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y separately published work icon The Best Australian Essays 2009 anthology   essay   column   prose   autobiography   criticism  
Issue Details: First known date: 2009... 2009 The Best Australian Essays 2009
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Contents

* Contents derived from the Melbourne, Victoria,:Black Inc. , 2009 version. Please note that other versions/publications may contain different contents. See the Publication Details.
Boxing for Palm Island, Chloe Hooper , single work essay (p. 1-7)
Silent Country : Travels through a Recovering Landscape, Tim Winton , single work essay
Tim Winton re-visits the Western Australian wheatbelt and, after a period of depletion and degredation, discovers 'the country gaining strength again, fighting back' and is optimistic that there might a 'wider reptatriation' ahead.
 (p. 8-24)
Darwin's Big Idea, Nicolas Rothwell , single work essay
'EARLY in the morning of January 12, 1836, the young naturalist Charles Darwin, on board the Royal Navy's HMS Beagle, caught his first glimpse of Sydney Harbour and the fledgling colony of New South Wales. He expected wonders: but what he saw, as he wrote that day in his diary, was a level landscape, "bare and horizontal strata of sandstone, covered by woods of thin, scrubby trees that bespoke useless sterility". Darwin was close to his 27th birthday and fresh from the Galapagos Islands, his mind brimming with rich, strange impressions, an instinct for pattern and order coming alive inside his heart. ' (p25)
 (p. 25-44)
Home Truths, Kate Jennings , single work criticism

Watching the film Wake in Fright nearly 40 years after its release - 1971 - brought back one good memory for me of life in the bush. Canvas water bags. Nothing like the taste of water from those bags: sweet and earthy. One hangs on the back of a door in the shambles of a mining shack occupied by Doc Tydon, the movie's supposed villain. Not that anyone in the movie drinks water. Heaven forbid. Instead they neck beer and, in the case of Doc Tydon, glug down whiskey in the legendary quantities typical of men on a weekend bender in the Outback. Typical, I should also emphasise, of men the world over who work in isolated areas under punishing conditions, although the pursuit of the Holy Grail of alcoholic oblivion in the Outback is undertaken with an inexorable determination, not so much blunting pain as getting their due. Cracking a few cold ones with your mates - legacy, birthright, entitlement.

 (p. 51-71)
Up from the Mission : Introduction, Noel Pearson , single work prose (p. 72-78)
What're Yer Lookin' at Yer Fuckin' Dog? : Violence and Fear in Zizek's Post-Political Neighbourhood, Kevin Brophy , single work essay (p. 79-99)
Uncle Ross, Desmond Kelly , single work essay (p. 106-110)
Once a Financial Anchor, Kate Jennings , single work essay (p. 111-116)
Why We Weren't Warned, Robert Manne , single work essay (p. 148-165)
How We Cheated Flames of Death, Gary Hughes , single work essay (p. 166-171)
Laugh, Kookaburra, David Sedaris , single work prose (p. 193-201)
The Grand Illusion, Robert Dessaix , single work column (p. 202-207)
Amongst the Living Dead, Benjamin Law , single work essay autobiography (p. 208-214)
The Element of Need, James Bradley , single work autobiography (p. 215-229)
Death Duties, Richard Castles , single work essay (p. 230-233)
Grand Polonaise, Anna Goldsworthy , single work essay (p. 241-248)
Two Portraits, Louis Nowra , single work essay (p. 249-264)
Ian Fairweather and Abstraction, Murray Bail , single work essay (p. 280-285)
Wider World in Their Sights, Geordie Williamson , single work column
Geordie Williamson examines changes in Australians' perceptions regarding fiction not set in Australia. Focussing on Nam Le's The Boat, she begins with the reception of Christina Stead's writing and also mentions the work of M. J. Hyland, Christos Tsiolkas and J. M. Coetzee. Williamson concludes: 'There is something exhilarating about the speed with which our literary landscape has altered. Like some tax-free island haven, a globalised, transnational literature seems to have found in Australia a place of balmy breezes and light regulation and decided to make of it a home. For the moment, that is.'
 (p. 343-348)
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