Patrick Marlborough

Fremantle, Perth

Contributor at Crikey

Patrick Marlborough: drongo writer/comedian/musician/wharf rat based in Walyalup, Western Australia. My novel NOCK LOOSE coming via Fremantle Press mid-2025

Articles

The Greens must radicalise, or perish

3 weeks ago | crikey.com.au | Patrick Marlborough

The media and political narrative is clear: the Greens’ woeful election performance is the result of voters punishing them for their dangerously radical beliefs (don’t bomb hospitals, starving children is wrong, you should be able to afford the dentist) — the rabid ravings of frothy-lipped eco-terrorists, gone feral from inhaling the fumes of dangerous culture war dogma (trans people should be protected, refugees shouldn’t be tortured, etc).
Laboration Day has struck the west coast — and it's clear the sands are shifting

3 weeks ago | crikey.com.au | Patrick Marlborough

Antony Green has returned to the fae-folk. Annabel Crabb’s flesh-cravat has been tucked away. David Speers has been powered down. “Laboration Day” arrived and conservative pundits everywhere had the paper bags wrestled from their hands as they attempted the proverbial Budd Dwyer. But as the nation’s fever wrapped up late on election night, Western Australia was a step behind, as always: still counting votes, gazing into our mega-pit navels. It was a massacre across the board.
Are Those Movies in Which Ben Affleck Plays an Autistic Killer Offensive … or Just Kind of Great?

1 month ago | slate.com | Patrick Marlborough

When I think of autism “representation” that reflects my own experience as a diagnosed autistic—Dale Cooper, Data, Alan Grant, Yakko Warner, Paulie Walnuts, David Byrne (specifically David Byrne in True Stories), Bob Dylan in the Must Be Santa music video, and Goku—I rarely think of characters or texts where the disorder is explicitly named, or even alluded to.
I’m Autistic. I Didn’t Expect the Best Recent Depiction of Autism to Be in … The Accountant 2?

1 month ago | autism.einnews.com | Patrick Marlborough

When I think of autism “representation” that reflects my own experience as a diagnosed autistic—Dale Cooper, Data, Alan Grant, Yakko Warner, Paulie Walnuts, David Byrne (specifically David Byrne in True Stories), Bob Dylan in the Must Be Santa music video, and Goku—I rarely think of characters or texts where the disorder is explicitly named, or even alluded to.
Overland literary journal

1 month ago | overland.org.au | Patrick Marlborough

To discuss season two of Disney’s Andor without discussing the genocide in Gaza would be both morally and intellectually disingenuous, and cowardly in a way that stains. Tony Gilroy knows this, despite his press-tour pussyfooting. Disney more than knows this, and I’m sure they’ve been rehearsing their response to the incoming discourse for months, if not since Gilroy first handed in the scripts.
Hanson, Palmer and the drongology of Australia's far right

2 months ago | crikey.com.au | Patrick Marlborough

Folks, there’s never been a better time to be a dolt and/or a drongo. We are living through relentlessly stupid times, where Nazi-Boer grifters and sex-pest veneer-dependents are teaming up to drive the world into a brick wall over and over again, like a Cybertruck packed with flammable crash-test dummies and loose nitroglycerin. It’s basically Wages of Fear if the truckers had ketamine habits and steered into every speed bump and pothole.
Gut-punches and laughter converge in Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Asura

2 months ago | thesaturdaypaper.com.au | Patrick Marlborough

Japanese auteur Hirokazu Kore-eda is cinema’s finest dissector of families. Throughout his 30-year career, the Palme d’Or winning director has whittled out cinematic dollhouses inhabited by characters so rich and full that you forget they are fictional until you’re reminded by the rolling credits.
WA Labor may lose Fremantle. It could be what the Doctor ordered

Mar 6, 2025 | crikey.com.au | Patrick Marlborough

A little over a week ago, Kate Hulett, a small business owner and teal candidate for the seat of Fremantle, cleaned up the Hungry Jack’s building that has sat derelict on Fremantle’s main drag, the “Cappuccino Strip”, for the better part of eight years. It is one of many empty shopfronts in the old port city, which in recent years has lived up to its reputation for spectres and hauntings by becoming a pseudo ghost town — at least in the spots we hide from the cruise ship tourists.
This WA election, let's just dynamite the Ningaloo reef and be done with it

Feb 17, 2025 | crikey.com.au | Patrick Marlborough

No-one knows who Libby Mettam is. Stroll up to the average Western Australian punter, say, an ol’ bloke having a midday tipple at The Buffalo Club, and ask, “Sir, what are your thoughts on Libby Mettam?” He’ll understandably respond, “Ay? Wot? Shout me another Swanny-D, would ya?”, and it’d be amiss of you not to. Truth is, I’ve had to google her six times while writing that paragraph alone.
Scurvy Dogs

Oct 28, 2024 | yeahnah.substack.com | Patrick Marlborough

Last week, a 51-year-old man presented to Sir Charles Gairdner hospital in Perth with a painful rash on his legs — a streak of tiny red pin-points. Doctors conducted an extensive investigation and all sorts of tests to try and work out what had caused this inflammation of blood vessels, which continued to spread while the man was in hospital. The doctors discovered that the man's diet mainly consisted of processed foods — that he was unable to afford fruit and vegetables.