Painting Fakes

Last time I was in Sydney I took a walk along the harbourside, through Barangaroo and up into Millers Point.  Thereby hangs a tale. Over the last couple of years I've been intermittently researching the redevelopment of public housing estates in NSW, looking at the strategies adopted by the state government and the evidence which supports or contradicts these strategies.  Millers Point is one of the less glorious tales I've been following. The area was one of the first in Australia to be occupied by the British, with the First Fleet setting up a flag there in 1788.  It was named for the windmills that stood on its exposed clifftops in the early to mid 1800s, grinding flour for the residents of Sydney Town.  Throughout the 1800s it was one of the more down-at-heel locations in Sydney, with the shabby docks backed by a complex of modest homes, boarding houses, doss houses and pubs inhabited by sailors, wharfies and various other workers - although there were als...

I should say at the outset of this post that I really enjoy the Olympics.  The tension of the contest, the sense of history being made and celebrated, the personalities large and small.  I enjoy the grace and technical skill of the gymnasts, the sheer power of the throwers, the speed and endurance of the runners and swimmers, the idea that these young people have focused single-mindedly on becoming the best they can at some arcane discipline. I enjoy the wins, of course, but what I enjoy most are those occasional moments of sporting ethics and friendship between athletes.  Like the Swiss pole vaulter helping the young Kiwi bronze medallist to clean up her face for the hundreds of photos that were about to be taken of her. Or the two women, previously strangers, who fell in their 5,000m heat and then coaxed each other through the rest of the race to finish together.  Or the tradition among decathletes of sharing the victory lap with the whole field.  These...

I was recently involved in a workshop where someone complained about the propensity for the wider public to support projects for homeless people that don't actually help.  The particular example she singled out was Street Swags , a charity founded in 2005 by young Brisbane woman Jean Madden.  Madden invented a weather-proof sleeping bag, and her charity raises funds to manufacture them and distribute them to rough sleepers free of charge so that they can sleep warm and dry in all weathers. Among her many other awards, Madden was named Queensland's Young Australian of the Year in 2010.  In the past month or two she has been in the news for less pleasant reasons - sacked, sued and charged in the criminal courts with fraud for stealing money from the charity she founded. This kind of scandal is certainly not the norm in the charitable world, but supporting charities like these is very popular.  The 2016 Young Australians of the Year are two Brisbane men by the na...