Using Words Wisely blog

Bill Hayden’s five years as foreign minister have received some attention in the week since his death. However, there’s more to say about his contribution to an independent foreign policy that allowed its diplomats to hold their heads high. This article first appeared in Pearls and Irritations 2 November 2023 The tributes written to remember… Read More »Vale Bill Hayden, a dedicated foreign minister

McMillan-Webster likes word play and the occasional pun. At the AGHS conference in Ipswich, she used a double entendre: ‘A date with history’ to introduce her talk. This is also the heading of the first chapter of her fascinating account of the life of seeds. The date in question is the Judean date palm, rekindled… Read More »Fiona McMillan-Webster, The Age of Seeds, Thames and Hudson, 2022

Even those gardens that appear wild have been planned in some way; the best have benefitted from skilled design. The October 2023 issue of Australian Garden History introduces garden designers of the past and present. Landscape architect, Ben Hardy-Clements, argues that, if we are to improve city living, we must ‘start by contemplating the delicate… Read More »The importance of garden design

David Reeve, To Remain Myself, the History of Onghokham, Asian Studies Association of Australia in association with NUS Press, 2022 ‘I also saw myself in struggle with the people who wanted to make someone or something out of me, while I wanted to remain myself.’ This is Onghokham speaking to his biographer, David Reeve. Ong… Read More »Biography of an Indonesian historian…and much more

Announcing the contents of the July 2023 issue of Australian Garden History

A former Afghan refugee has been awarded this year’s Australia for UNHCR Beddie Scholarship to study at the prestigious Australian Film Television and Radio School (AFTRS) in Sydney. Twenty-three-year-old Zabi Malik, from the Hazara community, fled Afghanistan with his family because of conflict and persecution, arriving in Australia aged nine.  Growing up in Adelaide, Zabi… Read More »Former Afghan refugee wins Australia for UNHCR Beddie Scholarship

Bringing multi-disciplinary perspectives to the story of gardens is at the heart of my approach to editing Australian Garden History. I am therefore please to bring readers biologist Tonia Cochran’s account of her team’s work at Inala Jurassic Garden in Tasmania. In collaboration with partners across the world, Inala is striving to preserve Gondwanan plant… Read More »From Gondwana to mid-20th century modern

The January 2023 issue of Australian Garden History brings readers some highlights from the 42nd annual conference in Hobart of the Australian Garden History Society, the first to be held face-to-face since the COVID-19 pandemic. Trish Hodge, a proud palawa woman, discusses plants from around lutruwita (Tasmania) and their significance for First Nations people living… Read More »The diverse histories of gardens

Here is my review of Lessons from history: leading historians tackle Australia’s greatest challenges, eds. Carolyn Holbrook, Lyndon Megarrity, David Lowe, UNSW Press, 2022 The 22 essays in the book tackle important public policy issues, many of which are the wicked problems that confound successive governments: climate change, relations with China, inequality, migration and more.… Read More »History and policy

The RFS is already warning of increased potential for grass fires this summer. So, despite the persistence of La Niña, it’s time to start preparing. To do that, there’s much we can learn from the past. That’s the lesson from an oral history project conducted in Bundanoon, a village in the Southern Highlands of NSW… Read More »Black Summer: voices from Bundanoon

The Olive Pink Botanic Garden in Mparntwe (Alice Springs) is an important character in a new opera to be premiered on that very site in October. The moment the composer, Professor Emerita Anne Boyd, entered the garden she could feel Pink’s presence. She knocked on the curator’s door and told him she was thinking of… Read More »Creating a musical language for the Australian landscape

Bringing stories back from the past can deepen our connections to place. So does gardening. It’s a potent combination. In the October 2022 issue of Australian Garden History, Trisha Dixon recounts, paradoxically just as we are told to expect a third La Niña, her journey towards dry gardening. The rains will eventually stop. Her article… Read More »Knowing our landscape through history

The stories in the July 2022 issue of Australian Garden History underline the importance of record keeping to history and other forms of storytelling. Without the newspaper cuttings, catalogues and correspondence expertly collated, curated and catalogued in the archives, Claire Baddeley would not have been able to tell the story of southwest Sydney’s 19th -century… Read More »Australian Garden History July 2022: Collating the past

