PATRICK MARMION: Matthew Bourne s Sleeping Beauty is my idea of a perfect Christmas show. His ballet is just what we need a fairy-tale of transformation and enchantment.
In 1817, an exasperated Governor Macquarie issued yet another warning to settlers in the Hawkesbury area about the foolishness of building on the flood plains.
One might have thought that after having committed and lost, maimed and damaged so many young Australians in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq in servitude to a US agenda, we might have learnt our lesson.