Amy Fallon

The courage of our convicts

When Fanny Jarvis stole from her employer, the servant girl from Staffordshire in Britain received a tough sentence: transportation for life to a new country. Three years after her arrival in Australia she was charged with insubordination, likely unaware of the role that she and others who shared her fate were playing in the origins of the nation’s democratisation. Today, she is still virtually unknown. But Jarvis, who endured nearly four years of hard labour and long periods of solitary confin

“Let go of the fear”: Life lessons from the first Black woman to visit every country in the world

When she quit her six-figure salary corporate job in 2008 and moved to Japan to teach English, Jessica Nabongo had been to nine countries—and never traveled solo. But it was the beginning of something. Three years ago, she became the first Black woman to travel to every one of the 195 countries and 10 territories recognized by the UN (United Nations) at the time. Her final stop was the Seychelles, where she arrived on October 6th, 2019. 38-year-old Nabongo, who has just published her first

Bernard Collaery’s divine intervener

When the decision to end his prosecution was announced, one of the first people that whistleblower Bernard Collaery called was a 76-year-old, plain-clothed, straight-talking nun living in a south-western Sydney convent. Susan Connelly, a sister of St Joseph, the religious congregation founded by the Australian saint Mary MacKillop, may seem like an unlikely ally for the embattled Canberra lawyer who had faced jail time for allegedly revealing spying in Timor-Leste. But Connelly, who’s been a C

Would You Eat Grasshoppers at 35,000 Feet?

When Ugandan vendor Paul Mubiru boarded a flight from the nation’s capital Kampala bound for Dubai and began enthusiastically selling nsenene – or grasshoppers – to other passengers in November, he was applauded and criticised in equal measure. It was an incident more commonly seen on a roadside than a plane full of international travellers which certainly caused a buzz in the East African country of Uganda. The actions of Mubiru and Hajib Kiggundu Hajib, a fellow vendor whose recording of Mubi

Sowing the Seed

SEED libraries are cropping up all over the place, and they're helping their communities to grow.

Labor urged to act to prevent Julian Assange extradition

The legal case against Julian Assange is a game of luck and whim. Any day now, the British home secretary, Priti Patel, is expected to rubber stamp his extradition to the United States. What will happen to him there is uncertain. The Westminster Magistrates’ Court formally approved his extradition on April 20 and Patel has until May 31 to announce whether it will happen. If convicted of espionage in the US, Assange could be sentenced to 175 years in prison. His legal team argue he would likely

Attention Passengers: Would You Eat Airline Food at Home?

This Indigenous-owned airline in Canada has passengers swooning over its cheesecake. With its crispy brown base and the right amount of fruit and creaminess, the homemade cheesecakes made and served by Air North, a small Canadian airline headquartered in a community of just 40,000 people, are considered a little slice of heaven at 30,000 feet. “I recall receiving comment cards asking which flights are the cheesecake on or if they could buy it anywhere,” says the airline’s longtime Red Seal che

Leaving the Church Makes For Some Good Content

The first Australian-produced podcast of its kind, it focuses on the pair’s religious experiences along with their guests. Launched in 2021, the self-help show is “causing a stir” among church leaders in Australia, Troy tells VICE, growing an audience here and beyond. It’s just one of the ways that those who have escaped authoritarian religions are using new media to “democratise their voices”. It comes after the popularity of podcasts like Exvangelical, named after the term used to describe the

‘I want the kids to see Australia’: Meet Stella Moris, Julian Assange’s fiancee

“Keeping Julian in prison will kill him eventually,” Moris, speaking at the Frontline Club, an independent journalist’s hub in west London where Assange held press conferences and hid out, tells The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. “The Australian government should be saying [to the US] ‘he’s our citizen, this has gone on for too long. It’s harming our credibility, politically. We’re getting a lot of flak over this issue. It would be helpful if you drop this’.” Sara Gonzalez Devant, as Moris w

I envisaged a two-week visit when I arrived at the youth hostel. I didn’t think I’d stay six months

Lured by the landscape and the inspiration that it offered, I envisaged a two-week visit when I arrived at the youth hostel in the mountains. I planned to work remotely, finish off the degree that I was working on part-time, and hike. I didn’t think I’d stay six months. But since international borders were shut, shelving my plans to move back overseas, I’d ended up in limbo in my small hometown. As a long-term expat, I was now making up for time away from my family who I loved. But all my school friends had moved away years ago, and after several months, it became isolating. Where to go to that wasn’t locked down? A former art nouveau ballroom in a mountain youth hostel became the unexpected answer, the setting for my life during a large chunk of the pandemic. In a year when so many people were alone, I accidentally moved into the biggest share house I’d ever lived in.

