“The rise of ‘Comms’ has been a salient feature of organisations in recent years. That is, hordes of people – or sometimes bots – whose actual if not ostensible roles are to make the place sound good, rather than actually do anything.” – Joanne Wilkes
“The stories of these courageous dissidents had an afterlife as well. This was partly due to those who remembered them, and partly because the regime itself held on to masses of documentation.” – Joanne Wilkes
A school friend of Cave’s in Melbourne in the 1970s, Tracy became the bassist in Nick’s earlier band, The Birthday Party, which brilliantly wreaked havoc in Melbourne and London through the early 1980s
“…Reading the essays does bring to mind the 1930s, when many of them were written…” – Joanne Wilkes
“I once tussled online with the anti-vax candidate for Mayor of Wellington, who told me I really had to ‘READ 1984’.” – Joanne Wilkes
The book has the author revisit his life, starting with the bodily changes of his childhood and puberty, and his playing dress-ups so as to express his desire to be an actor.
As the concert was on Mother’s Day, some of the audience would also have been grandmothers.
Whenever I visited Sydney, and then fetched up again at Auckland airport, would the Immigration official grill me about rugby, and arrange for me to be deported if I gave the wrong answer???
Gordon and I used to lie some afternoons on one of the lawns round campus. We’d talk, and drink coffee, and that was all. What a disappointment!
But at this Easter season, what I’m recalling is how in the ‘60s and ‘70s, there still existed a kind of fault-line between Catholics and Protestants.