Michael Winkler

Michael Winkler reviews 'The Secret of Emu Field: Britain’s forgotten atomic tests in Australia' by Elizabeth Tynan

May 2022, no. 442 • 23 April 2022

In 1953, the British government conducted the Totem nuclear weaponry tests at Emu Field in South Australia. It was an inhospitable environment for non-Indigenous visitors. One London-based administrator called for the Australian military to remove all flies from the site. These tests earned part of a chapter in Elizabeth Tynan’s award-winning Atomic Thunder: The Maralinga story (reviewed by Dani ... (read more)

Michael Winkler reviews 'Lowitja: The authorised biography of Lowitja O’Donoghue' by Stuart Rintoul

January–February 2021, no. 428 • 16 December 2020

In Recollections of a Bleeding Heart (2002), Don Watson wrote that Lowitja O’Donoghue ‘seemed then and has seemed ever since to be a person of such transcendent warmth, if Australians ever got to know her they would want her as their Queen’. Robert Manne, in the first-ever Quarterly Essay (2001), portrayed her as ‘a woman of scrupulous honesty and great beauty of soul’. These qualities g ... (read more)

Michael Winkler reviews 'Pathfinders: A history of Aboriginal trackers in NSW' by Michael Bennett

May 2020, no. 421 • 27 April 2020

The Aboriginal tracker is a stock character in certain Australian films, employed as set dressing, catalyst, curio. Although fictional trackers have been celebrated on celluloid, few real trackers have been given life within the national memory. Some people may recall Billy Dargin and his role in locating and shooting Ben Hall. Others might think of Dubbo’s Tracker Riley, or Dick-a-Dick, who fou ... (read more)

Michael Winkler reviews 'A Stolen Life: The Bruce Trevorrow case' by Antonio Buti and 'My Longest Round' by Wally Carr and Gaele Sobott

August 2019, no. 413 • 22 July 2019

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander viewers are advised that the following article contain depictions of people who have died. Philip Larkin famously suggested that ‘they fuck you up, your mum and dad’, but the alternative is usually worse. Twenty years before Larkin wrote ‘This Be the Verse’, his compatriot John Bowlby published Maternal Care and Mental Health (1951), which desc ... (read more)

Michael Winkler reviews 'Tracker: Stories of Tracker Tilmouth' by Alexis Wright

January–February 2018, no. 398 • 19 December 2017

In Alexis Wright’s novel Carpentaria (2006), Girlie claims, ‘If you ever want to find out about anything in your vicinity, you have to talk to the mad people.’ There are a lot of mad people in Wright’s biography of Aboriginal activist, thinker, and provocateur ‘Tracker’ Tilmouth. He is probably the maddest of all, in the Kerouacian sense of ‘mad to live, mad to talk’, but, accordin ... (read more)

Michael Winkler reviews 'Australian Gypsies: Their secret history' by Mandy Sayer

December 2017, no. 397 • 24 November 2017

In the Australia of my childhood, the Gypsy skirt was fashionable, ABC Radio played Django Reinhardt, ‘The Gypsy Rover’ was in school songbooks, peripatetic players were called ‘Gypsy footballers’, the Gypsy Jokers were a feared bikie gang, and nefarious Gypsies were stock villains in children’s books. Gypsies – or Roma – occupied cultural terrain, but the people themselves had a low ... (read more)

Michael Winkler reviews 'The Mind of the Islamic State' by Robert Manne

June-July 2017, no. 392 • 30 May 2017

One of the many contradictions of Islamic State, as exposed in Robert Manne’s latest work, is that a mob seemingly dedicated to deeds rather than words is in fact logocratic. For all of their murderous antipathy towards the People of the Book, Islamic State has relied not on speeches or policy platforms, but on a succession of books. While some trace the genealogy of Islamic State to Muhammad i ... (read more)

Michael Winkler reviews 'Losing Streak: How Tasmania was gamed by the gambling industry' by James Boyce

May 2017, no. 391 • 28 April 2017

Gambling is part of Australia’s self-definition. The way we like to tell the story, lads at Gallipoli went over the top with a two-up kip in one hand and a rifle in the other, while exchanging tips for the Melbourne Cup. This national myth of betting derring-do, full of heroic punts and back-slapping celebrations, bears scant resemblance to the modern reality of Australian gambling. Our monument ... (read more)

Michael Winkler reviews 'From the Edge: Australia’s lost histories' by Mark McKenna

January–February 2017, no. 388 • 19 December 2016

There is a well-meaning musician who performs intermittently in Central Australia. When he plays his hit song, he tries to augment the lyrics by chanting the word ‘strong’ in local language. In fact, he is singing a similar word that means urine. Presumably he thinks the audience’s laughter connotes delight rather than derision. Benign intentions, botched communication, a messy outcome. Int ... (read more)

Michael Winkler reviews 'Position Doubtful: Mapping landscapes and memories' by Kim Mahood

September 2016, no. 384 • 22 August 2016

At the bottom of one of Kim Mahood's desert watercolours, she scrawled, 'In the gap between two ways of seeing, the risk is that you see nothing clearly.' A risk for some, but not Mahood. Her work as a visual artist and writer attests to an eye that is unfailing and a lifetime of looking. The subtle gradations and veristic detail of Position Doubtful attest to sustained attentive observation. ... (read more)