Hospitality – by Nicole Melanson
Nonfiction Nicole Melanson Nonfiction Nicole Melanson

Hospitality – by Nicole Melanson

SHORTLISTED, ISLAND NONFICTION PRIZE 2021

… My father’s death took fifteen days, during which time I left a breadcrumb trail of tears from one end of my house to the other. Brush my teeth, weep. Skim an email, weep. Drip. Drip. Drip.

Flightless, cocooned with my husband and children in lockdown, I had no sharp edges to grate myself against. I needed the kind of cathartic cry that comes from overstimulation, a total sensory meltdown. In the absence of sufficient triggers, I lived vicariously through Gordon Ramsay’s temper …

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No Tomorrow – by Catherine Deery
Fiction Catherine Deery Fiction Catherine Deery

No Tomorrow – by Catherine Deery

On the day Josephine our sow escapes her pen and trots off across the flat paddocks in search of love, Timmy from town is at ours and me and him are trying to hurdle the creek on our BMXs using empty drench drums and sleepers stolen from Mum’s garden as a ramp. When Mum gets the call from old Mr Taylor on the farm next door about that goddamn pig rooting around in his house garden again, she puts her hand over the receiver and sticks her head out the back door and clocks the sleepers and drums and me and Timmy and the BMXs in one sharp eyeful but doesn’t say anything, just beckons me over and makes the shape JOSEPHINE with her mouth then TAYLOR’S, so I know it’s bad …

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The Great Aviary of Love – by Kathryn Goldie
Fiction Kathryn Goldie Fiction Kathryn Goldie

The Great Aviary of Love – by Kathryn Goldie

MYTH - We fell in love at the Phoenix, a dingy pub opposite a bus stop. We joked about the graffiti in the toilets. She wanted to know everything about me. She put her hand on my leg.

REALITY - She has my toucan wind chime, the one I bought with my good ex. My good ex haggled it down from $15 to $12.50. Now the toucan perches silently on her balcony, watching me with its wooden eye. It has watched my every move for more than a year. She was supposed to be just minding it …

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New Nature Writing Collection

The next six pieces are the second cycle of work from our Australian Nature Writing Project.

The pieces were selected by Ben Walter, who also initiated the project. This is what Ben had to say about this set of works.

I love wandering through ridiculous offtrack terrain in the mountains of Tasmania, but with three young kids, I find it can be pretty hard to get away. I’d love to say that reading nature writing serves as a substitute – that it totally compensates for the direct experience – and perhaps it does to a degree …

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The Ocean Sounds Like a Motorway – by Melissa Fagan
Nonfiction Melissa Fagan Nonfiction Melissa Fagan

The Ocean Sounds Like a Motorway – by Melissa Fagan

How does the ocean sound? Like the hollowed-out whoosh of a shell cupped to your ear. A distant rustle. A constant murmur. A heavy thud, a thunderous clap, the creep of the encroaching tide. When heard from above—standing on the top of a rocky cliff—the sound of the ocean carries upwards, reaching towards your ears. Beneath the surface, it’s a deep, low warble. A ghostly, inhuman echo. A whale song …

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The Backyard Project: Notes from Stolen Land – by Lia Hills
Nonfiction Lia Hills Nonfiction Lia Hills

The Backyard Project: Notes from Stolen Land – by Lia Hills

The murnong’s flower head droops, in need of a drink, a single closed tip at the end of an arching stem, like an organic streetlamp or an alien probe. I have no clock with me. I will measure time in plants, one per day, for the week that I’ll spend camping in my backyard – a half-acre in the Dandenongs – off-grid, tech-free, no contact with other humans. The plants come from a community nursery down the road that only sells local indigenous species. Each of the plants I’ll place in this ground has three names …

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Schrödinger’s Butterflies – by Dave Witty
Nonfiction Dave Witty Nonfiction Dave Witty

Schrödinger’s Butterflies – by Dave Witty

… Over the next few weeks, we saw the same butterflies on three, possibly four occasions. It is unlikely they were the same individuals - they live such short, hurried lives - but they were the same species. The common grass blue. Zizina labradus. A small butterfly not much bigger than a wasp. Its movement so fast and erratic, its size so slight, that when a grass blue comes into view, you notice only a flicker at first, a flicker that appears to jump several feet as it drops out of reality, only to reappear seconds later. Your eyes take time to adjust to their jinking motion. Only after ten, maybe twenty seconds, do you finally keep track of their passage …

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Feel the Quiet – by Zohra Aly
Nonfiction Zohra Aly Nonfiction Zohra Aly

Feel the Quiet – by Zohra Aly

There’s a list of things I imagine doing if I lived a different life: wandering into the small reserve I drive past daily, sipping my first cup of tea every morning on the patio bench, learning to identify native flora and fauna by name, picking up my embroidery from where I left it weeks ago. I never get round to them because I live this life, in which I’m wiping down kitchen benchtops, hanging laundry and scrolling through Instagram …

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And a Moth Flew Out – by Helena Kadmos
Nonfiction Helena Kadmos Nonfiction Helena Kadmos

And a Moth Flew Out – by Helena Kadmos

What showering outdoors is teaching me about my place in the pandemic

At the bottom of my garden steps is a tap. I check that the valve to the sprinkler hose is closed, and that the one to the other hose is open. I turn on the tap and follow that hose to a hidey-hole behind a green plastic water tank that’s taller than I am. This is the shadiest spot in the garden …

