Dads, eh? You think you know ‘em and then one day you grow up and measure them against the complex realities of the world and find them wanting. Before Atticus Finch became everyone’s ideal dad […]
It was inevitable that a big life change like buying a house would spark a flare-up of an immune disorder which reacts to stress. Anything which deviates from the flat line of normality is a […]
On 16 January 1973 Australian Francis James emerged from three years’ imprisonment in Canton (now Guangzhou) with just a brief announcement from China to herald his expulsion to the border and into the waiting arms […]
Part Three of a Special Report on China Watching, based on a three-part feature written by my father Jack Spackman on the mysterious disappearance of Francis James, who was imprisoned in China on suspicion of […]
Part Two of a Special Report on the arcane art of China Watching, through a three-part feature written by my father Jack Spackman on the mysterious disappearance of Francis James, who was imprisoned in China […]
In November 1969 an Australian named Francis James disappeared without trace. He was travelling by train from the southern China city of Canton, now called Guangzhou, to Hong Kong. He was last seen by his […]
Australia’s rush to embrace sweeping powers to access the digital footprints of its citizenry has raised the existential age-old question: What is a journalist? The development of the government’s data retention bill and its implications […]
Like many children I had no real idea of what my parents did for a living so the last thing I expected on a visit to Sydney in 1973 was to hear my dad Jack […]
In a scene straight out of childhood, I was sitting at the breakfast table with my father Jack Spackman, both of us with noses buried in the morning newspaper. It was one of the last times […]
It was a bleak day for Democracy in Queensland on Saturday, 31 January 2015. As voters went to the polls, something didn’t smell right. An important element was missing. And its absence was to cost […]
Copyright: Maria Spackman
