Hi – I’m Doug.
I’m a Melbourne writer with an interest in subcultures, cultural cross-pollination, travel, migration and people. Also chess, bikes, terrible puns + surviving climate change.
If you’re here, you probably came across a column of mine in The Age or Sydney Morning Herald. All of my columns are archived here.
I’ve written about everything from Australian sex surrogates to Kenya’s internet startups to the raskol gangs, mobile phone culture and electioneering of Papua New Guinea, from hipsters in Jakarta to pirate cemeteries in Madagascar.
I’ve had bylines in The Age, Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian, Good Weekend, the Christian Science Monitor, South China Morning Post, Roads and Kingdoms, the ABC and more.
My latest book project, Middlevale High, is an account of the year I spent in a high diversity public school in Melbourne, trying to figure out how kids from dozens of different backgrounds make sense of difference.
My first book, AmalgaNations, came out in 2014. Here’s the blurb:
“When the West meets the rest – what comes next? Fuelled by curiosity and wanderlust, reporter Doug Hendrie travels to the edges of our world to find the answer: a series of unexpected – and bizarre – cultural mash-ups, from the StarCraft videogame superstars of South Korea to the Clash-loving punks of Indonesia; from gay power in the Catholic Philippines to the street filmmakers of Ghana.”
Contact me: myname at gmail
Dear Doug,
I’m after an article you penned in around the 8th of June 2006 for the Valley Weekly titled “On a quest to find a helpful Earthling” printed on page 7.
More importantly its a copy of the photograpgh by Rob Carew I’m after. Can you provide any information on how to obtian the picture please.
Cheers
Clint Jeffrey
Astronomical Society of Victoria
G’day Doug,
Liked your article on Eltham.
Unsure how old you are, but I grew up in Eltham in the 70s & early 80s. I don’t recognise it anymore, after dual-occ was brought in (80s), it all went downhill from there. Was very special up till then, nothing came close.
Thanks Steve – my era was the 90s. Down by the river, it still felt timeless.
GDAY DOUGLAS, GREAT WEBSITE!!! COULD YOU WRITE A STORY ABOUT HOW HARD IT IS LIVING IN THE INNER NORTH? I THINK A LOT OF PEOPLE WOULD LOVE TO HEAR ABOUT IT.
BEST,
OLD MATE.