Latest news with #Dharug
Daily Mail
09-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Watch the VERY surprising way fans reacted to the Welcome to Country at State of Origin
Welcome to Country ceremonies have become a hugely controversial cultural topic in Australia in recent years. Renewed attention to the ceremony during last year's AFL finals, where Aboriginal Elder Brendan Kerin gave an address before a match between the Giants and the Lions. Criticisms have also been made over the frequency of the ceremonies, which are performed at cultural and sporting events. Some in attendance at sporting events have booed Welcome to Country ceremonies in the past, while others have taken to social media to express their disapproval of the ceremony. Some online have questioned why they should be welcomed to their own country, while a motion to abolish the ceremony by a council in New South Wales, was also started in February. During this year's State of Origin series, Welcome to Country ceremonies have been held at each of the three Tests at the Suncorp Stadium, Optus Stadium and Accor Stadium. While there has been large criticism online of the ceremonies, inside the stadiums there has been very little visible opposition to the ceremonies. And on Wednesday night in Sydney, fans inside the stadium stood up and cheered the moment after Auntie Julie delivered her speech. Indigenous elder Aunty Julie Jones and proud Dharug delivered her speech to over 50,000 fans inside the Accor Stadium, saying: 'This beautiful country holds and nurtures many stories from the time of creation to the very story we are all creating here tonight. 'Many people from all walks of life have the privilege of calling this place home. 'And this country she welcomes you all. 'When you leave here tonight, leave gently. Your footprints and spirit will be left with her. 'Thank you. Have an amazing night and enjoy the game.' A huge roar erupted from the crowd as they waited eagerly for the match to get underway.
The Guardian
21-06-2025
- The Guardian
Wildflowers, saunas and antiques: a local's guide to the Blue Mountains
My partner and I are both creatives. Six years ago we were living in a tiny apartment in Sydney's inner west, and I was paying extra for a studio. It wasn't sustainable so we decided to move to Katoomba, on the traditional lands of the Dharug and Gundungurra people. I read an article recently saying something like 'skip it, it's not at its best' but Katoomba has a beautiful authenticity, even if it's not quite polished. Our closest upper mountain towns are Leura and Blackheath. Katoomba is all old-world treasures and beautiful building facades. Blackheath has the incredible Victory Theatre Antique Centre, Gleebooks, Hat Hill Records & Audio and great rock climbing and hikes. Leura has an upscale main drag full of lifestyle and fashion stores, but it gets busy on weekends. I recommend walking the backstreets to see the cute cottages and gardens. Our favourite place to eat is the award-winning Ates in Blackheath. It serves delicious Mediterranean-style share plates and always feels like a special night out. Much of its food is cooked in its 150-year-old wood-fired oven and there's a greenery-filled courtyard. On weekends, Tempus Katoomba has a fine-dining menu with an incredible all-Australian drinks list. It's in the old bank and lots of historical parts remain but the interiors are fun and fresh. On weekday mornings it switches to the Tempest Up Early cafe, serving Little Marionette coffee. We're so lucky to have Black Cockatoo bakery here. It's run by a French expat, Alexandre Rivière, and uses organic Australian flour and Pepe Saya cultured butter. Savoury or sweet, it's all delicious. It's a cool space, too, with custom ply joinery and lots of plants. We just discovered The Laughing Elephant in Wentworth Falls. It's an Asian grocer but they make amazing banh mi and laksa at lunchtimes. Fidelity is a new cafe run by two super-warm and welcoming guys with a deep passion for coffee. The seating spills outside with lots of dogs and friendly vibes. I drink decaf and often feel self-conscious but the baristas at Fidelity are like, 'You've got to try this decaf!' The house-made chai is great too. Cassiopeia has great coffee and baked goods too; it roasts its beans in Leura. Lyrebird Dell walking track in Leura is magical. It's shaded and cool with waterfalls and tree ferns so it's a great in summer. You can detour down to the Pool of Siloam waterhole for a swim. It has a sandy beach and doesn't get too crowded. Lockley Pylon is a three-hour walk (7.2km return) mostly along a ridge in north Leura. It's known for stunning wildflowers in spring, like boronia and waratah. It's very exposed, so walking on windy or super-hot days is not advised. At the end there's an incredible view over the Grose Valley. Wentworth Falls Lake Park has a new walkway and a viewing platform along the eastern edge that's pram- and wheelchair-friendly. The area still feels wild in places but there's also a big playground, a cute jetty and ducks. People kayak and canoe here; we like to swim on the north side in the shade of the