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        • Quarterly Essay 59: Faction Man: Bill Shorten's path to power by David Marr
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        • Quarterly Essay 37 What's Right? The Future of Conservatism in Australia
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Quarterly Essay 37: What's Right: The future of conservatism in Australia by Waleed Aly (2010) . . . a retrospective

21/4/2016

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Waleed Aly is a commentator who is in sync with a wide range of Australian opinion. His cultural instincts meld with his academic and media credentials to offer a lucid insight into Australian public life. This retrospective on his acclaimed 2010 Quarterly Essay ‘What’s right? The Future of Conservativism in Australia’ finds his insights to be sharp and prophetic.
The Quarterly Essay is longish (25 000 words) in format and has two general approaches, examining public figures and contemporary issues. The QE’s record for critical timing in, for example, David Marr’s essays on Kevin Rudd, Tony Abbott, and George Pell is almost creepy and the broad analysis of issues and the subsequent impact these essays have had on the public debate is substantial. Aly’s essay is the second approach: an insight into a how conservative political thinking has changed over fifty years.
Before embarking on his thesis, Aly reflects on a Mark Kenny article, noting that he too found himself “in agreement with much conservative philosophy, yet in consistent disagreement with politicians and commentators who call themselves conservatives”. Starting with the emergence of Conservatism after the French Revolution, Aly derives from Edmund Burke that “human society is organic” and “so much about them is intangible and mysterious that they cannot be altered by design in the way one alters a machine”. Government is not a forum for experimentation. He quotes Lord Coleraine that “conservatism is an attitude of mind, not a corpus of doctrine or a carefully worked out system of political theory” and “it is not in itself ideological”. Throughout the essay, Aly promotes traditional conservatism as a buffer against excess change and as a protector of heritage and the environment.
In the chapter “Notes on a modern marriage”, liberalism is defined by John Stuart Mill as the need, in implementing democracy, that neither society or the State has any right to interfere with an individual’s thought or conduct, unless it is to prevent harm to others. Liberalism was at that time quite radical and not at all conservative. It can be argued that conservatism stands against something whereas liberalism is a stated ideal. “Neither” says Aly “accepts the right of a person or polity to impose radical utopian designs on society, and neither proposed a scheme to rid the world of evil. Both are inherently pluralistic”.
Enter the market and neo-liberalism. Economist Friedrich Hayek saw post-war centrally planned economies because government should be kept as distant as possible from economic activity, an anti-collectivist which sat neatly with the West’s fear of communism. Aly sees conservatives tolerating past (gradual) growth and progress but, with the advent of large and powerful corporations, this tolerance waned. Neo-liberalism precipitated the ‘market society’, and markets are amoral. Neo-liberal Margaret Thatcher said there is no such thing as society, making the point, says Ali, that it was not for the state to solve people’s problems such as homelessness.
Move forward to the arch Australian neo-liberal abomination, WorkChoices. Myopian focus by the Howard government on the market neglected to register that voters want “security and good working conditions, and were not interested in arguments about how they might reduce unemployment by sacrificing these”. Aly plots the rise of “a new kind of conservatism”, one articulated by Reagan decades earlier, “a crusade for freedom that will engage the faith and fortitude of the next generation.” Read ideology.
The drive to privatisation changed the roles of the IMF and the World Bank, which were originally emplaced to avoid economic downturns when the market failed, to evidence-free ideologues, the roles of which were totally at odds with the conservative tradition.
Forward to the WorkChoices era. Aly shows that the insecurities inherent in neo-liberal globalisation have “revitalised the twin forms of cultural belligerence: ultra-nationalism and religious fundamentalism”. Here members of society seek continuity, groundedness, stability and a sense of historicity, albeit through an unauthentic world view. Howard appealed to these reactive cultural notions, along the earlier lines of Thatcher, Reagan and George W Bush. This, and his embrace of market-based social reform, means he was not conservative at all. Howard’s prime ministership was that of a neo-conservative. Ali identifies this transition as the crux of his essay because it says a great deal about the state of Australian conservatism today.
Aly describes neo-conservatism as a state of siege. Commentator Kristol erects a barrier between the moral majority and “college-educated people” who are “not much interested in money but are keenly interested in power”. This new class is comprised of “scientists, teachers and education administrators …. “, the liberal media are to be blamed for “everything from spreading the myth of global warming to derailing the vice-presidential campaign of Sarah Palin and delivering Barak Obama to presidency”. This characterisation, by a neo-con himself, has shades of Stalin and Pol Pot (this reviewer’s view). People must be assimilated into the mainstream, the antithesis of liberalism. Believe anything you want, provided what we say defines Australianness. Aly sees that neo-conservatives “posit a clear, identifiable, unproblematic, national culture; a culture that was comparatively homogenous until the relativism of the Left tore at its fabric. This is an ossified, nostalgic fiction”. In examining the commentary of Liberal Party spokespeople from the era of this essay (2010), hindsight reveals that cultural conservatives such as Pyne, Hunt and Turnbull have persisted in leadership roles better than, say, the neo-conservative Kevin Andrews.
Climate change is a key issue in this “fight to the political death”. “Denial quenches the neo-conservative thirst for an enemy elite, dividing the world once more into friends and enemies, and turning the discussion into an ideological contest”. “Climate change is the most ideologically charged issue we are likely to witness for generations”. Yay the debate, alas the planet.
Aly has argued that “by embracing neo-liberalism, conservatives have backed themselves into an ideological corner that has forced them to violate the philosophical tenets of both liberalism and conservatism and to adopt a thoroughly reactionary form of politics”. Aly’s 2010 essay speaks to the present with the implication “liberalism and conservatism will have their best chance of thriving through the disavowal of neo-liberalism”.
The length of the Quarterly Essay format enables Aly to make and support his case. It is compelling. No argument can be complete, this reviewer would have liked to see population policies at least raised as they are directly relevant to many of Aly’s issues. Fans of this format may notice that Aly’s title bookends with  Clive Hamilton’s 2006 Quarterly Essay “What’s left? The Death of Social Democracy”.