Sex ed is headed back to Uganda's classrooms

Sex education is headed back to Uganda's classrooms. But quite what what education will look like is a point of contestation in a country that tends to put a higher premium on the opinions of religious leaders than on the best interests of its students.

Recovering From Religion

Saving Julian Assange

This week, Stella Moris said she and Julian Assange still intended to marry in the new year, although they have not set a date. She is currently speaking to the prison about arrangements. Moris hopes it will be a ceremony attended by close family and friends, with their children, Gabriel, 4, and Max, 2, taking part. “The High Court ruling has made things even more precarious than before,” she tells The Saturday Paper. “But that has only strengthened our determination to celebrate what is const

Steve Widders - The Visionary

Declared medically blind by Fred Hollows in 1990, second-time president of the Rotary Club of Armidale, Aboriginal Elder Steve Widders is championing Rotary's diversity, equity and inclusion policy.

An innovative game is helping Ugandan women to combat online violence

Rocking a sharp fuchsia pink blazer with high cut trousers and a flower behind one ear, Goitse, a Botswanan college student living in Rwanda, is described as an “ardent feminist” who loves a “soft life.” When she hears about a South Africa rape case trending on twitter, she ‘likes’ and retweets the post to show solidarity with the sisterhood, quoting a news story and expressing that as a woman she is always scared of losing her life to domestic violence. A fellow user DMs her an insult and Goi

The activist facing jail for Macquarie statue protest

It’s a freezing, mid-winter’s day in the Blue Mountains outside Sydney. Stephen Langford walks to the edge of a lake in his boxer shorts and plunges in the frigid water. In a few weeks, the veteran refugee activist will be in court again, facing jail for defacing a statue. For now, though, he seems indifferent towards the charges. “Sydney was a penal colony, so it would be just like cuddling a koala if I was imprisoned,” the 62-year-old says. “This case just shows that we do not have rights. Pe

Losing my religion: facing the trauma of leaving a faith

“People with religious trauma sometimes present with anxiety, depression or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), so they might get diagnosed with one of those.” She added that religious trauma presents differently depending on the person, their background and experiences. The formation of the Sydney-based Recovering from Religion (RfR) group nearly 18 months ago, operating under the auspices of the US-based non-profit established in 2009, was borne out of D’Souza’s own struggle to find help af

Can humanism help advance human rights in Africa?

Belief in one of the major world religions is commonplace throughout Africa but a small but growing number of people are turning to humanism, defined by the Collins Concise Dictionary as the “rejection of religion in favour of the advancement of humanity by its own efforts”.

With Violence Continuing There, Should We #VisitUganda?

“THE PEARL OF AFRICA–Uganda is gifted with beautiful attractions, nature, people, and more,” begins a July 21, 2020 tweet. The words are accompanied by images of a chimp and dancers, and ends with “#VisitUganda.” Situated on the equator, Uganda has the perfect climate and is full of endless attractions, including the world’s last mountain gorillas. Additionally, it’s the source of the Nile—the world’s longest river—and is one of only two global destinations where tree-climbing lions are found.

Meet the humanists: ‘You don’t have to be Christian to think of yourself as a good person’

When Heidi Nicholl moved to Australia five years ago, she remembers thinking: “Where is it – where is humanism?” The British-born Nicholl had been drawn to humanism, a secular, values-based movement, in her 20s. In her work as a hospital ethicist she was never far from considering questions about life, death, and the reality of being human. “The types of decisions that hospital ethicists need to make are all about the reality of being human, without the admittedly comforting idea that some sup