Back in June, these few paragraphs and a meditation on death and animals (that eventually became the ‘Cattle Country’ post at Overland) were originally the same piece of writing. I’m not sure why I never posted this part. Perhaps it felt unfinished. * Cadie left me a couple of days ago and I?m sitting in… Continue reading Lost and found
Category: On the road
Travel.
Wishbone
1. My grandmother?s piano has scales. The wood is old and the varnish is flaking. It?s ten years since she died?almost to the day. I don?t know exactly which day. Perhaps it was the day I saw ducklings by the creek and a black-nosed kangaroo peeping through the trees. Perhaps it was the day the… Continue reading Wishbone
Nothing again, nothing
We spent weeks driving through sparse winter sunscapes, in such a rush to be somewhere else, in such a rush to be in a rush, stopping only for salt pans, salt plains, salt lakes, salt rock, salt water?like some giant god cried into the centre of this continent, underscored our apathy with tears that could… Continue reading Nothing again, nothing
Swamp country
I spent the last nine days in the bush with a collection of family and friends. A party of twelve. I wrote in notebooks with bugs squashed between the pages. My feet are still black from dirt and burnt spinifex, a stubbed toe, a banged-up chin, mosquito bites itched open and bleeding?hundreds of pinpricks that… Continue reading Swamp country
Light pollution
I spent the majority of my childhood with the sound of traffic in the background, in places where you can?t see the stars for the streetlights. The bush was a place to go temporarily, because we?d always come back over that hill on the Hume eventually, and I?d strain to see the glitter of the… Continue reading Light pollution
Gulf country
It?s May 14. Our lantern has run out of batteries, so I?m writing this in the amenities shelter in the campground at Boodjamulla (Lawn Hill) National Park. I?m writing on lined paper in a fine blue pen and I have to stop every couple of words to brush the moths off the page and pick… Continue reading Gulf country
Waterweight
What about the roar and thunder of the falls? How, from above, the splashes up over the lip of the rock look like icicles? What about those grey-green gums, motionless against the iron sky, or the lichen-dappled boulders, black with slime at the river?s edge? What about the roots of that fig tree, hooked into… Continue reading Waterweight
Where are you?
Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here.
100 days and the Queen of Whatever
Leaving Melbourne felt like wading through molasses, sticky and slow-going, a series of blunders and clumsy patch-up jobs. Like a half-drunken stumble down the hallway in the middle of the night: hit your shoulder on the doorframe, slide into the dresser, trip over your own feet, claw at the wall to stay upright. Much of… Continue reading 100 days and the Queen of Whatever
Pinpricks
I never feel like I know a city until I can walk its streets at night, alone. And I can see the current snaking along the Brisbane River, a curl on the surface of the water?I can see it, from all the way up here. Vertigo doesn?t haunt me three beers down, and anyway, it?s… Continue reading Pinpricks