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Trajectories

31/3/2016

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Humanity is at the point of intersection of two trajectories – the realisation of the full potential of our sentience, and the recalibration of our relationship with the Earth so that it may sustain us.

Historic moments happen. The discovery of gravity waves is one of humanity’s most important discoveries in our quest for the nature of reality. That’s just happened and we should get ready for the roller coaster of discoveries. There is no reason why we would wait to exploit this discovery. An earlier discovery of the nature of disease transmission would have saved millions of premature deaths, depending on how many decades earlier it occurred. Before we had a better understanding of disease, we relied on cruel and desperate means to steer clear of infection, often based on crude and self-serving assumptions of how nature works.

Sentience gives us the capacity to weigh up options to decide what is best. Long term solutions make more sense but take longer to secure simply because short term benefits require less thinking. The Romans employed sentience in 139 BCE when they recognised the practicality of the secret ballot, yet it took another 40 years before Rome offered citizenship to all Italians. This belatedly became a factor in why Rome went on become the longest ruler of its known world. But the vote was limited to free men, not women or slaves and this short term thinking became the death knell of Roman culture. It was 1911 before all Australian women had the right to vote. What a disastrous waste of two millennia in fully harnessing the intellect of half the members of our species. Slavery is now considered abhorrent but still widely practiced for selfish greed. Short term thinking prevails.

Humans can reason but we often fail the ‘long term’ thinking test. We overlook that Homo sapiens successfully walked an evolutionary tightrope in the evolution of a larger brain to pelvic girdle ratio at the same time as the growth of infants to maturity was prolonged. For humanity, this was the first historic moment. Language and an enhanced sense of empathy allowed these mutations to thrive into civilisations. Communication and collaboration strengthened the civilisations that employed them resulting, amongst other things, in the theory of evolution disclosing irrevocably the place of humans in the natural world. We then understood the source of the sentience that we had long detected that we shared with animals. We could cease allowing primitive and contrived beliefs to largely ignore animal sentience.

