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Ben Robertson

Ben Robertson is a former journalist with The Courier-Mail, The Sunday Mail and WIN Television. He is the author of The Von: Stories and Suggestions from Australian Golf’s Little Master about Australian sporting legend Norman von Nida (UQP 1999), The Second Father: An Insider’s Story of Cops, Crime and Corruption (UQP 2009) and Who's Who in the Zoo, the memoirs of former undercover policeman and Italian migrant Domenico ‘Mick’ Cacciola. In 2012 UQP published Ben’s memoir Hear Me Roar: The Story of a Stay-at-Home Dad.


“My kinfolks thought more about character than about culture. They said culture could be acquired but character had to be formed. Character had to be hammered into shape like hot iron on an anvil. It had to be molded in the most exact and unrelenting form.”
Ben Robertson
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“It was not the goal that really concerned us, the journey was the thing. Who ever reaches any goal? From what journey can we return? We know of the poverty about us, of the work and worry, but we know of a degree of freedom, of a stunted beauty. We have warm open days and sunshine in Carolina. Much is denied us. But we have, we have. And an attitude is more powerful than any circumstance.”
Ben Robertson
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“The past that Southerners are forever talking about is not a dead past--it is a chapter from the legend that our kinfolks have told us, it is a living past, living for a reason. The past is a part of the present, it is a comfort, a guide, a lesson.”
Ben Robertson
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“It is defeat that lives on and takes the years to smother.”
Ben Robertson
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“It is a great comfort to a rambling people to know that somewhere there is a permanent home--perhaps it is the most final of the comforts they ever really know.”
Ben Robertson
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“We have been told to ask about everything: Will it leave us free?”
Ben Robertson
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