About an hour south of Nambucca Heads, the Pacific shore curves eastward and then north to form a graceful sweep of aquamarine fringed by forest green. This tranquil haven is known as Trial Bay. Today it’s a welcoming place. Mountains lapis blue with distance paint a backdrop. Kangaroos recline

In the modern world we celebrate individuality and freedom, but the truth is our mammalian nervous system loves order and conformity. The freedom to do and say as we please is the icing on an elaborate layer cake of learned behaviours. Interestingly, it seems the precise nature of the rules

When Mark Fisher popularised Fredric Jameson’s aphorism that it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism[1] he alerted us to an important principle. We don’t engage with the world directly. We meet it through culture. There are boundaries to imagination,

The road to Yapa weaves through clumped grasses in red sand woodland to the foot of a low, rocky ridge. Where the road ends, a path climbs out of mulga and eucalypt onto sandstone outcrops dotted with white cypress pine. You can camp by the river an hour away and

“It’s a sick society.” You’ve probably heard it said. You may have said it yourself. It’s one way of expressing disgust at the worst of human behaviour. But what if it’s true? I grew up in circumstances unique in all of Earth’s long existence. The

The trick to perpetuating injustice, as any skilled propagandist can tell you, is to make what is entirely arbitrary seem natural and inevitable. The politics of ‘us’ and ‘them’ and its ‘economy’ of ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ derive legitimacy from the notion that life is innately competitive. According to this view,

In the early 2000s a retiring senior executive from a prestigious German car company predicted our definition of luxury was about to change. Grandeur and excess would be superseded in the new century by fresh air, clean water, space, time, and silence. It was a surprisingly ascetical forecast, especially coming

Dr Stephen Porges, originator of Polyvagal Theory[1], noted that Covid-19 exposed how individual physiological states intersect with the health of whole societies. Mammals including humans are normally highly social but revert to a more primitive, reptilian state when threatened. This is the famous ‘fight or flight’ response. But in

On a panel show one night a small gathering of influential white people discussed an issue affecting Indigenous Australians. Every comment was well-intentioned. But they used the terms ‘we’ and ‘us’ for themselves and their audience and referred to Aboriginal people as ‘them’. I didn’t feel much camaraderie with

The image called Earthrise was taken from lunar orbit on Christmas Eve 1968. Earth’s swirling blue and white orb, resplendent in an ink-black sky, hovers above the barren, pock-marked surface of its Moon. I first saw it as a boy of ten. Its message to me remains as fresh