Alas, the laws that we employ to improve justice amongst humans break down at the species barrier. Most humans are sufficiently sentient not to believe this breakdown is a preordained law of nature, such was the kind of thinking that dispatched the superstitious Romans. Mostly, the rights of animals are suppressed because of the short-term thinking that ingenuity and commerce cannot adjust to progress.

But this injustice cannot last. To understand why, we need to look at the history of our exploitation of animals. Early humans were a part of the predator/prey relationship that is nature. Our larger brains needed the accessible protein that animal flesh provided. As communities formed, animals were domesticated and herded on land unsuitable for crops. While technology enabled more efficient food production, marginal or less arable land was grazed to provide at least some return. The impact of grazing species exotic to a habitat is now causing considerable environmental damage through impacts such as erosion and greenhouse gas emissions. Hunting is causing instability and collapse in biological communities. Only short term profitability is used to justify the drastic longer term impact. With the available agricultural technology, there is no justification for the inefficient and harmful use of land for animal production.

So the short term consumption of animals is invalidated on logical, moral and sustainability grounds? Is there any justification for eating animal products? Evidence now tells us the contrary. Our nutritional needs may be fully met without eating animal products and, in fact, animal products contribute to disease such as cancer and heart disease. Arguments to the contrary are short-term and contrived.

Human progress will be hindered if we damage the Earth and its ecosystems. Our ability to live together in a moral society will be forestalled if we hypocritically fail to recognise the rights of other sentient species. An evolved social and legal framework in which humanity can thrive will be weakened by illogical and primitive inconsistencies. How could a species that kills unnecessarily within that anachronistic framework not further distort it to justify murder and abuse of sentients of its own species?

If humanity reaches its potential outside of the confines of Earth, animal production for food will no longer be an option. Non-terrestrial communities will not have access to low quality pasture, vast oceans or other places to hunt or grow animals to eat. Habitable resources will be valued and used for quality plant production. The eating of animals will be universally accepted for the anachronism that it already is in our time.
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That time will be the end of our abuse of animals or, alternatively, our abuse of animals will be a factor in our failure to achieve our potential in that time. Why wait, why not seize the future now? We have a moral obligation to protect ourselves and future humans in a just and sustainable society. The trajectories of human potential and human morality have now crossed.
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Quarterly Essay 59: Faction Man, Bill Shorten's path to power

26/9/2015

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Faceless man no more


This Quarterly Essay was published a week or so before Malcolm Turnbull became prime minister of Australia. You would say that this changes everything for Bill Shorten’s prime ministerial prospects, so is the essay relevant? Yes – very – Marr leaves the commentary ideally set for the next chapter. Marr is a bit of a hack at these essays but all for good reason. His background knowledge is sound, his bias minimal, and his capacity for collating the events of a life into a compelling narrative is refreshing.

One major take-home from this analysis is Shorten’s oft criticised ambition. That’s not news to anyone, but framed against his desire to improve humanity’s lot, perhaps it is not a bad thing. His capacity to network and organise has also earned him some brick-bats, but is this not a critical talent for a leader? Little blemishes like a need to earn approval or to lie unashamedly to get out of trouble may not surprise. Such blemishes may be considered to pale against more stark character traits of recent national leaders. Would Shorten be a good prime minister? Marr gives us no reasons for alarm, as such. Can he convince an electorate that was ambivalent even before Turnbull became his opponent? Very problematical, especially when shape-shifting to that tougher role (than to defeat Abbott was) might make him even less attractive to voters.

Marr’s essay is considerably improved by the generous access Shorten provided, showing that either Shorten did not feel as vulnerable as Rudd and Abbott did in limiting or denying access, respectively, for previous essays, or that he is more desperate or approval seeking – a trait which Marr examines. This potted history of the recent union movement and Labor party machinations is a treasure and further enhances Marr’s credentials. It informs and sets the agenda for an interesting time leading up to the next federal election. I read the hard copy and cannot comment on any specific aspects the kindle edition.


