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In 1976, the Australian government signed an agreement with one of the leading universities in the world, Harvard, to fund a visiting professorial position in Australian Studies. Originally conceived by the government of Gough Whitlam, the gift of US$1 million was a token of Australian goodwill to the United States on the bicentennial celebration of the American Revolution. Its purpose was to promote increased awareness and understanding of Australia by supporting teaching, research, and publication.
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Australia does not have a great tradition of writers producing books on international affairs for a general audience. Along with others like Hugh White, Michael Wesley – a former head of the Lowy Institute now based at the Australian National University – is helping to correct this.
Dear Editor,
It was irritating to read Clive James’s poem ‘William Dobell’s Cypriot’ in the Spectator, but surprising in ABR (March 2004). Doesn’t anyone there know that Dobell’s painting The Cypriot was worked up, after Dobell had returned to Sydney in 1940, from sketches made in London? James Gleeson’s William Dobell (Thames & Hudson, 1964) names The Cypriot as Aegus Gabriell Ides, a waiter in a restaurant in Bayswater Road.
Deeper Water delivers on its title’s promise of immersion, sensuality, and the liminal. Narrated by Mema, an innocent twenty-two-year-old living on an isolated rural property, the book opens with the arrival of Hamish, a city sophisticate whose car has been washed down a flooding creek. Mema saves Hamish from drowning and takes him into her family home until the floodwater recedes. He soon becomes a catalyst for Mema’s sexual awakening and for her widening understanding of her place in the world.