Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

"History is hindsight with blinkers on. We see the source material through someone else’s eyes then reinterpret it. Literary criticism is a somewhat different task. Literary works are like children: we nurture them, cosset them, watch them develop and then send them out into the world to stand or fall on their own. They must make their own way in the face of their audience whatever we intended them to be. There is a tool, however, that the literary critic has that the historian does not. Sometimes, ever so rarely, an insight becomes available to the critic operating like a window on the author’s soul. So it was, gentle reader, that I made one of the most astonishing and significant literary discoveries (long suspected but never before blessed with evidence) in literary criticism as I soared my way through Yorick’s private diaries for the week of Trafalgar Day 1807." Malcolm B Duncan

In a surprise Australia Day announcement, John Howard reveals Governor-General has been placed on inactive list indefinitely. Formal Vice-regal functions will be exercised by Jeanette and the executive Council will be chaired by Howard's Chief of Staff to "increase efficiency and achieve economies of scale." Pru Goward sacked from HEROC – moves to Gold Coast and establishes Real Estate Agency and  shoestore. "It's a good thing we were tipped off" says Australian Editor Paul Kelly. North Bondi becomes New Zealand's largest city." Alphonse (Malcolm B Duncan) de Ponce.

"Imagine my delight in returning to the diary and despatches only to find, fluttering from between two pages, a laundry list. It bears testimony to the cost and difficulty of keeping a good warm watch-coat free of mud in a wintry Sydney Town. It also appears that Yorick spent an inordinate amount on seamstresses, all of whom one would have thought were convicts and whose labour would have been free. They appear to have been very obliging - at a price. Ink appears to have been in short supply and became more so with the publication of the Sydney Gazette, originally little more than a combination of the shipping news and a bowdlerized version of the Newgate Calendar including reports from Java and the Straits of Singapore as well as local hangings, floggings, advertisements of a personal nature (mostly for seamstresses) and what we, nowadays, would probably call garage sales. The historical insight continues to unfold." Malcolm B Duncan

"The Mitchell wing of the State Library of New South Wales is the repository of probably the richest source of early colonial history in the World. It is constantly yielding richer and richer treasures which not only augment our understanding but lead to a greater appreciation of what it is to be human. Webdiarists will imagine my delight, therefore, at being sconned in the archives by a large trunk which had been stuffed unceremoniously on top of an old case of taxidermists' delights. After I came to, I opened the offending missile and was enthralled by one of the most fascinating discoveries vouchsafed to the literary dilettante: the previously undiscovered diaries, letters and a personal historical note of one of the colony's earliest clerics and his daily observations of the people, the times and the politics of early Sydney Town." Malcolm B Duncan

"With honour at such a low ebb in the actions of political men, all were united in praise for the idols of new wealth, who strove to surpass each other in vulgarity of display and constant business, building empires of paper upon the corpses of genuine endeavour. But, formed for malice rather than mateship, Howard remained shunned by these new gods, and he failed to reap full benefit in an age when mere show counted above the rewards of further greed. For, although deriving nothing from their slavish associations but what was low and degrading, the party of labour yet retained the name of power, although all true rule had passed to those who had grasped at wealth." - Apocrypha of Tacitus (Widely suspected to be the clever forgery of Webdiarist, John Henry Calvinist)