Landfall – by Megan Coupland
Nonfiction Megan Coupland Nonfiction Megan Coupland

Landfall – by Megan Coupland

Thirty minutes north-west of Adelaide is a stretch of South Australian coastline synchronously, gloriously, luminous and bleak. In the language of the Kaurna people, the traditional owners of the land, it is Winaityinaityi Pangkara, ‘country belonging to all birds’. And from where I’m standing, not far from its northernmost point, I can see just a fragment: a shoreline so planar and still that it’s difficult to tell where solid ground transitions to water. It’s low tide, a Sunday in late January, and there is no one else in sight. There are the birds though, more numerous than I’d expected given the time of day and the settling heat …

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The Planet Terrarium - by Philomena van Rijswijk
Fiction Philomena van Rijswijk Fiction Philomena van Rijswijk

The Planet Terrarium - by Philomena van Rijswijk

The big Cat woman wakes at six every morning with enough time for half-a-dozen fatalistic breaths before dragging herself crooked across the mattress and somehow standing, her tie-dyed nightie bunched around big bluish thighs, her breasts pulled askew by the twists and suns. Those old boots that she fumbles into are stained and split from too many wet and dark winters in this wet and dark place ... a grey hollow where the frost lies all day in winter, making impressions on the grass of towels hanging stiff from the line. Sometimes she can smell the very moulds of the place exhaling from her skin. But it is not winter yet. It’s still trying to be autumn, though none of the beauty has come …

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Sestina After B Carlisle – by Stuart Barnes
Poetry Stuart Barnes Poetry Stuart Barnes

Sestina After B Carlisle – by Stuart Barnes

WINNER OF THE GWEN HARWOOD POETRY PRIZE 2022

My dying friend maintains Heaven
hallows only one queen. ‘Hell is
just around the corner, like a
gaudy shopping centre, a place
of no rest day nor night. Hot on
my heels, the Devil’s moving earth …

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Antarctica – by Andrew Sutherland
Poetry Andrew Sutherland Poetry Andrew Sutherland

Antarctica – by Andrew Sutherland

RUNNER-UP IN THE GWEN HARWOOD POETRY PRIZE 2022

I was thinking about Antarctica
how even in the last landmass labelled great unknown
there are stations // there are borders

how covid was on six continents of the world
and then in late 2020, people on the Chilean station tested positive
and suddenly // it was on seven …

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The Girls Become – by John Foulcher
Poetry John Foulcher Poetry John Foulcher

The Girls Become – by John Foulcher

RUNNER-UP IN THE GWEN HARWOOD POETRY PRIZE 2022

Scarlett Kate O’Mara joined us in her final year.
We were told to make no jokes about her almost name –
she’d had enough of southern drawls, glib confederate
quips. Elegant and tall, she clipped the smitten boys
like trinkets round her wrist, loaded up her pistol smile
and locked it on their hearts …

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Sloane on the Mountain – by Alexander Bennetts
Fiction Alexander Bennetts Fiction Alexander Bennetts

Sloane on the Mountain – by Alexander Bennetts

What she was running from, well, Sloane would never speak of it, but if you pored through reams of court transcripts and certain bank transactions, I’m sure you could eventually work it out.

She parked her canary-yellow Saab opposite the Mount Macedon Hotel and nodded to the regulars on the porch. Sloane made a show of greeting the bartender. He wore a deep V-neck; he looked like the kind of man who paid for his protein supplements to be shipped in from overseas. She asked for two bottled waters.

‘Just came in on the Spirit this morning,’ Sloane told him. ‘Figured it’d be a smart move to stretch the old legs.’ …

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Lines of Curiosity – by Margaret Aitken
Nonfiction Margaret Aitken Nonfiction Margaret Aitken

Lines of Curiosity – by Margaret Aitken

The building was once used for storing vegetables, but the huge fridges have been re-crafted into offices, the drafty attic spaces renovated into meeting rooms. Crumbling bricks and dusty wooden floors testify to the original use. Paint peels from the rectangle that stands against the winter sky.

