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Sydney Morning Herald
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
Far away from home, I fell in love with Australian music again
What in the World, a free weekly newsletter from our foreign correspondents, is sent every Thursday. Below is an excerpt. Sign up to get the whole newsletter delivered to your inbox. Washington: On a recent Wednesday night, I found myself in New York revisiting the new Australian bar that's opened up in Lower Manhattan. I first wrote about Old Mates pub in April, finding it was a surprise hit with discerning New Yorkers as well as the expat crowd. I came back to see The Wiggles. Not in their usual coloured skivvies, but in casual pub attire for a free gig at the end of their month-long US tour. The crowd might have been adults-only, but the set list wasn't, with plenty of Wiggles favourites mixed with karaoke renditions of You're So Vain and a rocking version of The Cockroaches' She's the One. The boisterous New York audience wouldn't let them leave without performing Hot Potato, while Dominic Field – sans Wiggles' tree costume – brought the house down with the hoedown-style Rattlin' Bog, an Irish folk song. For the uninitiated, Field – or the Tree of Wisdom, as he's known on stage – dances up a storm while the band works its way through the epic song, which is cumulative (the verse grows each time around, like The Twelve Days of Christmas) and gets progressively faster. 'It was incredible,' blue wiggle Anthony Field, Dominic's uncle, told me after the show. 'It was packed full of Aussies and a lot of Americans who grew up with The Wiggles. This is our last night in America, so we just wanted to let some steam off. We didn't do it for money; we didn't get paid.' We got talking about the lure of a slice of home during long stints abroad. It might be the sound of an Australian accent while walking the streets (not uncommon in the United States, I can assure you). It might be the appearance of a flat white on a menu (rarer), or just any coffee that's strong and well-made (rarer still). For me, it's Aussie music. I've been cleaning the apartment to the best of Savage Garden, roaming Washington with Missy Higgins coursing through my headphones, playing Ball Park Music while driving to the beach. And I tuned into Triple J's recent Hottest 100 of Australian Songs (Cold Chisel and Powderfinger both should have been higher, but clearly their vote was split across two top-20 tracks).
The Age
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Age
Far away from home, I fell in love with Australian music again
What in the World, a free weekly newsletter from our foreign correspondents, is sent every Thursday. Below is an excerpt. Sign up to get the whole newsletter delivered to your inbox. Washington: On a recent Wednesday night, I found myself in New York revisiting the new Australian bar that's opened up in Lower Manhattan. I first wrote about Old Mates pub in April, finding it was a surprise hit with discerning New Yorkers as well as the expat crowd. I came back to see The Wiggles. Not in their usual coloured skivvies, but in casual pub attire for a free gig at the end of their month-long US tour. The crowd might have been adults-only, but the set list wasn't, with plenty of Wiggles favourites mixed with karaoke renditions of You're So Vain and a rocking version of The Cockroaches' She's the One. The boisterous New York audience wouldn't let them leave without performing Hot Potato, while Dominic Field – sans Wiggles' tree costume – brought the house down with the hoedown-style Rattlin' Bog, an Irish folk song. For the uninitiated, Field – or the Tree of Wisdom, as he's known on stage – dances up a storm while the band works its way through the epic song, which is cumulative (the verse grows each time around, like The Twelve Days of Christmas) and gets progressively faster. 'It was incredible,' blue wiggle Anthony Field, Dominic's uncle, told me after the show. 'It was packed full of Aussies and a lot of Americans who grew up with The Wiggles. This is our last night in America, so we just wanted to let some steam off. We didn't do it for money; we didn't get paid.' We got talking about the lure of a slice of home during long stints abroad. It might be the sound of an Australian accent while walking the streets (not uncommon in the United States, I can assure you). It might be the appearance of a flat white on a menu (rarer), or just any coffee that's strong and well-made (rarer still). For me, it's Aussie music. I've been cleaning the apartment to the best of Savage Garden, roaming Washington with Missy Higgins coursing through my headphones, playing Ball Park Music while driving to the beach. And I tuned into Triple J's recent Hottest 100 of Australian Songs (Cold Chisel and Powderfinger both should have been higher, but clearly their vote was split across two top-20 tracks).
