Ernest Robinson Hillier isn’t credited in our urban histories. He arrives, leads a movement and disappears. It was Bob actually who first stood (metaphorically) before the bulldozer to save our inner-city heritage and clear out the cockroaches, rats and poets. As Bob stoutly said in Let’s Buy a Terrace (1968), slums made perfect homes for…
Author: Jane Grant
Norman and the Boys
It’s scary out there. Rowdy in the bookshop. Tony Abott is singing Advance Australia Fair very loudly. Helen Garner can’t stop worrying at that ‘thin membrane’ separating Good from Evil. Randa Abdel-Fattah can’t hear her and shouts ‘speak up’. ‘Oh, do be quiet,’ I sigh. Draw the curtains. Let’s have a little séance to lift…
Reasons to be Cheerful: Part One
What ever happened to the Mo Show which Barry Humphries had roaring plans to stage in 1966? Roy Rene, aka Mo, beloved slapstick vaudeville clown and folk hero. Humphries not the first or the last Dada dandy to blow the Mo Trumpet. Mo’s face later used as a Nimrod poster, welded onto experimental theatre by…