Reality Check - by Jocelyn Prasad
Nonfiction Jocelyn Prasad Nonfiction Jocelyn Prasad

Reality Check - by Jocelyn Prasad

I was more at home among backpackers and their well-thumbed copies of Lonely Planet. The real Indians were out of my reach. They were so self-assured in their Indianness that I felt like a fraud, like someone who arrived late to a party and couldn’t find her way in …

A moment of memoir - as part of our new 5-piece suite from South-Asian Australian writers inspired by the COVID situation in India and the Australian response

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Principles of Permaculture - by Sam George-Allen
Nonfiction Sam George-Allen Nonfiction Sam George-Allen

Principles of Permaculture - by Sam George-Allen

… Now, alone and an adult, I am having a renaissance with the ground. I am changing; I am getting lower down. Mole-like, I want to go beneath the grass, I want to swim in the earth. I imagine seeds and the root-hairs they send down into the soil. I want to silence the bell even further with the press of earth, with the silent growing living things down there that go on living while the world above them falls to bits …

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How Do You Make Them Let You Belong? - by Erin Hortle
Nonfiction Erin Hortle Nonfiction Erin Hortle

How Do You Make Them Let You Belong? - by Erin Hortle

Through the casual sexism inherent in Australian surfing culture, Erin Hortle reflects on identity and inclusion
I want to begin by telling you about this time a guy was a dick wielding a phallus. A film of cloud sheened the sun’s light silver. There was no wind. The bush, sprawled beyond the sand dunes, was still and quiet. The ocean was glossy, and heavy lines of swell rolled sluggishly across its expanse. Quicksilver, silverquick …

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Housing Climate: From Plastic to Concrete - by Miriam McGarry
Nonfiction Miriam McGarry Nonfiction Miriam McGarry

Housing Climate: From Plastic to Concrete - by Miriam McGarry

From Tasmanian fires to Queensland floods, Miriam McGarry wonders how we will find home in an age of climate instability:
… I was reclaiming a pair of jeans I had loaned her, collateral from the era we had share-housed, when Jack shouted from the bathroom, ‘Look at this sky!’ It appeared as if the entire mountain was on fire. ‘Hobart blue’ was replaced by a brutal and swelling terracotta. A closing barricade. A shroud …

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Thirst - by Rick Morton
Nonfiction Rick Morton Nonfiction Rick Morton

Thirst - by Rick Morton

By the end of 2004, when I was graduating from my regional state high school, a person could almost walk clear across the dam that supplied our entire region with water … In many ways, I was a child of drought …

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Endlings - by Harriet Riley
Nonfiction Harriet Riley Nonfiction Harriet Riley

Endlings - by Harriet Riley

In 1996 a correspondence published in Nature coined the term ‘endling’ to refer to an animal that was the last of its species. It’s a fantastical word, like something out of a fairytale. An endling lives deep in a dark forest beneath distant mountains, and can only been seen at midnight once every hundred years. In a way, this isn’t so far from the truth. Every now and then there’s a sighting of an animal, like the Australian night parrot, long thought extinct. But just as often we know exactly when and where the last member of a species died …

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Swift Parrot x Dark Mofo - by Zowie Douglas-Kinghorn
Nonfiction Zowie Douglas‐Kinghorn Nonfiction Zowie Douglas‐Kinghorn

Swift Parrot x Dark Mofo - by Zowie Douglas-Kinghorn

Sex and death on the eve of the winter solstice? I gulp as the ogoh-ogoh looms over me, ready to prey on my fears. The usually diminutive swift parrot (or Lathamus discolor) is rendered in behemoth glory as a papier-mâché Balinese sculpture. Beneath the parrot’s clawed foot is a small parcel made of palm leaf: a canang sari …

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Down to a Fine Art - by Elizabeth Flux
Nonfiction Elizabeth Flux Nonfiction Elizabeth Flux

Down to a Fine Art - by Elizabeth Flux

… The best way to work out what and who is and isn’t essential is to imagine the world with it stripped away. Yes, I want to keep breathing and I want my heart to keep beating, but I also want to exist as more than a body moving through a silent utilitarian world …

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Selling the Farm - by Nicole Gill
Nonfiction Nicole Gill Nonfiction Nicole Gill

Selling the Farm - by Nicole Gill

Nicole Gill on holding on, and letting go:
They’re selling our family farm. And I don’t think that I can stop it. I find out second-hand, from my brother. My mind skips over emotions like a stone across water – denial, anger, straight over bargaining, and into depression. How can this be? The Van Diemonian squattocracy ain’t what it used to be …

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For Sale - by Ruth Quibell
Nonfiction Ruth Quibell Nonfiction Ruth Quibell

For Sale - by Ruth Quibell

Ruth Quibell on homesickness and the fading of the great Australian dream:
Like most Australians, I once aspired to own a home of my own, but as I get older, and property prices further part ways with median incomes, I know it is unlikely. I’m far from an outlier … Whatever my other achievements at work, or in my personal relationships, I am left with an unresolved longing for a permanent home …

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hope thicks the air - by Viv Cutbush
Nonfiction Viv Cutbush Nonfiction Viv Cutbush

hope thicks the air - by Viv Cutbush

… It’s about the movement of water. Clay, silt, sand and gravel. The skin of a mountain ash tree. It’s about Joan of Arc and hope in the dark. It’s about the futility of words, except without words all we are left with is what goes unsaid …

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Stepping Back from The Edge: Re-imagining Queenstown - by Cameron Hindrum
Nonfiction, Arts Features Cameron Hindrum Nonfiction, Arts Features Cameron Hindrum

Stepping Back from The Edge: Re-imagining Queenstown - by Cameron Hindrum

… one might wonder exactly where the future lies. It might be too bold to imagine that it lies in the arts. However, there are many examples of arts festivals driving regional renewal, establishing new parameters of community engagement in areas that might otherwise have been written off, if not actually abandoned …

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Friends of Charlene: The Angelic Engineering of Kylie Minogue - by Jonno Revanche
Nonfiction Jonno Revanche Nonfiction Jonno Revanche

Friends of Charlene: The Angelic Engineering of Kylie Minogue - by Jonno Revanche

In 2010, at the behest of absolutely no one, Kylie Minogue decided to become an angel. In the music video for ‘All the Lovers’, Kylie was lifted up on the shoulders of a scantily clad flesh army, an architectural flash mob and assemblage fantasy brought to life by director Joseph Kahn … Her dutiful gays scurried to meet her as if by a wordless summoning. Her hair billowed behind her, her torso wrapped in Jean Paul Gaultier, those white-banded leather lines crisscrossing her like wings as she conducted the crowds below. She is exactly how we perceive goodness: luminescent (and with an expensive wig!) …

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Horse People - by Hollen Singleton
Nonfiction Hollen Singleton Nonfiction Hollen Singleton

Horse People - by Hollen Singleton

‘You see that horse there,’ the veterinarian said to me, hushed. ‘That’s Makybe Diva.’ No, it’s not, I thought. Just because I wasn’t one of them, just because I was a townie who didn’t know how to ride, didn’t mean they could mess with me …

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