The history of British settlement was written into sandstone by Australia’s Aboriginal people  – but a mixture of disregard and “progress” has put these precious rock-art records at risk.

Rich-lister Gina Rinehart, one of the world’s biggest uranium companies, and countless other prospectors are all lining up to mine landscapes holding the planet’s most ancient artworks.

So, print is all but washed up? Not according to one of the world’s most successful magazines, which, against all odds, is still making money — lots of money.

In the centre of New Zealand’s North Island is a patch of green that remains forever Middle Earth — well, for at least as long as money grows on fake trees.

Speeches too good, or too misjudged, not to revisit, issues too vital not to read direct from source. Catch up this holiday season, as we unearth a couple of gems each day.

In a village near the Sea of Galilee, archaeologists have struck a first-century synagogue. Did Jesus once preach at its long-buried pulpit?

So few indigenous Australians have played cricket at the elite level, and Cricket Australia isn’t sure what to do about it.

It’s Denmark’s ‘The West Wing’: the TV series ‘Borgen’ has done for politics what Nordic-Noir has done for screen police and thriller lit.

The whimsical imagination that Victoria Roberts has long breathed into her drawings, cartoons and stage characters comes alive in her first novel — a newly broke family of eccentrics settles, along with the contents ...

Amid tragic fallout from the film ‘Innocence of Muslims’, a Sydney playwright saw comic potential — in the porn past of the film’s director.

A beautiful mosaic pilfered from the Palestinian front during World War I now hangs in the Canberra’s Australian War Memorial, shoved awkwardly behind a newly built wall, testament to a growing national ...

Archie Roach has emerged from grief and illness to produce the album of a lifetime.

The federal government has granted $10 million to ramp up the ABC's news division across radio, TV and digital. Here's how Aunty is poised to dominate Australian media with one hugely ambitious online market ...

Sydney Festival director Lieven Bertels ponders the challenges of creating a relevant, ticket-selling arts line-up when everyone’s got a show they want to flog — and your fellow festival ringmasters are both friend ...

To shuttle the Endeavour to its museum home, Los Angelenos took down street lights, power poles and hundreds of trees. What’s more, they took their beloved cars off the roads.

Flops, hits and collisions with Anne Bancroft: a daughter's life in the theatre, from napping the wings to wandering the world with her father in the next seat.

On a hill in the centre of Java, thousands of Muslims regularly turn up to a religious ritual with a surprising stipulation: to seek their fortunes, they must have sex with a stranger.

Alpha by subject ... or by dinner party seating rules? Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Geraldine Brooks on a shelving obsession.

Good artists copy, great artists steal. But in the digital age, photographic copyright is fading fast.

From her home, Irris Makler could hear the unmistakable BOOM that meant it was time to grab her gear and head out towards the carnage.

When AFL Media launched in January, it was denounced as “Pravda”, the puppet mouthpiece of the football state. So far, it’s proved them wrong — and Aussie Rules fans are hitting the site in such high numbers that ...

The beloved author, who grew up in Melbourne, the child of Holocaust survivors, has a new novel, ’Lola Bensky’. Here’s the novel’s first chapter.

In a video interview, a former board member of Australia's National Institute of Dramatic Art argues something is rotten at the school.

I look therefore iPhone. For British artist David Hockney the view, whether vignette or sweeping, is constantly evolving.

Australia has forever been behind the rest of the world in indigenous tertiary education. A new report suggests radical ways to fix that. It’s time.

Robert Connolly's new film explores the dark and brilliant youth of Assange, "one of the more significant figures of the 21st century".

What happens when celebrities become our friends online? You know that’s crazy, don’t you?

He was a cricketer, a standout student, a pharmacist. And he left it all — for a life of poverty, purpose, and "everlasting happiness".

An undeclared war within Islam is playing out in Syria, as popular uprisings get tangled in old religious feuds.

The creators of a new cultural magazine are redefining Australia’s gay scene, and rejecting the ghetto.

A four-letter flare-up can cost you as much as running a red light — but is maintaining order really at risk from modern expression?

Robert Hughes was an explorer — of language, history, art, and of what was worthy (or not) of our serious attention.

Amid the great achievements of Australian athletes in London, the medal tally is short of the forecast haul.

As Team GB gathers up an historic gold-medal haul, London Mayor Boris Johnson has managed to garner almost as much glory as the athletes.

Sufi music is wildly popular in Pakistan — once you get past the armed guards. Why are the Muslim mystics so maligned by militants?

Executing a spectacularly shallow dive, Australian fans have proven to be a most unsporting public this Olympics.

As the ATO prepares its case against millionaire David Walsh, Australians have defended the owner of MONA and the museum he built.

Queensland is axing amazingly successful youth music programs. Conductor Simone Young brings down her baton on Campbell Newman's cuts.

What happens when you fight a culture of violence and corruption in a game that is the national passion?

What makes Kenyans run so fast? In the remote village of Iten, Kenya’s elite runners prepare for Olympic victory.

On the cusp of the Great War, the Stockholm Olympics featured art contests and a gold for Australia’s first female swimming champion.

Trapped between chronic brutality and absurdist politics, anti-regime Syrians have discovered a powerful way to resist, and attack — humour.

