AustLit

'This memoir honours the life and work of Ken Inglis (1929–2017), adjunct professor at Monash University, emeritus professor at The Australian National University, and one of Australia’s most admired and warmly regarded historians. Colleagues, family and friends presented 18 wide-ranging papers at the Laconic Colloquium held at Monash University on two cool days in November 2016. A hundred or so people happily gathered from around Australia and overseas to honour Ken and his work. Three of his former PhD students from the early 1990s were there: two from Canberra, and I came from Darwin. Inglis, despite being wheelchair-bound for two long days, entered into the spirit of the occasion, ‘drawing on his remarkable memory to offer new glimpses of his methods, experiences and work’ (p. xvi).' (Introduction)

'On 25 January 1988, Archie Roach broke silences and unsettled history. Standing on a makeshift stage in La Perouse, Sydney—and armed with a guitar—Roach strummed one chord. And then he sang:

This story’s right, this story’s true

I would not tell lies to you

Like the promises they did not keep

And how they fenced us in like sheep.

Said to us come take our hand

Sent us off to mission land.

Taught us to read, to write and pray

Then they took the children away,

Took the children away, T

he children away.

Snatched from their mother’s breast

Said this is for the best

Took them away

(Introduction)

'Amid the grave reports of devastation from areas of Australia ravaged by bushfires over the summer came a glimmer of hope in late January 2020. Some 20 lyrebirds were photographed taking refuge around a dam on a property near Wollombi, New South Wales, on the edge of the Yengo National Park. By this time, almost all the park had been burned by fires that had raged for over a month, and BirdLife Australia estimated that more than half of the known habitat of the lyrebird had been burnt. Soon after, scientists estimated that at least a billion animals had perished in the bushfires of the ‘Savage Summer’. The lyrebirds photographed at Wollombi were among the survivors.' 

(Publication summary)

'From 1962, Dr Claire Weekes’s self-help publications and recordings helped hundreds of thousands of people suffering from anxiety disorders. For many years, her ability to reach out to lay people in readable non-technical terms initially met with dismissal by the psychiatric profession in Australia but found more recognition by professionals in Britain, the United States and Canada. Yet her approach to cognitive behavioural therapy has slowly, if perhaps grudgingly, become accepted here and internationally, and indeed incorporated into some bibliotherapy programs recommended by medical professionals. Judith Hoare’s biography has rescued Weekes from an undeserved near oblivion by reminding us of her achievements. Hoare, a former senior editor at the Australian Financial Review, found that Weekes’s advice gave her relief from her own anxiety in her early career. She has given us an insight into Weekes’s many achievements, not only in the field of self-help, but also in biological science and music, and as a physician, presenting a warts-and-all account of her often-troubled domestic life. But the loyalty of her family and friends supported Weekes in her extraordinary dedication to the welfare of her worldwide ‘patients’, continuing well into her 80s, through letters, meetings and telephone calls at any time of the day or night.' 

 (Introduction)