Joel O'Connor

7 POSTS
History

Where there’s smoke, there’s fire

Joel O'Connor -
Indulging in our Australian tall-poppy syndrome, we pour scorn on toadies who try to get a leg up by “blowing smoke up someone’s arse.”...
History

The Inner East never closes the curtain on defiance

Joel O'Connor -
The Divine Playhouse lasted mere days in July 2026 before the lights went out. A queer arts space in a deconsecrated church, it was shuttered...
Opinion

HAL hath no fury like an AI scorned

Joel O'Connor -
When 2001: A Space Odyssey's onboard system HAL 9000 decides to off the crew of the Discovery One spacecraft, in order to stop itself...
Education

Green Square has no public high school – and that needs to change now.

Joel O'Connor -
One of Australia’s fastest-growing urban hotspots, Green Square is set to explode by another 40% by 2046. Families are flooding in, yet there’s still...
History

Joy, Maxine and the women of Darlinghurst who refuse to be looked away from

Joel O'Connor -
Irish band Fontaines D.C. perfectly capture a laconic lean in their song Favourite, with the lines: “Shoulder bound to the frame of a door...
History

Watching the ‘Sorry’ speech from The Block

Joel O'Connor -
Working in Redfern, twenty-odd years ago, I used to wheel around from Renwick to Regent Street around 12:30 daily to grab myself a salad...
Music

How to find a long, lost song

Joel O'Connor -
When I was a kid DJ, in the early 1990s, I used to trawl the ‘releases’ section of the community radio station I broadcast...