gumtrees. It's busy on weekends with people barbecuing and picnicking. Minnehaha Falls in North Katoomba is 2.7km return with some stairs, but the waterhole at the end is a sublime swimming spot. The track follows Yosemite Creek which has loads of scribbly gums and banksia. I love native plants but I'm also a sucker for the lilacs, tulips and maples at Everglades House and Gardens. The art deco house is a wonderful glimpse into the past and you can do Devonshire tea in the tearoom. The 12-acre garden is manicured in some parts and bushy in others and you can picnic on the lawn. Down in the Lawson industrial area (15 minutes' drive east of Katoomba) is a quarterly experimental arts event run by SIRC_UIT. It's always a unique experience, with performance and installation, and there's a pop-up bar and food. Zoe's Blackheath has live music, Italian-influenced pub-style food and a great bar for a casual drink. Mountain Culture Brewpub in Katoomba is in a rambling 1900s building. The co-owner is originally from North Carolina; it has won many awards for its beers. There's great views and yummy burgers and fried pickles. Aqua Ignis is a new sauna and bathhouse in Blackheath that's open until 9pm. It has magnesium baths and a herbal steam room; it's such a restorative evening. Blue Mountains Sauna in Leura has been around longer; it's a more traditional Nordic-style space with regular 'clothing optional' sessions. Blue Mountains Cultural Centre in Katoomba is a crucial stop for art lovers. It features touring shows, such as the Archibald prize and the Wynne prize, as well as exhibitions from renowned local artists such as Claire Healy, Sean Cordeiro and Nick Stathopoulos. There's also an immersive permanent video installation filmed in the national park. I'm a mural artist, and the encouragement of street art here is so nice. Me and four other female mural artists painted the Froma Lane walkway that connects Katoomba Street to the centre. Beverley Place was really dilapidated 10 years ago before it was transformed into the Katoomba Street Art Walk. When a wall mural fades a new artist is invited to paint it. It's a really cool space to walk through. The cultural centre runs short street art tours or you can use a self-guided map. Landslide Gallery in Wentworth Falls was once an old flour mill. It runs an Australia-wide and international artist-in-residency program and its exhibitions showcase the incredibly diverse mediums of Blue Mountains artists, from ceramics to sculpture, paintings and textile art. Day Gallery is a commercial gallery in Blackheath; the couple behind it, Helen and Vincent Day, are legends. Their roster of artists is truly inspiring. During Covid lockdowns, renowned local painter and musician Claire Nakazawa (from the band Haiku Hands) created a mural on the external wall as her response to the landscapes after the black summer fires. The area around the Blue Mountains Cultural Centre in Katoomba is getting so vibrant. Katoomba Civic Centre's gardens are re-landscaped with tree ferns and banksias, and it's a lovely stroll through the Carrington hotel's garden down to Katoomba Street. The Blue Mountains Co-op is near there and has a kiosk with the most amazing soups. The co-op market garden is next to the cultural centre and the Carrington hotel. It's run by Farm it Forward, which makes unused pieces of land productive. This patch was long abandoned and now it has a head farmer and the co-op sells its seasonal organic produce. I painted a produce-inspired mural on an adjoining heritage-listed wall to bring some joy and to revive the space. The Carrington (from $230 a night) is an old-world beauty and I love looking at the historical photographs of how Katoomba began, with just the Carrington at the top of the hill and this rickety train line. The Kyah (from $190 per night) is a very cool renovated motel in Blackheath. It has a great restaurant called Blaq, gardens, a tennis court and a hot tub. Chalets at Blackheath (from $1,300 a night; sleeps two) are very high end and dreamy. There are four freestanding chalets with bushland views. They have fireplaces, bathtubs and a sundeck; you're really immersed in the environment and birdsong. Cloud Parade (from $1,095 a night; sleeps 10) is an Airbnb in Leura with lovely interiors and stunning valley views. It's only a 15-minute walk to the town centre, which is impressive, because often places with views this good are a fair hike from the shops. Nastia Gladushchenko is a Ukrainian Australian artist and interior designer
The Guardian
11-04-2025
- The Guardian
Kate Grenville: ‘I'm recognising the way in which I don't belong in Australia. I don't have to pretend any more'