I wrote a piece this week, explaining why I grieve for Russia and for diplomacy: I grieve for Russia, which is not the same as Putin – Pearls and Irritations (johnmenadue.com) I argue that the West is complicit in this carnage, not striving for dialogue, for negotiation, for understanding. In Australia, I grieve for the… Read More »Russia and Ukraine: we must strive for talks

The luscious cover of the April issue shows a magnified image of a spider orchid (Caladenia caudata). The plant is a threatened species endemic to Tasmania. Much of its habitat has been lost through historical clearing. The photograph was taken by Deborah Wace, an artist and ecological activist, who has been inspired by the 18th-century… Read More »April issue of Australian Garden History

POSTED 30 JANUARY 2022 Here in Bundanoon, summer has been elusive. The sun has had to compete with mist and rain; weeds are the happiest plants in the garden. That’s meant a bit more time for reading. Two novels I’ve finished are set in the nineteenth century; both have a botanical theme. The Fair Botanists by Sara… Read More »Summer reading: novels about plants

The first issue of Australian Garden History for 2022 reveals how much gardeners have achieved despite the pandemic. The cover images convey the exuberance, serenity and endurance of garden life. Professor Grace Karskens’s article draws on her book, People of the River: Lost Worlds of Early Australia, which received a 2021 NSW Premier’s History Award. Karskens… Read More »Gardeners surviving 2021: January issue of Australian Garden History

Are larrikins what we really need as political leaders? Lech Blaine’s recent essay, Top Blokes, (Quarterly Essay,  83/2021) explored the persona, and  Jack Waterford recently questioned whether Labor leader Albanese’s abandoning the larrikin personality had been the right move. I agree that by eschewing plain speaking and daring, Albanese has impoverished the ALP but whether… Read More »Time to end larrikinism as a political ploy

Editorial pointing to how gardeners can take action on climate change and pointing to the role of Indigenous knowledge in managing the landscape.

Further to Stuart Rees’ eloquent exposure in Pearls and Irritations of the Prime Minister’s cruelty toward those Afghans already in Australia on temporary visas, below is my letter to the Prime Minister arguing for a more humane and pragmatic asylum seeker policy. Pragmatic because times have changed – the boats are no longer coming – and… Read More »Don’t forget the plight of Afghans in Australia

In this issue of Australian Garden History, the array of images expands many fold the word limits necessarily imposed on contributors. Photographs of NSW’s sweeping high country and its tell-tale flora reinforce the point made by Warren Foster, a proud Yuin man, that evidence Aboriginal gardens have been around for millennia is right before our eyes.

The April issue of Australian Garden History features the exquisite paintings of the Australian bush by Marion Mahony, the wife of Walter Burley Griffin. Mahony deserves to be better known in her own right, as award-winning journalist Glenda Korporaal demonstrates. The cover shows the remarkable rainforest built on the side of Black Mountain in Canberra,… Read More »Australian Garden History April issue

Amid the restrictions of COVID-19, the Bundanoon History Group managed to complete phase one of its bushfire project in time for what turned out to be a cool and wet summer. Its messages have been distilled in a poster hanging on the History Shed in the main street and in a short video made for… Read More »Bundanoon History Group bushfire archive project

I can’t imagine the old normal returning unaltered after COVID-19 but worry that the rush towards a new normal will entail too much focus on growth and profits and not enough on caring for the vulnerable and the environment. If that happens, we will have squandered an opportunity to reset how we value health, work… Read More »Will we ever be satisfied with less?

Studying the lifecycle of the cicada

by Francesca Beddie Announcing his plans for university reform on 19 June, the minister for education, Dan Tehan, did as many of his predecessors have done. He invoked Robert Menzies. Here is an extract from Tehan’s speech at the National Press Club: 

In early January, the leader of the Opposition, Anthony Albanese, suggested the first sitting day of Federal Parliament for 2020 be devoted to marking the unprecedented bushfire crisis. That got me thinking about Australia Day.

