Skip to main content

G'Day Cobbers!

By
Gintaras et al.,
Thanks for inviting me to join your discussions. I have been reading the posts and I am very impressed. I am still a Professor at Macquarie University although I have cut back the undergraduate teaching to concentrate on Research. Currently I have two books under way:
1. A study of the first ever university- level Australian History Course in the world- Stanford in 1907-8
2. A book called A REBELLIOUS SOLDIERY AND A RAPACIOUS PEASANTRY? Australians and the French 1916-1920.
I have ambitions to write a biography of TW Stanford who lived in Melbourne for much of his life-spiritualism, art, entrepreneurship... We will see!

Comments

  1. James FergusonJune 18, 2010 at 11:04 AM

    Glad to have you aboard, George. The only history I remember reading of Australia was Hughes' The Fatal Shore. Big fan of Peter Carey.

    ReplyDelete
  2. avrdsJune 18, 2010 at 3:25 PM

    Welcome, George! Nice to see you here.

    ReplyDelete
  3. TripplerJune 18, 2010 at 8:04 PM

    The one thing that intrigues me the most about Ozland is its great sports history. Back in the 60s it produced some great tennis players wiht Rod Laver being my fave. Years later I greatly enjoyed watching Mal Meninga:

    http://www.abc.net.au/reslib/200706/r148833_527289.jpg

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mal_Meninga

    To me, rugby is the King of team sports and nobody played the game with greater skill or intensity than he did. I hope some day you will get a chance to do a prolonged study on the subject and to write a book that will reveal the nation's great sports history.

    ReplyDelete
  4. JAbelJune 19, 2010 at 3:43 AM

    George,nice to see you hear.We hope to have Robert Whelan back with us at some point.

    ReplyDelete
  5. avrdsJune 19, 2010 at 4:35 AM

    Yes, hopefully soon!

    ReplyDelete
  6. NYT PerduJune 19, 2010 at 4:40 AM

    So glad to see your own fine self once more, Parsons. Hope there will be more tales of adventure of whatever kind you care to pass along. (E.g., how was your sojourn at Stanford/SF, where are your wandering young'uns these days, and did Enfielder's planned sojourn in your 'hood ever occur, and if so, how was that?)

    Somehow I feel I should say I'm sorry I never became the Patrick White fan that chartres did, but I did stay with Carey for a few more novels. Also, I confess I'm old enough to have seen and admired Rod Laver in person...well, in tournament, somewhere on the E. Coast (the U.S. one) sometime in the '60s. Enuf confession for today.

    ReplyDelete
  7. George ParsonsJune 19, 2010 at 9:58 AM

    Thanks everyone! I'll give you a blow-by-blow account of the Stanford travels one day. In the meantime stepson Justin Wolfers and partner Betsey Stevenson are both at the Wharton School. Their latest production is a daughter called Matilda.
    Trippler : I have written about Rugby League a lot-a history of St George. One of these days I'll finish an article I started a while ago on the Australian Rugby tour of the US in 1912. And Mal is still thriving. Coach of the all-conquering Queensland.

    Laver was in our golden days of tennis.Now our best are Samantha Stosur and an ageing Leyton Hewitt.Rather sad.

    ReplyDelete
  8. TripplerJune 19, 2010 at 4:48 PM

    Hi GP!

    Thanx for that news.

    St George-Illawarra Dragons currently sit atop the NRL rankings (or what you Ozmen call "ladder"). Re Queensland, I hope you had a chance to view the State of Origin (SOO) between the Maroons (cached by Mal M) and the Blues of NSW. Normally, I do not watch what we Yanks call "all star games" as most are boring and feature very little defense. However, the SOO is the exception to this rule as it is perhaps the most intense all star game in the world.

    I enjoyed your article on heroes:

    http://www.pr.mq.edu.au/macnews/june01/heroes.htm

    Lleyton? I refer to him as "Baby Huey" for his constant whining - what a pathetic example compared to all those great Oz sports heroes. I have yet to read my copy of "Bodyline" as the print on the book is too small for my weak and aging eyes. But maybe some day ...

    ReplyDelete
  9. George ParsonsJuly 9, 2010 at 10:55 AM

    I am writing a paper for a seminar at the Sorbonne in Paris about the Australians in France 1916-1920. The Boys from OZ were impressed that French ladies put their legs around their neck! It did wonders for Australian-French relations.Anyone know the American reaction? Or were you more worldly than us colonials?

    ReplyDelete
  10. avrdsJuly 9, 2010 at 10:38 PM

    http://www.usgennet.org/usa/mo/county/stlouis/ww1-music/downonthefarm.htm

    ReplyDelete
  11. avrdsJuly 9, 2010 at 11:12 PM

    And for accompaniment:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlUExq2hNBU

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dylan in America

By
Whoever it was in 1969 who named the very first Bob Dylan bootleg album “Great White Wonder” may have had a mischievous streak. There are any number of ways you can interpret the title — most boringly, the cover was blank, like the Beatles’ “White Album” — but I like to see a sly allusion to “Moby-Dick.” In the seven years since the release of his first commercial record, Dylan had become the white whale of 20th-century popular song, a wild, unconquerable and often baffling force of musical nature who drove fans and critics Ahab-mad in their efforts to spear him, lash him to the hull and render him merely comprehensible. --- Bruce Handy, NYTimes ____________________________________________ I figured we can start fresh with Bob Dylan.  Couldn't resist this photo of him striking a Woody Guthrie pose.  Looks like only yesterday.  Here is a link to the comments building up to this reading group.
182 comments
Read more

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

By
  Welcome to this month's reading group selection.  David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908.  At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades.  Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society.  I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran.  Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, noting the gro
228 comments
Read more

Team of Rivals Reading Group

By
''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005
293 comments
Read more