Kate Grenville crouches down on a rock on Sydney's lower north shore, feet bare, next to a Cammeraygal engraving of a whale. The writer is careful not to trespass on the art. 'You can just see the little figure,' she says, pointing to a faint outline of a mysterious tiny human with outstretched arms and legs in the leviathan's belly. Ten-year-old Kate was first brought to this coastal Waverton site on a school excursion almost 65 years ago, but remembered only the big whale, not the little human. 'The whole thing was kind of trivialised,' she says. 'The [whale] outline was picked out in this white Dulux gloss, so I was astonished when I came back and realised there was a figure inside.' Reaching for her bag on the timber boardwalk to fetch a cloth sunhat on this cloudy April morning, Grenville returns to the rock to absorb the presence of this etched human, who is perhaps an Indigenous knowledge keeper. Grenville, now 74, has just been on her own knowledge quest to grapple with a violent history from which many other non-Indigenous Australians have kept their eyes averted. First, she drove once again to the familiar 'claustrophobic' valley of Wisemans Ferry on the Hawkesbury River, where her England-born great-great-great grandfather, transported convict Solomon Wiseman, 'took up' land shortly after being freed, according to the wording of family lore that took no account of Indigenous dispossession. Clues to Wiseman's character were contained in unconfirmed rumours he killed his first wife, Jane, the mother of his six children, by pushing her down some stairs or off a balcony, accidentally or otherwise. In 2005, Grenville published her bestseller novel The Secret River, in which she fictionalised Wiseman as William Thornhill, speculating he took up a gun and shot Dharug people, and in 2015, the story became a milestone television miniseries, vividly depicting Thornhill's part in an Aboriginal massacre. I tell Grenville I was on set when the massacre was filmed, deeply moved by those scenes and the leadership of actor Trevor Jamieson, a Spinifex man who encouraged the rest of the Indigenous actors to hug the non-Indigenous actors after the director called cut. 'What generosity,' she says. 'I remember when I wrote the massacre scene – I generally do 25 drafts – but that scene I wrote once, as though I was writing with my face averted, and I never revised it: I couldn't bear to look at it again.' Now, Grenville has been looking deeply at the landscape, and what lies beneath. As she documents in her new nonfiction book Unsettled: A Journey Through Time and Place, she recently drove northward of Wiseman's Ferry, up through Tamworth, getting out of her car to walk at length wherever land was not 'fiercely fenced', to better understand the journey of her forebears after Wiseman, but also more deeply consider the devastation wrought on the Dharug, Darkinjung, the Wonnarua, the Gomeroi peoples and so on up the line of colonisation. 'I think this book is a kind of homemade, DIY truth-telling and I think that many people could do a version of that,' she says. 'Mine is a particular version because I happen to have the ancestors that went back, but everybody lives on a little bit of Aboriginal land. One of the things that people could do is to find out exactly what happened on that land before, who it belonged to, and really own that.' We take a walk now, down past gums and grevillea, through country inhabited by ringtail possums and bent-wing bats. We head towards the collapsing timber docks, topped by rusting steel, down to the disused coal loader building, which from the 1920s to 1970s operated as a harbourside site where coal was delivered, stockpiled and transferred. Grenville is a keen and curious rambler, enquiring about the tunnels within the building, but she is quick to point out she is not here to venerate colonial industry. She climbs the metal stairs on the side of the coal loader, looking out across the working harbour, naval ships in dock and cargo vessels chugging along, but it is the landscape she loves. 'Oh, it's beautiful, isn't it?' she reflects. 'I'm a top-of-the-hill person. I don't like valleys much. Balls Head, you look out across the harbour in all directions, and it is a fabulous feeling of freedom and the beauty of country.' Grenville's soul-searching pilgrimage was spurred by the defeat of the referendum on the voice to parliament. She handed out how-to-vote cards for the yes side. 'There was certainly racism, and plenty of it, but the overwhelming feeling I got was people didn't know, they hadn't been told, they hadn't been taught,' she recalls now. 'And as that fabulously effective slogan went, 'If you don't know, vote no'; in other words, it is OK to just go on in ignorance.' We repair to a cafe closer to the whale engraving. Over a pot of tea, Grenville is warm and engaging, glowing in a newfound confidence of belonging in Australia after her journey. In class at North Sydney Demonstration School, Grenville had certainly learned of the 'exotic and picturesque' Aboriginal people, and was taught they were 'nomads' without a connection to place, and that after the British came, they were exposed to deadly measles, flu and smallpox. Never did her teachers speak of the colonisers shooting the Indigenous people. It was only as an adult Grenville began to deconstruct her mother's phrase that Solomon Wiseman 'took up' his Hawkesbury land. ''Took up' – I mean, you take up a piece of unfinished knitting ... you're doing something good.' Recent reading and conversations with Indigenous people have helped Grenville gain a deeper appreciation of Aboriginal culture, history, land management and resistance. In the new book, she describes first Australians as 'patriots defending their homelands', eschewing the mythologies taught during her childhood. In Unsettled, Grenville has prised apart the language non-Indigenous Australians use to tell our history. Now, she would like non-Indigenous Australians to be known as 'balanda' – a word the seafaring Macassan traders brought to the north coast of Australia, derived from Hollander, used to describe the Dutch colonists in Indonesia then taken up by some Aboriginal peoples here. 