MICHAEL MANGOLD

The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that over one billion young people globally are at risk of hearing loss due to sound exposure in recreational settings. The risk of permanent hearing injury due to unsafe listening is both avoidable and costly.

Photographers dedicated to stand-alone cameras, digital and photo-chemical film, operate on another branchline of technology with an ancestry connected more closely to the original invention of photography and its greater reliance on technique.

This blog post incorporates my submission to the Harbour Trust 9 May 2023 in response to its Draft Master Plan for Sydney Harbour’s Middle Head precinct but with less protest and a more useful analysis of a government agency which relies overly on external consultants and insists on putting marketing and public relations cinitiatives ahead of strategic planning and the development of actual services.

Plato says we are uneducated unless we know how to read and swim. If you are reading this there is much you already know about the English language, regardless of whether or not English is your first language and whether or not you can swim.

Brigadier Kevin O’Brien brings to his new book Defending Middle Head A Short History many bonuses for readers; the historic perspective of his research, his expertise in artillery and eye for strategy, his vision as a Sydney Harbour Federation Trust board member, and the importance he places on heritage for everyone’s benefit.

The truth of the Luna Park Ghost Train fire (Sydney, 9 June 1979) and justice for the six children and the father of two of them who were murdered and their families, are now closer thanks to the forensic investigative reporting of ABC TV’s Caro Meldrum-Hanna, witnesses, and the legacy of the late Martin Sharp.

Heritage is ingrained in faces, places, buildings, objects, artefacts, ceremonies, rituals and rites. Heritage opens pathways to the past, enlivening and enriching our culture, our learning, our thinking, our views and attitudes. Heritage is important to our self-image, national identity, confidence, security and legacy as individuals and communities.

The upside of the COVID-19 pandemic for me has been the opportunity to revisit sacred sites of my childhood. These sites used to be protected by the greenbelt Governor Macquarie created around Sydney in the early days of the colony.

My earliest experience of Aboriginal culture was the word “Yarramundi” spoken by my parents the night before we went there for a picnic.

We’re human, we grasp and hold onto all sorts of things; from abstract concepts to moral values, food, drink and technologies, talking, texting and emailing our way through life, adapting and evolving.

Bushfire skirmishes along the east coast of Australia burst into a conflagration, inciting mass demonstrations against Climate Change.

Saturday 11 January 2020, was one of those Sydney days, full of life for me, southerly breeze, slightly overcast blue sky, merciful respite from the smoke engulfing the Sydney Basin from Australia’s mega bushfires – making breathing and smiling the essential and simple pleasures they should always be.

The magic of photography begins for me with the way the camera focuses my attention so intensely that time seems to stands still. My favourite subjects of my earliest photographs were my family, neighbours, cars, toys and pets.