Madonna King: Down-on-its-luck Melbourne winning as the nation’s heart capital
Melbourne v Sydney has always been a thing. Sydney is big and brash. Melbourne doesn’t boast the same population but argues quality...
Madonna King: Our lives have become less spontaneous. It’s time to revive the art of surprise
Huge plumes of blue smoke billow from the exhaust of a red Holden Commodore doing burnouts on a public road. People gather,...
Madonna King: Perfectionism is hurting our teenagers. What’s wrong with being ‘ordinary’?
When did being ‘ordinary’ become such a pejorative term? When did coming in the top third of the class, or making it...
Madonna King: Words matter, more than ever
Words matter. And with masks covering our grins and grimaces, they matter even more. Yesterday I pulled into a shopping centre car...
Madonna King: From Kabul, more pictures that will linger in memory’s unfading album
Photographs can provide an anchor that sometimes escapes words. A child’s first birthday. A toddler’s tentative first steps to childhood. That first...
Peter Bol has well and truly raced into our hearts
As Peter Bol lined up as the first Australian to make the men’s 800-metre final since 1968, he carried with him the...
For real sporting heroes, look no further than our Olympic girls in the pool
This Olympics, despite COVID trying to kill it off, is showcasing marvellous physical feats. Olympic records are being broken and world champions...
The enduring legacy of the pandemic threatens to divide us
An us-and-them mentality is now threatening to be the long-term symptom of the pandemic. And unless our policy settings take that into...
Loneliness is the real epidemic, and we all need to pitch in
Reading people’s eyes will soon be the stuff of university research projects and theses; another reminder of how COVID has created a...
All the times our politicians should have said ‘sorry’ in the past week
Why is ‘sorry’ such a hard word to say? Five letters, and yet our politicians – irrespective of their party affiliation –...