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Quarterly Essay 58: Blood Year: Terror and the Islamic State by David Kilcullen

22/5/2015

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Attempting a commentary on the nexus between global politics, terrorism and the rise of Islamic State in 90 pages is a challenge and Kilcullen does a masterly job. Australian readers should not expect an Antipodean-focussed identification of risks against which to assess local political objectives, but are likely to be more than convinced of Kilcullen’s more general observations. His expert and dispassionate analysis will surprise even those who have watched events roll out over more than a decade. Kilcullen does not pick favourites across politics, in fact it is easy to conclude that most political entities have failed Syria, Iraq and Libya equally.

In describing religion intolerance and the path to radicalism, it is necessary to touch on some grim events. Kilcullen does this in a matter of fact manner that allows the reader to gain confidence in his analysis of where the divergent interests of troubled states could take the world. Restored boundaries, justice (good luck with that one), the containment of ISIS, a restored caliphate (after all, less than a century ago there was one) – few of the players really seek these kinds of outcomes directly, their goals could easily be characterised as myopic self-interest or rooted in nostalgia.

Kilcullen devotes 20 pages comparing probable and desirable strategies. They make sense, he has after all advised governments. Yet while his strategies are sound, they will be hard work and not attractive politically. Which probably means that they won’t happen. But as he says, the alternatives are worse. Notwithstanding whether Kilcullen’s recommendations would stand the test of political reality, that does not deride from his expert analysis and very informative essay.

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caring for the elderly - this is a balanced yet profound essay on an important topic

23/3/2015

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The blurb

In this moving and controversial Quarterly Essay, doctor and writer Karen Hitchcock investigates the treatment of the elderly and dying through some unforgettable cases. With honesty and deep experience, she looks at end-of-life decisions, frailty and dementia, over-treatment and escalating costs.

Ours is a society in which ageism, often disguised, threatens to turn the elderly into a “burden” – difficult, hopeless, expensive and homogenous. While we rightly seek to curb treatment when it is futile, harmful or against a patient’s wishes, this can sometimes lead to limits on care that suit the system rather than the person. Doctors may declare a situation hopeless when it may not be so.

We must plan for a future when more of us will be old, Hitchcock argues, with the aim of making that time better, not shorter. And we must change our institutions and society to meet the needs of an ageing population. Dear Life is a landmark essay by one of Australia’s most powerful writers.

“The elderly, the frail are our society. They are our parents and grandparents, our carers and neighbours, and they are every one of us in the not-too-distant future . . . They are not a growing cost to be managed or a burden to be shifted or a horror to be hidden away, but people whose needs require us to change . . .” —Karen Hitchcock, Dear Life

Karen Hitchcock is the author of the award-winning story collection Little White Slips and a regular contributor to the Monthly. She is also a staff physician in acute and general medicine at a large city public hospital.


Kirkreview


The issues of geriatric and end-of-life care are very different, topics which many people tend to avoid, either through not contemplating the lives of those who have done much but are becoming a burden, or by confiding that if ever they themselves were in such a position, early despatch would be desirable. These views usually change, even reverse, when older age has come, when the small discomforts aren’t as bad as the alternative. Sometimes. Other times, life is less wonderful and a blanket approach to end-of-life options is discordant with reality The rationalisation of public health that leads to pigeonholing both policy and people in aged care facilities is just as abrasive as the platitude that extended life expectancy is a societal boon. There are gaping disconnects, aching ironies and, sadly, a lack of debate beyond the realm of the bean-counters on this central and growing issue.

Hitchcock tackles problems, options and outcomes at a personal level, through the lives and experiences of patients and health care professionals. She traverses the terrain between love, empathy and pragmatism deftly but without an ounce of dismissal. A friend said that everyone must read this essay, alas I fear many will not because of the unease the topic generates. They will be the poorer. Hitchcock’s essay is a brief (70 pages), balanced and profoundly caring treatment of this topic and I am indebted to her for her insights.
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nailed it!

