The Sunshine Club Sleeping rough on the Hawkesbury
It’s sweltering as I walk across the grassy river flats. I can see Dean’s ute, people gathered round another vehicle. Beyond them a jungle of weeds, willows and wattle.
Car City Blues A letter from New York
"Traffic crawls at 4.7 miles per hour in Midtown Manhattan mocked by the towering deco architecture evoking speed. A double espresso and you’re walking faster."
Pleasure and Pain The medical cannabis debate
The image problem the drug has doesn’t fit our western dualistic thinking. How can something be both good for you and fun at the same time?
Suggested
Braving Town Hall Station Frayed nerves and fire fears
“The odorous humidity of the place remains at the heart of a collective unease human beings seem to have when they enter this decaying six-platform netherworld that’s so central to the functioning of our city.”
Bilson at Table Eating the Seasons
A marriage of French and Japanese cuisines
Eight Years On The Syrian war and its child refugees
“I’m working and saving up so I can save rent for a tent,” Ibrahim says. “The tent owner comes and demands his money. You don’t even get a chance to rest.”
Features
The Best Way to Ruin a Walk The grass is greener for Sydney’s public golf courses, but for how long?
Golf courses – particularly public ones – are caught in the middle of a three-way contest between a population largely unconcerned with golf, developers with eyes for well-located land and the six per cent of us that still play the sport.
Who’ll Stop the Rain? After the horrors of Myanmar, Rohingya refugees now face the monsoon season
Makeshift dwellings of bamboo and sheet plastic sit immediately above one another on slopes of silt. All this is likely to turn to mud as soon as the monsoon season arrives.
Marrickville or Mirvacville? A development that could shape where our city is going
“The proponent seems to have confused south Marrickville with downtown Hong Kong” - Inner West Council Mayor, Darcy Byrne
Sleep Well Beast How The National brought me back from the dead
‘Let's just get high enough to see our problems, let’s just get high enough to see our fathers’ houses.’
Culture
White as Snow, Red as Blood Snow White at the Sydney Opera House
You’re a teenager and your mother is dead. Your father marries a narcissist who hates you for your beauty…
Stuck in a Moment You Can’t Get Out Of Bill Henson’s photography is losing its way
Henson likes to quote others in the genius mode and settles on Einstein’s idea that “the most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious”. But now, with these latest images, there is no mysterious threshold.
Books That Change Lives, Apparently Iranian existentialists, chick lit grandmas and spitting in Morse code
How to win the Facebook competition to see who has the most exotic home library.
Playmaking in Pyrmont Bringing history to life in ‘The Sugar House’
“My own grandfather, Roy, had worked as a fitter and turner at the Colonial Sugar Refinery, which dominated this peninsula for so long.”
Raconteur
On Hospitality A philosophy on dining behaviour
"Much of the romance of food is generated by people with idealised versions of what their childhood meant... Their hospitality industry becomes Rosebud; a nostalgic rendering of what unconditional hospitality looks, tastes and smells like."
Getting Southerly Busted At North Bondi RSL
The image of Bondi is one of glitz and glamour… But the salt-blasted reality is somewhat different; the old weathered remnants of what was known locally as Scum Valley still often win out.
Lunch with Friends Bistro Moncur with McLean Edwards
“It is that sort of place, Bistro Moncur, where art dealers, ladies who lunch, colourful lawyers and failed Labor politicians can all convivially share a meal and look down their noses at tedious but ubiquitous real estate agents who seem always to be relegated to Siberia down near the kitchen.”
Secrets of the Sydney Fish Market The world is your oyster
“Sydney Fish Market is one of the best fish markets in the world... Well, it’s not Tokyo’s Tsukiji, but it’s not bad. Living so close and going so often, I’ve learnt a few of its secrets.”