'I think the phrase 'non-Indigenous Australian' is not only cumbersome and awkward to say but it suggests we don't need a special name, that we are the default from which everybody else is a kind of aberration,' says Grenville, who today lives in Melbourne's North Fitzroy. 'But we are not the default, we are not the norm.' Noting Victoria is 'ploughing ahead with the Yoorook Justice Commission', Grenville believes the 'balanda' across Australia must sit down with Indigenous Australians to deeply listen to truth, to aim for a 'treaty or some kind of negotiated agreement'. In the 'great humming silence of landscape', Grenville writes in Unsettled, 'I know how little I really belong.' But now, she is feeling more confidence in her place, and radiates a sense of peace. 'I'm recognising the way in which I don't belong; that sounds kind of paradoxical, but I don't have to pretend any more because I recognise that my sort of belonging is a particular sort of belonging, and if you are an Indigenous person, that's a different kind of belonging. 'The challenge is to come together and find a way those two sorts of belongings can live side by side without the sense one has to crush the other.' Unsettled: A Journey Through Time and Place by Kate Grenville, published by Black Inc, is out now. Grenville will be a guest at Sydney writers' festival in May.
The Guardian
04-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘Blood-pumping', ‘outstanding', ‘urgent and essential': the best Australian books out in April
Nonfiction, Black Inc, $36.99 Twenty years after she fictionalised her ex-convict great-great-great-grandfather Solomon Wiseman in The Secret River, speculating he took part in killing Dharug people, Grenville makes a pilgrimage through the landscape of northern New South Wales to better understand more than two centuries of suffering by Indigenous people dispossessed by colonisation. Moments of profound clarity ensue in Unsettled: looking down on Mogo Creek to the Hawkesbury River's north, Grenville's imagination tracks her great-great uncles riding horseback armed with guns. 'In the great humming silence of this landscape – a silence created in part by what people like my forebears did – I know how little I really belong.' – Steve Dow Fiction, Ultimo Press, $34.99 In former Triple J presenter Vijay Khurana's debut novel, two schoolboys flee their small town in Canada for a road trip to wherever. Adam is the alpha, an apparent student of Tate and Peterson and the only licensed driver – but it's Teddy who has the gun licence, and the money to put it to use. The devastating story that follows – narrated by each character in alternating chapters – is a tense and gripping power struggle of toxic masculinity, as the teenagers push each other further and further down a violent road of no return. Where hit UK TV show Adolescence illuminated the myriad societal failures that are driving young boys to violence, this outstanding debut takes us inside the darkest and most vulnerable parts of their minds. – Steph Harmon Poetry, UQP, $29.99 Safdar Ahmed, whose graphic memoir Still Alive was a searing indictment of Australia's refugee detention system, teams up with poet and author Omar Sakr (Non-Essential Work; The Lost Arabs) for this collection of poems and illustrations responding to the atrocities committed by Israel against the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank since 7 October 2023. Read cover to cover, it evokes Sakr's excruciating, sometimes bewildered, experience of bearing daily witness from afar (heightened by recently becoming a father), while the poet and artist both grapple with the moral complexities of their roles documenting what Sakr describes as 'the daily immiseration of Palestinians in the brutal reality of apartheid'. As the people of Palestine continue to suffer systemic violence and dehumanisation, this is urgent, essential work. – Dee Jefferson Fiction, Hachette, $32.99 Chris Flynn's fourth novel follows a trio of old friends – who grew up together in the small country town of Gattan – in the aftermath of an inexplicable global catastrophe, which sees every nine-year-old on the planet suddenly drop dead. Each of them is struggling, in their own way, to regain some sense of agency in the face of this threat, and to protect or honour their children as the world threatens to collapse around them. This is a fast-paced and compelling novel, written with Flynn's characteristic dark humour, and great generosity of heart as well. – Fiona Wright Fiction, Allen & Unwin, $32.99 Debut author Sophie Quick's sharp, pacy satire centres on an unexpected antihero: a scammer with a heart of gold. Christina is a single mum in suburban Melbourne who has created a Zoom-only alter ego – Dr Ruth Carlisle – for the purposes of life coaching, then blackmailing her clients. As we learn more about her background, Christina's actions take on a Robin Hood quality. Her targets are wealthy – grifty influencers and sleazy marketers – while her financial situation is shaky at best. Taking aim at TedCore and the self improvement industrial complex, the story also contains shades of Caroline and Natalie. Timely and slyly funny, it is a gut-check for anyone who's ever taken social media-sized slivers of life advice too seriously. – Alyx Gorman Fiction, UQP, $34.99 Sign up to Saved for Later Catch up on the fun stuff with Guardian Australia's culture and lifestyle rundown of pop culture, trends and tips after newsletter promotion The premise might feel a dime a dozen: disillusioned woman flees big city to find herself in an exotic location. But this short, sparse, deeply absorbing debut – which won the 2024 Victorian premier's literary prize for an unpublished manuscript – is about so much more than that. Ruth's refuge is Guatemala: a tourist town called Panajachel, painted so vividly you can almost see it. There she meets two women who inspire two very different infatuations; and soon, without us even noticing, Ruth is stuck – with a job, a house, and a desire to go deeper into the country and into herself. The promo calls the novel 'perfect for fans of Deborah Levy, Miranda July and Rachel Cusk'; as a fan of all three, I loved this one too. – Steph Harmon Fiction, Transit Lounge, $34.99 What does it mean to bear witness? To listen to the survivors of war crimes recount their experiences and suffering? Out of the Woods, Gretchen Shirm's fourth novel, offers a poignant, insightful answer. Incorporating real witness testimony, the narrative is closely intertwined with real events: namely the massacre of 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys in the town of Srebrenica in 1995, and the conviction at The Hague of a senior military commander for genocide. Though imperfect, the story asks probing questions about how we can begin to comprehend the incomprehensible. – Jack Callil Crime/thriller, Penguin Australia, $34.99 This is a return-of-sorts to familiar territory for Bradley, who writes timely and thrilling novels imbued with a sense of social urgency, often involving the climate crisis and scientific developments. His last book, Deep Water, was a nonfiction hit – but he's back on fiction again, this time a crime novel set in a future Sydney that has been transformed by rising sea levels. This propulsive novel follows Senior Detective Sadiya Azad's efforts to find a missing five-year-old who disappeared 'in the tideline', amid submerged apartments and pontoons as a huge storm approaches. – Sian Cain Graphic novel, Scribe, $39.99 Rachel Ang's graphic novel is made to be devoured. Blood-pumping and fresh, these five loosely connected tales revolve around Jenny, a young Australian woman who stumbles through interactions with lovers, family and strangers with a sense of paralysis. From feeding fetishes, repressed childhood horrors and surreal exchanges with her future child, Jenny endures much in her painful quest to overcome bodily shame, and to connect. Ang's expressive compositions and darkly comic voice perfectly capture these hermetic moments, which appear so slight and mundane on the surface but belie an interior storm. A bold, hallucinogenic collection that feels uncomfortably human. – Claire Cao Nonfiction, UNSW, $34.99 By her own admission, Jane Rawson is not a nature natural. A novelist, former environment editor at the Conversation and literary magazine editor, her comfort zone is less bushcraft, more towncraft. In Human/Nature, she weaves in her own complex relationship with nature as she dissects the broader human understanding of the natural world, offering a moment of pause as the environment changes around us. With levity, beauty and deep contemplation Human/Nature interrogates how our own ideas of purity, intelligence, care (for starters) affect how we impact, ignore, undermine and protect all the wild things which are not human. – Celina Ribeiro Cookbook, Murdoch Books, $29.99 Zucchinis were the gateway veg for Alex Elliott-Howery's pickling habit. Her partner had a bountiful back yard crop that her kids didn't want to eat, so she taught herself to pickle. Her hobby became an obsession and then a business, when she opened Sydney's now-closed neighbourhood cafe Cornersmith in 2012. Four cookbooks, community cooking classes and another cafe later, she's a leading force in delicious solutions to food waste. Her fifth book goes back to basics, featuring 80 quick, achievable recipes for condiments, such as bread and butter cucumber pickles, cauliflower relish and banana ketchup. It's no-fuss, light on storytelling and keeps it seasonal. A truly compelling pocket-sized guide to making your kitchen scraps worth keeping. – Emma Joyce