Red sun smoky skiesSurely not the new normalThough it’s been weeks now Stop checking the appBlue diamonds are not that closeCan’t just hope for rain

I follow migration matters closely, so Tim Watt’s survey of the White Australia Policy and subsequent immigration policy was familiar territory. For those who don’t, there is much to recommend in the story he tells and his demonstration of the economic benefits of skilled migration. But his analysis has flaws.

In April 2019, the American Society for Editing decided to drop hyphens in expressions denoting dual heritage, like ‘Asian-American’, ‘African-American’ and so on. ‘American Indians’ refers to those hailing from India; the first people of the American continent are called ‘Native Americans’. While a hyphen is a small thing, its use can be a sensitive… Read More »Towards cosmopolitaness

Some people say a visit to Antarctica changed their life. I don’t but months after my trip the other-worldly beauty of the seventh continent is still with me and I am still grappling with how to put the experience into words. Someone who managed to capture the spirit of the place, long before the I-phone… Read More »Capturing Antarctica

People in Buenos Aires, especially the locals (porteños or people of the port) don’t get much sleep. Many commute for several hours to get to and from work during the week, so they are used to eating late and rising early. On weekends, they might get to sleep in, but those who like to party… Read More »Word play

If you want to write well, learn to love the full stop. See it as the goal towards which the words in your sentence adamantly move. So advises Joe Moran, Professor of English at Liverpool John Moores University, in an article that sings the praises of that dot at the end of a sentence, a… Read More »The full stop

‘I like Putin’, a tonged-straight-haired platinum blonde declared. We were standing in a long queue to make a pitch to a publisher. Mine was about Russia and history and houses. The blonde had a card. On one side was the cover of her book — the back of a naked woman with a horse tattoo,… Read More »Literary speed dating

‘Community’ is one of those words that sounds positive. For some, it might convey a bit too much touchy-feeliness but like mother’s milk it is hard to dismiss as essentially a good thing. I live in Bundanoon, a small town which prides itself on its sense of community. I’ve had glimpses of it in the… Read More »What’s in a word?

‘We will always choose perfection over politeness.’ That, a German friend explained, is why a stranger sitting at the next table outside on a glorious spring afternoon got up, came over to me, took my cutlery and started to demonstrate how to deal with a Weißwurst. The skin must not be eaten. It must be… Read More »Cross cultural non-communication

I watched Ken Loach’s film I, Daniel Blake again recently. Again, I cried. A sick bloke with talent and decency ends up dead before he can argue his case to be treated not as a client, customer, service user or national insurance number but as a citizen, no more no less. Surely our citizens can expect more… Read More »Wanted: politicians who inspire and creative public policy

For many years I have introduced new entrants to the diplomatic service to the archaic language of third person notes or notes verbales. Some are enchanted by the trappings of their new profession; others scornful of the use of phrases like: ‘avails itself of this opportunity to renew the assurances of its highest consideration’.

Australia’s handling of the global refugee crisis confounds me. I cannot fathom how a nation of immigrants can be so manipulated by our politicians. They stir up artificial fears, pathetic fears when compared to the terror that compels people to flee their homes. Facts and more facts about the horrors in Syria, the plight of… Read More »Stories from the front: art reveals more than news about the ravages of war

All the talk about Australia Day – what it symbolises, for whom and when we should celebrate – prompted me to delve into the history of the date, which has long been contentious. The Conversation website has run a series.  And Honest History has published various articles.  My post for the Professional Historians Association of NSW and ACT argues… Read More »What do we mean by Australia Day?

A metaphor is a figure of speech in which a word or phrase ordinarily used to describe one thing is applied to another: Fill your paper with the breathing of your heart. William Wordsworth It’s not just poets who use metaphors. We all do. Some have become so deeply entrenched we hardly recognise them, for example… Read More »Metaphors: find the right word to stimulate the brain

Do you say merry or happy Christmas or both? Are you comfortable with Xmas or do you prefer ‘holiday’? As we approach the festive season, here are some explanations for these differences, some of which are, I’m afraid, political. First to merry or happy: you’ll note that both are used on this Christmas card, the… Read More »Season’s Greetings!