18/1/2015

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Germaine Greer on rage (Little Books on Big Themes)

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Greer offers a cogent, numbing and utterly convincing account of the rage experienced by male aboriginal Australians. Her analysis highlights both the source of this rage and its impact on aboriginal communities. The black man’s rage is in no way of his own making, it is simply a natural and deep rooted response that any human would feel to events and circumstances.

Greer has turned the debate on indigenous politics on its head and shows the perversity of many aspects of the Northern Territory Intervention and other contrived government responses. These responses, in their myopic lack of perspective and conveniently whitewashed options, are a perpetuation of so much that is wrong.

It is refreshing that a commentator such as Greer, who is often reported to have lost touch with Australian issues, can nail this problem so neatly. The reader is lifted from what is an otherwise despairing account when Greer identifies a way forward, a shared vision which will nurture hope and ownership, rather than rage.

Thanks to Annette, Tara and J for putting me on to it.
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humanity rules

28/12/2014

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In his spare and charming style, Wilson seeks meaning in our personal lives and, thereby, in our trajectory as a species. The critical and complementary roles of the humanities and the sciences are well argued, the forces that have shaped our evolution as a species are identified clearly, and our place in the greater biota, known and unknown, is considered. While Wilson acknowledges that many of his arguments have been made elsewhere, there is no doubt that he has collated these into a cogent and compelling contemplation on the future of humanity.

Wilson establishes his usual allegory between human society and the eusocial animals, insects mainly. Readers will be aware that there remains significant controversy with his theories in this area, which he in part acknowledges, but this does not deride from his central premise anyway. Nit-picking is easy – I had some difficulty with a scientist including ‘particle spin’, which has precise and not continuous values, amongst the continua which science studies. There similarly seems to be some internal contradiction in the precise areas in which he sees eye to eye with Richard Dawkins on the role of kin selection. He says that philosophers say that they “will attend to (the topic of free will) when we’re ready and have time”. In fairness, there is hardly a more kicked around topic in philosophy than that of free will. Nevertheless, rather than weaken it, these statements enliven Wilson’s commentary. His summation that “the history of philosophy when boiled down consists mostly of failed models of the brain” is, well, kind of tough but more than a little true.

Wilson pulls it all together in his final chapter, “A Human Future”. The ‘hard-wiring’ flaws of our evolved brains and some dogmatic and often selfish legacies of our societal evolution: these are not hurdles for the species to overcome as much as realities to understand and integrate into our world view as we realise humanity’s future. This is an articulate and accessible treatise on human potential. Is it ‘singing to the choir’? Perhaps, but, alas, that seems also to be how some of the obstacles to human enlightenment have become entrenched.
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Quarterly Essay: 56 Clivosaurus: The Politics of Clive Palmer by Guy Rundle

24/11/2014

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It seems to be beyond chance that the topics of the Quarterly Essay intersect so often and so precisely with the focus of events in Australian politics. Rundle' s experienced analysis and, in particular, his ability to see beyond the daily cut and thrust of public life enable to him to size up the phenomenon that is Clive Palmer and conclude that, like Madonna, had he not existed, we would have to have had to invent him. I consider Rundle's commentary to be balanced. Readers of his recent `A Revolution in the Making' will detect a familiar political disposition but will also smile at his identification of a "political class", a disparate group of one-time student politicians from which almost all political aspirants will arise, and which "insider journalists (are) trying to pretend they are not part".

Rundle introduces us to Palmer with an account of the shin-dig he arranged at his dysfunctional Coolum resort to introduce voters to ideas, and to warm the electorate and commentariat to the Palmer United Party. There was an awkward dissonance in these first few pages, well contrived by Rundle to introduce his central thesis. Journalists have always been reluctant to do their work on Palmer and only ever do so at the final post. Sloth and bias have shaped headlines to superficially characterise a force that would emerge as the perfect storm from the north threatening cosy politicians and commentators.

