Contemporary

Academia, Australia, Contemporary

A dispatch from Harvard by the Yarra

[Cross-posted at Cliopatria.] ‘Harvard by the Yarra’ is actually the University of Melbourne, Australia (the Yarra being the major river hereabouts, though the university is not actually anywhere near it). Some wag coined the phrase to describe (and deride) the aspirations implicit in the Melbourne Model, a radical overhaul of undergraduate teaching announced in 2007.

Art, Australia, Civil defence, Contemporary, Pictures

The fire

I don’t have anything deep or moving to say about the bushfires which destroyed several towns on the north-east edge of Melbourne on Saturday (try here instead). Everyone I know is (I think) safe, which is the first thing to say, but beyond that … the official death toll is currently 181, but is sure

Australia, Contemporary

David Philips, 1946-2008

As Chris noted here the other day, David Philips died recently. David was a recently retired associate professor in the School of Historical Studies at the University of Melbourne, where he taught for three decades, and had an international reputation in the study of crime and policing in 19th century Britain and the comparative study

1910s, Books, Contemporary, Other, Pictures

Mark my words

This will end in tears: Zeppelins to make tourist flights over London. (Via Airshipworld.) Image source: from the front cover of Louis Gastine, War in Space: or, an Air-craft War between France and Germany (London and Felling-on-Tyne: Walter Scott Publishing, 1913). (OK, it’s Paris, not London — so I cheated.) The oldest paperback I own,

1940s, Australia, Contemporary, Pictures

Out of the depths

This has been all over the news here today, though I suspect interest is somewhat less outside Australia: the wreck of HMAS Sydney has been found. On 19 November 1941, Sydney was returning to Fremantle, Western Australia, after escorting a troopship north to Sunda Strait. It encountered the German commerce raider Kormoran somewhere out in

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