The Age
21-06-2025
- General
- The Age
Secrets and lies as South Korea's adoptees search for belonging
What in the World, a free weekly newsletter from our foreign correspondents, is sent every Thursday. Below is an excerpt. Sign up to get the whole newsletter delivered to your inbox. Singapore: There is a word in Korean, sosokgam or 소속감, which means 'a sense of belonging'. For Carissa Smith, who was adopted from South Korea in 1985 and grew up on the NSW North Coast, it's something that has always been elusive. Instead, she has lived with a life-long feeling of dislocation and anguish. 'I always struggled with 'fitting in', like I have a hole inside of me,' she says. 'On my birthday, I would look at the moon and wonder whether my birth mother was looking at the same moon from Korea. I wondered if she missed me, I wondered if she loved me.' Last year, she travelled to Seoul, hoping to find clues about her birth family that would paint a fuller picture of her identity, and answer questions that her three young Australian-Korean children might have one day. It's a journey numerous Australian adoptees have made, which has taken them to the doors of the Eastern Social Welfare Society, the agency in Seoul that has facilitated the adoptions of some 3600 Korean children to Australia since 1978. It holds the files containing critical information about their past. Smith says she was ushered into a room where a staff member sat across from her holding a manila folder of her records, using a ruler and her hands to obscure large sections of it. 'I begged her to show me those bits, because I just wanted to try and find my birth mother,' she says.
Sydney Morning Herald
21-06-2025
- General
- Sydney Morning Herald
Secrets and lies as South Korea's adoptees search for belonging
What in the World, a free weekly newsletter from our foreign correspondents, is sent every Thursday. Below is an excerpt. Sign up to get the whole newsletter delivered to your inbox. Singapore: There is a word in Korean, sosokgam or 소속감, which means 'a sense of belonging'. For Carissa Smith, who was adopted from South Korea in 1985 and grew up on the NSW North Coast, it's something that has always been elusive. Instead, she has lived with a life-long feeling of dislocation and anguish. 'I always struggled with 'fitting in', like I have a hole inside of me,' she says. 'On my birthday, I would look at the moon and wonder whether my birth mother was looking at the same moon from Korea. I wondered if she missed me, I wondered if she loved me.' Last year, she travelled to Seoul, hoping to find clues about her birth family that would paint a fuller picture of her identity, and answer questions that her three young Australian-Korean children might have one day. It's a journey numerous Australian adoptees have made, which has taken them to the doors of the Eastern Social Welfare Society, the agency in Seoul that has facilitated the adoptions of some 3600 Korean children to Australia since 1978. It holds the files containing critical information about their past. Smith says she was ushered into a room where a staff member sat across from her holding a manila folder of her records, using a ruler and her hands to obscure large sections of it. 'I begged her to show me those bits, because I just wanted to try and find my birth mother,' she says.
Sydney Morning Herald
13-06-2025
- Politics
- Sydney Morning Herald
A tale of two cities on either side of a divided country
What in the World, a free weekly newsletter from our foreign correspondents, is sent every Thursday. Below is an excerpt. Sign up to get the whole newsletter delivered to your inbox. Los Angeles: Hello and Kumbaya from Los Angeles, where the sun shines every day, even if the streets don't. Earlier in the week, while jogging in Washington, DC, I was stopped by an older man from out of town who wanted to know if it was safe to be outside at that time of the evening. It was 7.30pm, still light outside, in one of the prettiest, leafiest parts of the nation's capital, Kalorama Heights. Granted, the streets were pretty quiet. But I assured the man it was safe. Still, in today's America, you can't blame him for asking. After all, I was about to jump on a flight bound for Los Angeles to cover the immigration protests that saw US President Donald Trump dispatch the National Guard and the Marines – picking a serious fight with the biggest state in the union and generating global headlines. And it's not just LA. Police clashed with protesters in San Francisco and Dallas, Texas, with more rallies likely as the Trump administration accelerates its plans for the biggest deportation program in US history. This week's events have turbocharged unease back in Australia – and around the world – about the United States under Trump. It is strongest among political progressives, who baulk at what they say is an authoritarian new order being ushered in by the president, but you can also detect it among the mainstream. The US in 2025? No, thanks. There's a hardness, an ugliness, a brutality and unfairness to Trump's United States that Australians especially might find distasteful. But at times like these, it's important to remember it's not all bad. The US is big enough to contain multitudes. While the protests in LA were turning violent, Washington was hosting WorldPride, the LGBTQ festival held every one of two years that, like the Olympics, travels the world from city to city. It was last hosted in 2023 in Sydney, and will head to Amsterdam next year.
