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Keywords: Fires

  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Living with Australia's beauty and terror

    • Tony Smith
    • 20 February 2009

    In contrast to tabloid television coverage of fires, Lohrey's writing explains much of our relationship to the bush. Like plaques in town halls honouring fallen soldiers, the task of rebuilding devastated communities is embedded in the national psyche.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Why we forgot the Apology

    • Myrna Tonkinson
    • 19 February 2009
    9 Comments

    The muted recognition of the anniversary of the National Apology was partly due to the bushfires in Victoria, which continue, understandably, to monopolise attention and emotion. But the momentous event of February 2008 has not been followed up by significant developments in Indigenous affairs.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Ash Wednesday 1983

    • Marlene Marburg and Grant Fraser
    • 17 February 2009
    2 Comments

    flame .. Might ignite the instant .. And go wildly on the palsy of the wind .. So that a shock of parrots thunders forth .. Spewing slipstreams of fire .. A vomitus of barbary sparks .. So that our lungs are cooped with ash

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Fatal firestorm's distant witness

    • Bronwyn Lay
    • 16 February 2009
    8 Comments

    A year ago, on the day of the National Apology, the emotion was palpable over the seas. But it was hard not being there, standing on the same dirt as your fellow countrymen. It is similarly difficult to be away from home during a time of natural disaster.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Politics stymie bushfire response

    • Paul Collins
    • 13 February 2009
    12 Comments

    Though the fires are still burning, the blaming has already begun, with environmentalists and academics pitted against rural people and firefighters. We have entered a new era of fires and will need to take a long, ecologically sensitive look at what has happend.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    When Leonard Cohen prays

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 13 February 2009
    13 Comments

    The world of pop music is dominated by prettiness and skin-deep perfection. In that context, Cohen's greatness is not instantly discernable. Lately a Buddhist, he has spent his latter years in study of religion — 'But cheerfulness keeps breaking through.'

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  • RELIGION

    Putting the flame to blame

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 12 February 2009
    12 Comments

    A compulsive fire lighter sets fire to a few leaves. The fire grows and ends up causing many deaths. While it is momentarily satisfying to find someone on whom to fix blame for the fires, it is unhelpful to be fixated in blame.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Bushfire TV

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 12 February 2009
    3 Comments

    Kevin Rudd controversially told Channel Nine's Today show that the Victorian firebugs had committed 'mass murder'. Grief and anger compete during such times, and for armchair critics it is often all too easy to take the moral high ground.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    When nature is the enemy

    • Brian Matthews
    • 11 February 2009
    7 Comments

    Fires and floods, murderous cyclones, unprecedented storms — none of them confined to their time honoured places and seasons. Nature is no longer our familiar element and our inspiration. It's running amok.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    No ark in a firestorm

    • Moira Rayner
    • 11 February 2009
    3 Comments

    What can I do, I think, that first Sunday, other than being a nuisance at an emergency centre, or a gawker? I fall into something practical, fostering survivors' dogs and cats, and caring for bewildered companion animals who survived but whose owners didn't.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Humanity endures in bushfire tragedy

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 09 February 2009
    9 Comments

    During the financial turmoil this summer, images of fire have abounded. The economy is 'going into meltdown'. Shareholdings 'turn to ashes'. This weekend's bushfires make us ask instinctively what really matters.

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  • RELIGION

    Ash Wednesday did not begin in 1983

    • Kylie Crabbe
    • 27 February 2007
    5 Comments

    For many Australians, Ash Wednesday is synonomous with the devastating bushfires of 1983. But a thousand years before the bushfires, Christians were beginning the season of Lent with Ashes, ensuring a gritty start for the road to Easter.

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