I scramble up the hill toward it, my silky dressing gown stuffed into my bag. I’ve chosen my outfit carefully. It’s easy to slip in and out of, doesn’t wrinkle when folded, not suggestive. I don’t knock before I open the corrugated-iron door …

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Infrared – by Ryan Delaney
Fiction Ryan Delaney Fiction Ryan Delaney

Infrared – by Ryan Delaney

Emily scans the bush for signs of life. She can spot Ben and Gary in the distance – their lurid, wattle-coloured jumpsuits making them stand out amongst the burnt gum trees. Their eyes will be peeled for fresh droppings, scratches on black trunks and animal tracks imprinted in the ash. As she watches the men solemnly comb the scorched earth, Emily wonders if there is really a difference anymore between a forensic and environmental scientist.

On the surface, the land appears to be healing. Bright pink and green epicormic shoots have burst through black bark and are beginning to flower. Other native pyrophites – such as blackboys, bottlebrush and banksia – are not only surviving but flourishing in this post-fire landscape, their hardy seeds split open by the extreme heat …

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The Day the Wave Came – by Paul Mitchell
Fiction Paul Mitchell Fiction Paul Mitchell

The Day the Wave Came – by Paul Mitchell

Morning sunlight through the kitchen window warmed my stubbled face and I finished filling the sink with hot water and soap suds. I turned off the tap and picked up the silver pot that I hadn’t been able to cram into the dishwasher last night. It smelt of the Portuguese-style chicken dish Leah had made, a meal she’d dubbed ‘our last supper’. I hadn’t laughed, or eaten much.

My dressing gown sleeves drooped into the dishwater so I rolled them up, tighter this time. I could have taken the gown off, but I was naked underneath. If I went and got dressed, I’d risk waking Leah – who should really be up by now, given the plan we’d made last night. Maybe she was sick and would stay in bed all day. And the inevitable would be postponed …

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Learning to Be Tame – by Carla Silbert
Nonfiction Carla Silbert Nonfiction Carla Silbert

Learning to Be Tame – by Carla Silbert

Books with pastel covers tell me to expect the sensation of butterflies flapping deep in my stomach when I first feel ‘the little one’ kick. A butterfly is a fragile creature – a tiny rip in its wing renders it flightless. In my guts, an orca whale is doing somersaults. It is flipping and rolling in a too-small swimming pool, its smooth skin stretching the edges. I nickname the baby Tilikum after the orca who spent its life performing for tourists at SeaWorld in Florida. …

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Collateral Damage – by John Tully
Fiction John Tully Fiction John Tully

Collateral Damage – by John Tully

Barry Hall didn’t care too much for pubs but it beat sitting in front of the TV in his crummy Yarraville flat on a rainy Friday night. He was nursing a pint of Fat Yak in the lounge bar of the Railway Hotel and keeping a covert eye on who was coming in through the doors from Anderson Street. The city did nothing for him; Barry was a Tasmanian country boy who liked his space. Melbourne was vast and noisy, with trucks going past his little flat at all hours of the day and night with their headlights blazing through the faded old curtains …

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Rubbish – by Liz Betts
Nonfiction Liz Betts Nonfiction Liz Betts

Rubbish – by Liz Betts

First rule of a crime story: always start with a body. The side of the road, wallaby grass, great lumps of quartz, broom beginning to flower. I see a flash of red, but I keep walking; it doesn’t scream crime. I stop, turn back, take a photograph, and move on … When I walk, I spy twiggy bush-pea, kangaroo tracks and white-winged choughs flying low. But what I am searching for is man-made …

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Philomela – by Orana Loren
Fiction Orana Loren Fiction Orana Loren

Philomela – by Orana Loren

… I brought you here so that the deadness of the walls would whiten your tongue. Your tongue was always too fleshy for me, too pink-flashing. I could never look at your lips for long; they were always too full and swollen with honey, and the edges curved when you smiled – curved up, you know? But when I brought you here, your tongue did not stop. Each time you grinned I saw river-pink, a young-blood pink, a new-skinned pink, the thickest water. Pink over pink over pink, in and out went your tongue; then your breath, and your breath, and your tongue. The thickest pink …

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Pamirs – by Nathan Mifsud
Nonfiction Nathan Mifsud Nonfiction Nathan Mifsud

Pamirs – by Nathan Mifsud

In 1271, the merchant-explorer Marco Polo came upon the treeless valleys of the Pamirs – literally, the pastures. He saw lean beasts fatten within ten days, and wild sheep with horns six palms in length.

