You know those times when you think you’ll just get one or two little projects done and suddenly morning has turned to afternoon and then the sun has set and it’s well past bedtime and those projects still have you utterly, head-spinningly, occupied. Well, ah, the last twelve months has been like that for me. […]
This week a remarkable man, a pillar of my home town community and someone I utterly adore, slipped from this life. The irony of one of the biggest-hearted and most-alive human beings you’ve ever known having a heart attack and dying is just the start of it. There is a lot to say, and at […]
A few years ago, because curiosity took me there, I slowed my usual pace through the tunnel at Central Station and sat on a milk crate next to an old, old woman who promised me that my fortune was inscribed in my face and on my hands. Her name was Amy and she was 92. […]
I’m finishing writing a PhD about love and concrete, and resuming writing a memoir about dating. Here is a glimpse inside: Peter’s mother was dying. Her final days had brought him back to Sydney from life lived almost forever in Europe. He had a villa in France, home base, and from there travelled the world, writing […]
Today was a treat day, spent listening to superb panels and lectures at Sydney Writers Festival. Here’s a quick wrap, because I wish you could have had the day I had. Went to: The Writers Habitat: Michaela Kalowski in conversation with authors Caroline Brothers, Jenevieve Chang, Sara Foster and David Francis Writing Through Fences: Hani Abdile, […]
I’m still close enough to my parked car to press the keypad to double-check it is locked, and already history is inscribed and readable in the landscape. Of course, it isn’t readable in the open-a-book-in-your-native-tongue-and-effortlessly-read sense of the word. Rather, it is readable in the way that makes history such a richly engaging discipline, where […]
Restoration isn’t about taking a riverscape back to a set point when all was well, as is the popular view of restoration. It isn’t fixing up. It isn’t undoing what was done. Rather, it is about changing the direction in which a river’s becoming moves, by intervening in both the geomorphic and socio-cultural landscapes of […]
The interplay of perfection and imperfection has long characterised writing about Los Angeles. In a guide to the city in the 1930s, the project supervisor John D Keyes promised a publication which aimed ‘to present Los Angeles truthfully and objectively, neither glorifying it or vilifying it.’ He goes on to lament that ‘for many decades […]
