Farmers are vital to our livelihoods. We know the luxury of just picking our dinner ingredients from the shelves of the local supermarket is often the result of someone else’s hard labour, and regular battles against the elements. To many, the rural farmer is the “real Australian”. But historically, there’s a more complex story to the Australian farmer than the idealised narrative we’ve become accustomed to. Christopher Mayne calls on us to remember that while farming and agriculture were crucial to establishing the new nation, they were also intimately involved in settler-colonial violence, as well as the dispossession of Indigenous Australians’ land and foodways.

And Sebastian Smee, in his latest for the Quarterly Essay, worries about the effect the digital age is having on our inner lives and sense of self. He says human nature is changing for the worse. But in her review, Stephanie Trigg argues we’ve heard such concerns from previous times and previous generations, and they haven’t been borne out.

Meanwhile, as we’re halfway through summer, many of you will have noticed by now your “base tan” is well and truly established. A lot of Aussies like the way this looks, and many think it’s healthy. But the truth is once your skin darkens from sun exposure, even if it hasn’t burnt, you’ve damaged your skin cells. And repeated exposure will change your skin and the DNA within its cells, making you age prematurely and more likely to get skin cancer. Every tan is doing you damage.

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