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Challenge and Opportunity single work   essay  
Issue Details: First known date: 2020... 2020 Challenge and Opportunity
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'At 80, I’m just a bit older than Meanjin.

'Born into the British Empire, we both started out in Brisbane where, in December 1940, journalist Clem Christesen AM OBE published the first Meanjin Papers. Days later (3 January 1941) the 6th Division of the 2nd AIF, which, like the 1st Australian Imperial Force of 1914–18, had been training in Palestine, engaged with Italian forces at Bardia, the first occasion where our ground troops were seriously committed in World War II. I’d arrived in the preceding October, the month in which the Battle of Britain ended. Some 35 Australian pilots (ten died) flew in that conflict over Will Shakespeare’s ‘sceptered isle’—this fortress built by nature for itself against infection and the hand of war—that my Essex-born, Brisbane-resident maternal grandparents, Bert and Emma Byford, still referred to as ‘home’.' (Introduction)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Meanjin The Next 80 Years vol. 79 no. 4 Summer 2020 21111248 2020 periodical issue

    'In December's 80th birthday edition of Meanjin, writers address the edition's theme: The Next 80 Years.

    'The issue opens with reflective contributions from all of Meanjin's living past editors. Tara June Winch and Behrouz Boochani offer a conversational meditation on time and the very notion of a future. Bruce Pascoe writes on the strange relationship non-Indigenous Australians have with trees, and wonders when we will realise that the forest is a friend. Jennifer Mills encounters ... herselves ... in a future archive. Peter Doherty sees a future world of worries-many of them viral-but settles on hope and the necessity of individual responsibility. Jess Hill wonders whether existing models of policing are fit for purpose in countering domestic abuse. Michael Mohammed Ahmad writes on whiteness and the idea of 'real Australians'. Jane Rawson looks at dramatic changes in Australian nature and wonders 'who belongs here?' And Raimond Gaita writes on the moral challenges that have been presented by Covid19 and the challenge to our future presented by Black Lives Matter and the quest for Indigenous sovereignty.' (Edition summary)

    2020
Last amended 16 Feb 2021 08:45:32
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