In 2015, two Australian cyclists negotiated a Tajik border post without incident. An eagle soared overhead. Marmots chirped and scampered in the alpine grasses. For lunch the men consumed two dumpling soups, two coffees and a bottle of Pepsi …

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The Museum – by Gemma Parker
Fiction Gemma Parker Fiction Gemma Parker

The Museum – by Gemma Parker

The ferris wheel is closed. Two little faces peer up at her – they have traipsed all this way. People around them are strolling into a nearby museum, which is painted black and has no windows. She holds their hands tightly and walks up to an attendant. Do you speak English? A nod. Would this be appropriate … okay … for the young children? Would they like it?

The young woman, dressed in a smart navy uniform, glances at her in genuine surprise. Oh yes, she murmurs. She looks reverently down at the children. Yes, okay for children …

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Compare and Contrast – by Gillian Bouras
Nonfiction Gillian Bouras Nonfiction Gillian Bouras

Compare and Contrast – by Gillian Bouras

There are twenty-two vignettes in [The Summer Book by Tove Jansson], and the threads that bind them together are Grandmother and her six-year-old granddaughter, Sophia. Grandmother is nearing the end of her life, but Sophia is beginning hers, and is at the stage we all go through, that of thinking some seasons and routines are going to last and repeat themselves forever. But in sharp contrast, Grandmother feels that everything is gliding away from her. The book seems to be about nothing very much, but is about everything, about the ways in which life is lived over time … [W]hereas Sophia had a grandmother who taught her all sorts of things, I had my grandfather …

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The Moths – by Gillian Britton
Fiction Gillian Britton Fiction Gillian Britton

The Moths – by Gillian Britton

On the first morning of the moths there was very little rain. Other invaders had seemed formed of the rain, but the moths seeped in as if formed of stone or air. They appeared in the storm cellar, where Kepi was laying down bottles of the juice they had made from seaweed and nettles – surprisingly flavoursome. The moths were suddenly there, flapping ghosts of pale smoke grey that sent Kepi shrieking back up to the surface. When she took Meno down for a look – creeping quietly, peeking down from the top of the stairs – the moths had mostly shredded themselves on the coarse stone walls, leaving soft traces, like chalk markings. Black, wingless bodies covered the stone floor, some still writhing. But they died quickly …

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Who Owns the Greek Myths? – by Katerina Cosgrove
Nonfiction Katerina Cosgrove Nonfiction Katerina Cosgrove

Who Owns the Greek Myths? – by Katerina Cosgrove

Novelistic retelling of Greek mythology has exploded in recent years … For me, a Greek-Australian writer, there is something about these books that feels disorienting. These works are literary, researched, respectful and probably well-meaning. I’ve taken pleasure in reading Miller’s Circe, Barker’s The Silence of the Girls and The Women of Troy, as well as Renault’s The King Must Die and The Bull from the Sea. Yet these books are written by privileged people with no small measure of power, the products of elite universities and classical educations. These writers have not publicly acknowledged consulting with Greek scholars or spent time living in Greece …

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Finger-branches – by Eliza Henry-Jones
Fiction Eliza Henry-Jones Fiction Eliza Henry-Jones

Finger-branches – by Eliza Henry-Jones

A breathtaking new story inspired by a residency at the Australian Institute of Marine Science

… We, the oldest from the reef, remember crown-of-thorns starfish from the sea. We never see them, but we know they’re near. They change things (a whiff a tremor). We have long learnt to buckle down (draw in fight fight fight) at their approach. The whiff tremor of them carries through cold lab air. It makes us so grateful for our tight, clear tank. Louise noises COTS. Crown-of-thorns COTS. They are feasters. We are their sunlight …

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Nature Writing Project- Cycle 3

The next six pieces are the third and final 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 …

Recently, I found myself with a spare day in Launceston. I thought about climbing an obscure mountain nearby, but there’d been major rain, flooding in the area – the huge weather event that trammelled over Victoria in mid-October had also blasted Tasmania …

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