Tango, new tango, tango fusion — call it what you will, it’s back with a vengeance and the kids love it.

Majok Tulba was of no use to the rebels who would have made him a child fighter. Ten years on, his debut novel takes the measure of those soldiers.

Streamed music from music-subscription services is on the rise. So, who wins and loses from sites such as Spotify and Rdio?

With plywood moon modules, golf cart Mars Rovers and pseudo-scientists on scooters, artist Tom Sachs contemplates mankind’s move to Mars.

Contemporary Australian architecture is out of the Sydney Opera House shadow, earning plaudits from Shangai to Stonehenge.

Meet Jimi Bani, the Torres Strait royal who stars in Mabo.

Along with beauty queens and oil, Venezuela is exporting its music education program, El Sistema.

A path to discovering the magic of Nobel-winning Australian author Patrick White, born a century ago.

Performer Amanda Palmer took her latest album online and raised more in two weeks than any record label would have given her.

Australian photographer Bridget Fleming push-biked her way into New York's zeitgeist by snapping at its tail. Follow her cycle path in this cheeky video.

Chemistry, cliff-hangers and communing in tweets: how entertainment truisms keep getting tweaked to make gotta-talk-about-it TV.

Washington social justice lobbyist Sister Simone Campbell talks about The Vatican's crackdown on the activities of US Catholic nuns.

Essayist Peter Robb gives us divine 'Lives'.

Australia has a better story than its lazy clichés would suggest. The wonder from down under needs a linguistic relocation.

The most unlikely satirical success of our generation, Dame Edna, is kicking off her heels. Can anyone fill her shoes?

On the cusp of stardom, Sydney boy Jai Courtney talks about life on the way to becoming Bruce Willis’s son in the new Die Hard movie.

Australian culture, once derided as an oxymoron, might emerge with new strengths depending on the focus of a new national policy.

When — nobody thinks if — Black Caviar breaks the record of race wins in Australia, she’ll likely be packed up to race before the Queen. What then?

Australian actor Kym Vercoe is haunted by atrocities that happened in a hotel where she slept as a tourist. Now she's making a film about it.

We all know Aussies like to swim. But why is it such a big deal?

On two wheels in the most car-obsessed city in America, cyclists are taking it to the streets.

It's a $65 billion a year industry, but are video games mindless or changing the world for the better?

With La Traviata on Sydney Harbour and plans for an opera in a footy stadium, opera-lovers are trying to create more opera lovers. But will it work?

Long absent from polite society, it's widely considered one of the most obscene words in the English language —  suddenly it's vogue again.

Rowan Williams tried to navigate the tumult of a church divided — but the just resigned Archbishop of Canterbury never succeeded.

Mad Men’s sexist, brash world of 1960s ad men oddly speaks to women — especially those who thought this world was supposed to be history.

When Newcastle made it to the The Lonely Planet Guide’s must-see top 10 global destination list last year, many were shocked. Not in Newcastle, however, where they wondered why it hadn’t happened sooner.

Mmm… The Simpsons. When it’s good it’s better than doughnuts. When it’s not … remember it’s TV’s longest-running, possibly most influential sitcom.

Why would a Muslim shed his sweetheart, family, profession, nation and religion for a patch of Aussie housing commission?

The answer these days is: not your grandmother’s opera. Young Australian producers are giving an old art form new vibrance.

Philosopher and atheist Alain de Botton talks about his new book — about religion.

In these troubled times for Australian soccer, an Indonesian oligarch has stepped up to buy the Brisbane Roar club.

Basketballer Jeremy Lin has done more than just shoot the New York Knicks into a winning streak.

Still spinning cricket balls, still spinning yarns: Shane Warne, superstar, proves that he’s still cricket’s biggest talent and biggest name — and even has a hankering to return to the Australian Test cricket ...

Is Warney returning to test cricket? As this two-part profile from earlier this year shows, he’s been spinning this yarn for a while.

With the sudden death of art historian Dr Boitran Huynh-Beattie, Australia has lost a remarkable moral leader.

When the Vatican effectively sacked an admired bishop, it raised questions about justice and Roman discipline.

The interior of Antoni Gaudí’s Sagrada Familia church in Barcelona invites a reconsideration of his place in the history of architecture.

Long memories shroud a controversial monument in suburban Bonnyrigg, where Australia’s Assyrians remember their people’s bloody history.

An accident-prone childhood led to a surprising discovery: Buubuu was not clumsy, he was home to 109 ancestor spirits and marked to be a shaman.

The battle between hardline and moderate Islamists will determine the political future of the most populous Arab nation - perhaps the region.

From the misreporting of a picnic "massacre" almost a century ago to SIEV4 and beyond...

The Global Mail’s European correspondent muses on his latest hometown — the efficient, the delicious … and the racist.

Out, damned mainstream review! Bloggers are rising up to tell Sydney theatre lovers what they really think of the latest plays, with no punches pulled.

With nowhere to point your moral compass, Indonesia presents a journalist with some tricky choices.

The Global Mail's Latin America correspondent loves his "schizophrenic" adopted home, Buenos Aires.

Americans go crazy for their football—and dissecting the game of gridiron reveals much about American culture (hint: power over subtlety).