In the new world of work, which heralds machines doing routine tasks and people solving problems, learning the how without the why is not enough. In other words, inquiry and evaluation must be integral to all tertiary teaching and learning. This is precisely the time not to break the teaching-research nexus. Good teachers are scholars.… Read More »Teaching + research = tertiary education

Are the cicadas deafening you this spring? Where we live they are out in force, causing people to talk. Some mention ‘si-KAH-da’, other say ‘si-KAY-da’. Why the difference, I wondered. And here, in an extract from the Boston Globe, is the explanation. It’s all about evolution, not of the species but of the English language.… Read More »Evolution

Last month (May 2017) the World Bank’s chief economist, Paul Romer, was stripped of his management duties (he remains the bank’s chief economist) after researchers rebelled against his efforts to make them communicate more clearly. Romer wanted his staff to write succinct, direct emails, presentations and reports, using the active voice and avoiding too many ‘and’s’.… Read More »Tone matters

Merriam-Webster, the oldest dictionary publisher in America, has had no qualms about entering cyberspace. Its Twitter feed now responds to the weird use of language in political debate. After Trump’s adviser Kellyanne Conway coined the term ‘alternative facts’ to explain the dispute about crowd numbers at the presidential inauguration, Webster tweeted: A fact is a piece of information presented as having… Read More »Fact check: turn to the dictionary

Here’s an article from The Spectator about the plural of ‘referendum’ being ‘referendums’. I agree. We didn’t adopt Latin grammar ‘holus bolus’ (that’s an archaic term from North America), so shouldn’t be imposing rules that apply to Latin but sound silly in English. The split infinitive is a case in point. The rule works for Latin… Read More »Latin-isms

In my classes, I am quite often asked about the Oxford comma. When the question comes, others ask what on earth is that? The Oxford comma, because it was traditionally used at Oxford University Press, is also known as the serial comma and comes before the penultimate item in a list: The wombat eats shoots,… Read More »The Oxford Comma: usage in Australia

On 27 April 2016 I attended a public hearing of the House of Representative’s Standing Committee on Education and Employment. It was part of the committee’s inquiry into innovation and creativity: workforce for the new economy . When I introduced myself as, inter alia, a former diplomat, I was greeted with a German ‘sehr gut’ and… Read More »Multilingualism matters

I’m just back from Islamabad, where I trained several enthusiastic groups of Pakistani professionals. Their English was good–one introduced herself as a fan of ‘Orwellian’ English, meaning plain-speaking language not the Big Brother type. The participants’ thinking and their expertise was impressive. Perhaps their brains respond well to all the articles they ‘gobble up’, as another participant put… Read More »Gobbled-up articles

Aristotle identified three elements in the art of rhetoric: ethos (authority or evidence); pathos (the emotional hook, one might say); and logos (a logical argument). His point was that to win over an audience required more than the facts. How these are marshalled and how they resonate matters, as Nobel Laureate, Peter Doherty, explains in his… Read More »Evidence versus emotion

English spelling is hard. The language has over 1,100 different ways to spell its 44 separate sounds, with many having no relationship to pronunciation. You can blame history for this mess. English has always adopted words from other languages* — Norse, German, Latin, French to name few — but without  standard protocols on how to spell them.  There are some… Read More »‘i’ before ‘e’…

‘A good editor won’t introduce errors’, declares an American editor selling her wares. It’s a good benchmark and one you’d expect an international journal to adhere to. So imagine my shock when the proofs of an article I wrote (eons ago … academic publishing works at a languorous pace) arrived with the following: The citation… Read More »Editing necessities

Education Minister Christopher Pyne has announced a pilot for a literacy and numeracy test for teachers in Australia to be introduced in 2016. This won’t be the solution to problems of poor grammar and spelling that abound among school and university graduates but it will perhaps help to change the mind set that bad language… Read More »Does bad English matter?

The National Centre for Vocational Education Research recently published a synthesis I did of research on the outcomes of training. Stephen Matchett commented in his Campus Morning Mail (5 May 2015), ‘This is much more than a snapshot of the state of research – it encapsulates perennial policy challenges for voced’. I hope, though, it… Read More »What’s the research telling us?