Australia in Three Books

A few minutes before midnight on 31 December 2011, I arrived at a warehouse party in lower Manhattan pulsating to the tune of ‘Pumped Up Kicks’. At the time, I was living with my then-partner in San Francisco, where ...

I remember 1975 as the year Gough Whitlam was sacked, but also as the year I read The Vivisector. I was 15. Zeppelin released Physical Graffiti, Dylan Blood on the Tracks, Skyhooks Ego Is Not a Dirty Word. AC/DC ...

A few years ago, in an interview on national breakfast TV that was supposed to be on literature, I was asked a question about feminism in Saudi Arabia, a country to which I have no personal connection or cultural ties ...

I was a bookish child with a voracious hunger for stories. At the age of four, I would hold a tiny torch under my blanket at preschool during nap time so I could keep reading. I devoured all the books ...

In times of crisis I take comfort in the words of black women in whatever form, whether it’s poetry, fiction, memoir, academia, journalism or a Twitter feed. When a white police officer killed an African-American man on camera in May, ...

I was standing in line at Mt Druitt Starbucks, the Corned Beef of Western Sydney, scrolling through my Twitter feed. I read that a white New Zealander author named Christina Thompson won this year’s nonfiction Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for ...

For the longest time, the Australia I knew was all myth. Early reading didn’t dispel this languid stereotype because part of that upbringing was made possible only by the claustrophobia of the culture itself. It was a narrow existence, filled ...

If Australia can be represented in three books, there can be little better a genre than crime fiction. European Australia originated as a penal colony, and crime and its representation have been an obsession ever since. It began with convict ...

Our lives are made up of different arcs—love, family, politics, geography, time and dislocation among them. One of the arcs that has exercised me most is my wondering about post-colonising Australia and its myths and mythmaking propensities, also about my ...

I was recently asked to talk about ‘Australia’s past and present’ at an international school in Hong Kong. I had just stepped off a long-haul flight and my hosts briefed me about the talk on our drive to the school ...

I’ve heard of that place, Australia. There are even some memories that persist of it as a discrete, identifiable object. It was a thing taught to me in primary school in jovial, unambiguous ways. It was a series of tales ...

Mem Fox, Possum Magic (1983) The Very Hungry Caterpillar is one of my favourite childhood stories, and an icon—an ugly duckling who becomes more beautiful via food safari. But down under we’re blessed with the delightful Hush, star of Mem ...

Escaping from suburbia is the story I’ve heard many people tell over the years, but it’s never been a story that I relate to. For me, the suburbs represent refuge, even precious culture, as they do for many others. After ...

Literature is a reflection of the culture that spawns it. As a queer teenager growing up in Sydney’s outer western suburbs, my access to literature was limited to the books we had at home—airport novels—and the small collection at my ...

Beverley Farmer, The Seal Woman (1992) I’ve been thinking about Beverley Farmer’s beautiful, aching book The Seal Woman again recently because I spent some time last year on the surf coast of Victoria, alone in a house on a hill ...