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Keywords: John Schumann

  • AUSTRALIA

    300 Australians that no one wants

    • John Schumann
    • 23 October 2024

      There are approximately 300 Australians like Will currently held in forensic disability facilities, hospitals, mental health facilities, the prison system and providers of last resort. After two decades of seclusion, his story reveals a broken system where lives deteriorate, not improve, despite efforts for reform.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    The true quiet Australians

    • Brian Matthews
    • 17 August 2023

    Red gum, this ‘smooth-barked large tree that gives watercourses all over Australia their Australian feel’, seemed intent on bobbing up in my life one way or another, sometimes as a result of sheer luck or coincidence. (From 2021)

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Wit, irony and the Australian vernacular: Remembering Brian Matthews

    • John Schumann
    • 15 June 2022
    5 Comments

    Most of us, when pushed, can name a couple of teachers who had a profound influence on our lives. For me, Brian Matthews was one such teacher. I enrolled in English at Flinders University in 1972. On asking the enrolling officer whether anybody was ‘doing anything about Lawson’, I was directed to the office of Brian Matthews, a recent appointment to the English Department. ‘I hear you know something about Lawson,’ I said, leaning in his doorway.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    The true quiet Australians

    • Brian Matthews
    • 03 June 2021
    6 Comments

    Red gum, this ‘smooth-barked large tree that gives watercourses all over Australia their Australian feel’, seemed intent on bobbing up in my life one way or another, sometimes as a result of sheer luck or coincidence.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The romance of the song

    • Brian Matthews
    • 06 October 2020
    10 Comments

    He came in, sat down, and we talked about Henry Lawson. He was well read in the field, having encountered Lawson not only in a small way at school but especially at home where his mother had given him an anthology of Australian stories and he’d come across ‘The Drover’s Wife’. We hit it off: he was pleasant, engaging and witty and we resolved to continue our talk in the near future.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Teaching literature to rock stars

    • Brian Matthews
    • 01 February 2013
    2 Comments

    He appeared in the doorway of my study one day in 1971 and asked if I was the one who was starting a course in Australian literature. His voice was soft and melodic, his accent beautifully Irish. Born in Belfast in 1947, he had grown up amid the horrors of 'The Troubles' and would in later years refer to himself as 'a recovering Catholic'.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Bio-picks

    • James Griffin
    • 06 July 2006

    James Griffin reviews the Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vol.16, John Ritchie and Diane Langmore, eds.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Truth, politics and the Fourth Estate

    • Morag Fraser
    • 14 May 2006

    The following essays by Morag Fraser and John Schumann are edited addresses from the Jesuit Lenten Seminar Series held in February–March 2005.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Truth? You can’t handle the truth

    • John Schumann
    • 14 May 2006

    Morag Fraser and John Schumann reflect on the crucial role of truth in our society.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Needlework

    • Brian Matthews
    • 23 April 2006

    Although a Delta Goodrem launch would no doubt draw a larger attendance, perhaps a celebration of Henry Lawson,  would be a more notable and important Australian event.

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