Rundle will open many eyes when he recounts Palmer's formative years and collates events to better illuminate the uneasy politician's beliefs, motivations and methods. He contradicts the pronouncement that Palmer is "a man of no fixed character or beliefs, who rose to power though a rational political process. The reverse is the case." Rundle's argument is interesting, amusing and convincing. While he acknowledges he has been guided mainly by one biographical source, his analysis is singular in its directness and brevity for the Quarterly Essay format.

This essay concludes with an historical analysis that is, again, atypical of and even scornful of the conformity and lack of scrutiny evident in the mainstream media. I wonder if Rundle dines on his own when working in Canberra. I hope not - his characterisation of an electoral system which can be manipulated to ensure the genesis and extinction of parties like the Palmer United Party is as convincing as is his suggestion that only calamity can reform such a system. Readers will nod their head at Rundle's cynicism with major political parties and their preference to woo clumsy political blocks to vote predictably on different issues.
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The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan

22/10/2014

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This is a novel of many parts, cemented together by the author’s love for the written word. Flanagan once describes this love from the point of view of an illiterate Tasmanian trapper who saw stories to be a fantastic journey or, as AC Grayling said of Flanagan’s novel when awarding the 2014 Man Booker, to be like riding a comet. The quotidian dusty colour of interbellum Australia, the inhumanity of the Thai Burma railway that reacted to produce such humanity, the dystopia of post-war Japan, the folly and perfection of love, these are all elements that fuse in Flanagan’s tribute to the written word.

While always a rich and colourful novel, Flanagan employs lean prose, with a paucity of adjectives, to incise more deeply into the meaning of an event. He does not judge, he simply observes, to sink into a portrayal of events which becomes breathtaking, then alarming. By not pigeon-holing personal histories into the values of any one generation or any one culture, he has created a classic. As Flanagan’s protagonist, Dorrigo Evans, confronts horrors beyond logic or belief, he grapples with the ephemeral nature of memory, tapping into an obsession of human purpose as old as the Iliad. This novel is many things but it is not a love story, it is a story of love. Through love, Flanagan assigns purpose to horror, contradiction, failure and hope. It is a most satisfying and understated examination of the human condition.
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Pemulwuy: The Rainbow Warrior

8/10/2014

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This towering saga, told in only 200 pages, is a triumph of narrative and historical exposition. It relays a tale of conquest and futility for an innocent and vanquished people while disclosing a deeper insight about pacifism.

The lives of Pelulwuy and Kiraban, and those of many aboriginal and colonial players during the first decade of Australian occupation, are enriched by Willmot's understanding of his own aboriginal culture. The irony and humour that Willmot employs, and the fast flow of events across the Sydney basin make this an engaging book. Its portrayal of other historical characters, beginning with Governors Phillip, Hunter and King, and including Watkin Tench, Bennelong and Black Caesar are interesting and insightful. Similarly, Willmot succeeds in portraying the grace, athleticism and martial grace of the Eora warriors which is at least the equal of other warrior cultures from history. The strategic intellect of Pemulwuy earns him a comparison to Hannibal, and his `madness' may also be compared with other historical notables.

I can only praise this book. There are some possible inconsistencies - I wondered for example how an aboriginal girl from the Sydney basin would be aware that non-Australian bees sting or how aboriginals considered the brain to be the seat of consciousness, an outcome of thousands of years of Western and science and philosophical enquiry. But these are small things. Having had the privilege to know many contemporary aboriginals, I am aware of the accuracy of Willmot's descriptions of the innate skill in sport and physical combat possessed by many young (and older) aboriginals. The mythic invulnerability of Pemulwuy may ascend to another level but I often smiled, recalling an acquaintance each time an Eora warrior with a shield and spear bested a Rum corpsman toting a musket and bayonet, or completed a cross country journey more quickly than a horse rider.
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