history has inspired and empowered
Essays & reportage
21 July 2019
They went to the moon but discovered the Earth
From the archive
17 December 2017
A chance encounter anticipated the shocking disappearance of a prime minister on 17 December 1967
National affairs
31 October 2017
Malcolm Turnbull is the latest leader to rebuff carefully developed Indigenous proposals
Essays & reportage
18 July 2017
Extract | How Geoffrey Bolton’s environmental history made a difference
Essays & reportage
9 August 2016
For Eric Rolls, historical writing needed to serve the future, writes Tom Griffiths
Essays & reportage
24 July 2015
Tom Griffiths welcomes a profound exploration of intergenerational memory
National affairs
15 February 2015
Making sense of the premature passing of another elected prime minister will influence the fate of his successors, writes Tom Griffiths
Books & arts
3 December 2013
In his desire to find the evil in Douglas Mawson, David Day overlooks the awkward tenderness and vulnerability that may lie at the heart of this flawed and driven man, writes…
Essays & reportage
3 April 2013
What would success taste like, wonders a Melbourne AFL supporter
Essays & reportage
22 November 2012
The experts driving Australia’s bushfire policies won’t acknowledge that different forests produce different fires
Essays & reportage
24 February 2012
On board the Aurora Australis as it sailed to Commonwealth Bay to commemorate the centenary of Douglas Mawson’s historic expedition, our correspondent witnesses a…
Books & arts
12 October 2011
Books | Despite the Black Saturday tragedy, attitudes and policies have moved far too slowly
Essays & reportage
4 December 2009
As the world talks about climate change, the Antarctic Treaty shows how politics and science can work together with enduring results, writes Tom Griffiths
Essays & reportage
16 February 2009
Testimony from the 1939 and 2009 fires reveals what we haven’t learnt from history