Welcome to Eureka Street

back to site

Author: Juliette Hughes

  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Crowned with many crowns

    • Juliette Hughes
    • 09 May 2023
    6 Comments

    It didn’t bother me to watch the coronation. I was always going to, not least because I remember the last one. Despite astrologers' claims that the date of the coronation of King Charles III was a bad omen, the day was a moment of celebration for many; a chance to watch some history and hear some pretty decent music.

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Egg hunt mayhem: A plea

    • Juliette Hughes
    • 05 April 2023
    2 Comments

    From chocolate-covered canines to sugar-rush-induced meltdowns, some Easter egg hunts don't quite go as planned. But with the promise to pay for damages and a reminder to all parents that sharing is caring, we can't help but wonder, was it all worth it?

    READ MORE
  • INTERNATIONAL

    New heresy: In conversation with Richard Dawkins

    • David Halliday, Juliette Hughes
    • 03 March 2023
    2 Comments

    In the world of science and rational inquiry, few names loom as large. The often-controversial evolutionary biologist has spent decades exploring the mysteries of the natural world and ruffling feathers in religious and secular movements alike. Speaking to Eureka Street, Richard Dawkins discusses the difficulties in public discourse and what constitutes modern heresy.  

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The beautiful ugliness of Roald Dahl

    • Juliette Hughes
    • 27 February 2023
    13 Comments

    Roald Dahl's beloved children's books have been given a makeover, with 'sensitivity readers' rewording phrases that might offend modern sensibilities. But what has been lost in this sanitisation of Dahl's work? Do we risk losing the very essence of what makes these works so powerful and enduring? 

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Best of 2022: When the lobbyist makes the laws: Victoria and the sex industry

    • Juliette Hughes, Kathy Chambers
    • 05 January 2023

    With very little public debate or consultation, Victoria has repealed almost all laws relating to prostitution. Alone among all recreational activities, sex for payment is now unrestricted, even regarding health and safety. If we really care what happens to people, what place does sex work have in our society?

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Duelling playlists

    • Juliette Hughes
    • 14 December 2022
    1 Comment

    Especially around Christmas, we Hugheses tend to get weird about playlists. What music do you want streaming through the house anyway? You can get anything at all on YouTube and Spotify these days. My family members, like me, have always been a tad defensive about playlists although there are a few items we all like. But these are over far too soon, and then the arguments begin about whose taste is more execrable.

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Yellowstone and the Machiavellians

    • Juliette Hughes
    • 09 December 2022
    2 Comments

    This year I discovered Yellowstone, and my all-too-easy-breezy dismissal of the series has changed to respect and continuing interest because it has made me think about humanity and the world. It made me reflect on being human, and what (despite and often because of our best aims and intentions) we might have to do in the world to survive.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Love, mercy and schadenfreude

    • Juliette Hughes
    • 02 November 2022
    4 Comments

    The town celebrated Guy Fawkes day and burned an effigy of the man who tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament centuries before. For days beforehand, even as the holy women left the churches where they had prayed for the release of souls from punishment, children would be dragging carts and prams around with Guy Fawkes dummies they’d made, stuffed with straw and newspaper like scarecrows, easy to burn.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    When the lobbyist makes the laws: Victoria and the sex industry

    • Juliette Hughes, Kathy Chambers
    • 20 October 2022
    10 Comments

    With very little public debate or consultation, Victoria has repealed almost all laws relating to prostitution. Alone among all recreational activities, sex for payment is now unrestricted, even regarding health and safety. If we really care what happens to people, what place does sex work have in our society?

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    A moral compass at the centre of J.K. Rowling's Ink Black Heart

    • Juliette Hughes
    • 07 September 2022
    4 Comments

    So far it hasn’t been easy to find a review in Australia from someone who has actually read the sixth and latest book in Rowling/Galbraith’s Cormoran Strike crime series, The Ink Black Heart. l wonder if it is too much to ask for people to simply read books (any books) before holding opinions about them.

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Everyone’s a critic

    • Juliette Hughes 
    • 16 August 2022
    1 Comment

    Five years ago, the beloved and I were in a reality show called Everyone’s a Critic. The show took us all to art galleries, mostly in Melbourne and Sydney, plonked us in front of some artworks, asking us to say what we thought of them. I realised TV norms being what they are, that we could have a ten-minute conversation about artists with whom we were familiar and all that would make it onto the program would be ten seconds of me mentioning my mum.

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Memory and Austen

    • Juliette Hughes 
    • 14 July 2022
    4 Comments

    History is on my mind at the moment, all because of yet another awful Austen adaptation. The latest cinematic mud-pie thrown at her in the new Persuasion movie may even be the worst one yet, which is something, because there’s a lot of competition. Who can forget Gwyneth Paltrow in the 1995 Emma driving a carriage in a yellow ball gown as though she were doing the time trial in Top Gear?

    READ MORE