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A New Garden – by Erica Nathan
Nonfiction Erica Nathan Nonfiction Erica Nathan

A New Garden – by Erica Nathan

… Enticing birds to feast, shelter and pause in a shared urban space has been my ten-year learning mission. I love to garden. But even as I write this, my guard is up quicker than a thornbill’s early morning dip in the birdbath. Even among the declining number of enthusiasts, my idea of gardening lacks broad appeal …

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Moss – by Jane Rawson
Fiction Jane Rawson Fiction Jane Rawson

Moss – by Jane Rawson

… She remembered it cold and damp. She remembered it dark and green. Her first days in a nest beneath the snow, then those brief, bright moments before she stretched new limbs and took cover in a close, green cavern. A life of icy winds, sleet that pricked her skin into life. / Then David’s hands around her his lips on her damp breathing skin and now every day is hot and dry …

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The Third Angel of Chernobyl – by Carmel Bird
Nonfiction Carmel Bird Nonfiction Carmel Bird

The Third Angel of Chernobyl – by Carmel Bird

… I write this in February 2022, beginning on Valentine’s Day. The whole world, suffering from the pestilence of COVID, is focused on the question of whether Russia is or is not going to invade Ukraine, which has been a separate and troubled country since 1991. By 17 February, the suspense continues, and perhaps Russia will invade, perhaps it won’t. Naturally, the world watches on television as snow falls on the troops, on the tanks, on people in bright puffer jackets …

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Bombera – by Josefina Huq
Fiction Josefina Huq Fiction Josefina Huq

Bombera – by Josefina Huq

… Somebody asks her how it felt having her birthday on the day of the fire. What’s it matter? she says. Even starting a fire couldn’t get people to come. They laugh, and she tries to laugh hard enough so as not to feel hurt, thinking about that night. How she was across town and saw the firetrucks zoom down the main road, headed straight towards her wooden spot in the corner. The sirens cutting through the lyrics of Happy Birthday …

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A Year Without Mirrors – by Sarah Klenbort
Nonfiction Sarah Klenbort Nonfiction Sarah Klenbort

A Year Without Mirrors – by Sarah Klenbort

… my daughter Kaitlyn signed, ‘Stop!’
‘The ground,’ she pointed, ‘is moving’.
I looked into the pool of light from our torch and thought I was having an LSD flashback. But I hadn’t taken drugs in 20 years.
The ground was moving. On closer observation, dozens, hundreds, thousands of shells were walking towards the ocean on the other side of our camper. I sat, rapt, half-hanging out of the tent, staring at this mass march of hermit crabs …

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One Man’s Trash – by Piri Eddy
Fiction Piri Eddy Fiction Piri Eddy

One Man’s Trash – by Piri Eddy

… He had taught her everything he knew. How to secure the hook and sinker, what knots to use. How to feel the tension in the line – to work with your catch, not against it. He showed her how to cut the skin, to separate the good from the bad. On the table, he laid out his catch from the lake: a bed spring, two cigarette butts, a crumpled-up bottle. ‘Where’d they come from?’ she asked. ‘From people,’ he said. ‘Back when there was always more.’ …

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The Turkeys – by Saraid Taylor
Nonfiction Saraid Taylor Nonfiction Saraid Taylor

The Turkeys – by Saraid Taylor

she steps through the mallee eucalypts and thinks of her dad: an incarnate old bush song a banjo paterson verse a shearer clean with his hands; never taught to read, travelling all down the south-west country in long jeans into tin sheds making runs of a hundred covered in wool and sweat and flies and animal heat: his life, her childhood a folklore yarn a cliché the great australian ballad, a shearer dad home by friday night only to leave again sunday afternoon …

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Jobs for Women: Annunciate – by A Frances Johnson
Poetry A Frances Johnson Poetry A Frances Johnson

Jobs for Women: Annunciate – by A Frances Johnson

HIGHLY COMMENDED IN THE GWEN HARWOOD POETRY PRIZE 2020/21

She won’t go easily; two great wings
pinion mild spring air, remind her
of less feathered rapes. Destiny,
like crime, was never aerodynamic.
She is robust; sulky lips purse a third cigarette.
Here, there are no jobs for young people.
The angel’s eyes burn.
Will you do it? Will you? …

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Geometry of Lament – by Alicia Sometimes
Fiction Alicia Sometimes Fiction Alicia Sometimes

Geometry of Lament – by Alicia Sometimes

Excavations of Viking sites have uncovered razors, combs and ear cleaners constructed from animal bones and antlers. The Vikings buried the dead with their personal belongings and marked the graves with stones. These hallowed sites hid a trove of clues about how they once lived. Which is why it was so perplexing to see around thirty Barbie doll legs protruding from the ground in front of me like a giant toy memorial …

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Spectral Coordinates – by Brigid Magner
Nonfiction Brigid Magner Nonfiction Brigid Magner

Spectral Coordinates – by Brigid Magner

… I found the survey map for my street, which was labelled in an expert copperplate hand. Till then, I hadn’t registered that I live in the ‘Parish of Jika Jika’ in the ‘County of Bourke’. Jika Jika, also known as Billibellary, was a revered elder of the Woiwurrung. His name was given to a parish which dispossessed his people, as well as to a notorious wing of the Pentridge prison that no longer exists. Seeing my family home mapped out on this survey made me feel uneasy and complicit …

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