September 2012 The crime would have been no less vile had Jill Meagher been a 40-year-old shift worker in Warrnambool or a teenage student from Frankston or any other female abducted, raped, murdered and dumped in a hastily dug grave beside a commuter shortcut. But certain facts gave her violation and death a particular, heart-sickening quality that felt personal. Although I’d never met Jill Meagher, I could easily imagine circumstances, professional and social, when I might have done so. She worked, as I did, in the world of culture and media. She was close in age to my daughter and her […]

Somewhere in the stunted stretch of time between Donald Trump being elected and his first day in office my mum had a heart attack. Don’t get me wrong. He had nothing to do with it. Today is his first day in office and her second day out of hospital. Some days are better than others. We’re sitting in the lounge room, big white bowls cradled in our laps, eating the fried rice I’ve made. The rice started out good but has ended up pretty ordinary. We’re watching a free-to-air movie, we’re not watching the live coverage of the inauguration, happening […]

‘Oh, you’re going to have an advantage over me,’ the white woman says with a wide smile. We’re the first two to arrive for Arabic 101. I make a sound and the sound dies between us. I would describe it but I don’t know what it was, having never made it before nor since. If I were to imagine what it was most like sonically, I would say shame. I am the 29-year-old son of Lebanese and Turkish migrants, my father and mother were born in Turkey and Lebanon respectively, so they learned English in addition to their own languages, […]

The poetics of ignorance in the Central Desert When I was a kid, Warlpiri people were an idea, a story, a mythology that hung on the walls and in the air around the dinner table when my dad would talk about his childhood at Yuendumu. He was kindergarten age when he ran inside the mission house, forgetting to pull his shoes on at the door as per my grandmother’s rules, and announced, ‘We caught a lizard, mummy, and we ate it. Don’t worry, Charlie picked the poos out.’ Darling anecdotes like this pepper my grandmother’s mission diaries. In one entry, […]

The only other thing my wife and I had ever before attempted to paint was a single paling on our then newly built front fence. It had taken almost an hour to do what we did of it and as there were another 20 or so to do afterwards, we worked out that we couldn’t possibly finish by tea-time and so paid a professional to do it instead. He insisted on cash so I have no record of his name, but judging from what he charged and the result I assume it was either Paul Klee or Kandisky. We had […]

The Psychology of Learning by Robert Borger and A.E.M. Seaborne, first published in 1966, defines learning as ‘any more or less permanent change of behaviour which is the result of experience’. ‘It’s too sweet and gentle,’ I say of the pink. ‘I want it to pop. I want what you’re wearing.’ I turn from the mirror. ‘It’s a bit watermelon candy,’ the salesgirl agrees. She returns with another tube of lipstick, its surface sanitised. I wipe my lips clean and try the fourth shade, a dark don’t-fuck-with-me crimson. I smile, then laugh at my reflection. My first Dior lipstick. I […]

Myxomatosis Inside the wire cage are two small rabbits, eating from a pile of picked grass. One blinks. The girl thinks it’s at her but can’t be sure as its eyes dart around a lot. The eyes are deep black, almost all pupils. Her mother flicks up the latch on the door of the cage and lets her scoop up one of the bunnies and hold it. She feels its heat through the knit of her school jumper. It scratches her hand with its claws, makes it bleed a bit, but she doesn’t mind. The cage comes home in the […]

‘Shut up and drive’—Rihanna ‘Who’s gonna drive you home tonight?’—The Cars ‘Let’s drive’—Shannon Noll ‘Little red corvette’—Prince ‘White mustang’—Lana Del Rey ‘Get out of my dreams, get into my car’—Billy Ocean Recently my partner Jackie and I road-tripped around Aotearoa. But really I drove the whole way round the North Island, 2000 kilometres with stiff legs and neck, eating ginger kisses with one hand on the wheel, traversing roads choked by excessive works. We were waiting to cross a one-way bridge and I let the hatchback on the other side go first. I heard a crisp knock on my window—was […]

The image of Australia is of a man in an open-necked shirt solemnly enjoying an ice cream. His kiddy is beside him. —Donald Horne. Have we done with the man in the open-necked shirt solemnly enjoying his ice cream? It would appear not. For a long time he was there in the flesh, as real as you or me.

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Yaroomba, Sunshine Coast, Queensland January 2017, from the back deck To look out from here, especially from the vantage of a softly rocking hammock—drowsy toddler copilots optional—is to inhale green. To bathe in blue. Or, if it’s inclement, to be secure, dry, nestled amid a wet semitropical jungle. The leaves up close to the sky are of that particular Australian blue-green that’s not the sole dominion of eucalypts. The truffula tree pandanus, which was pretty much the only plant in the back yard when we moved here a little over 11 years ago, thrusts like a cut-out against the cotton […]

1 There’s a Paul Klee sketch hanging in the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art titled A Guardian Angel Serves a Small Breakfast. The figure hovers just above the ground, its wings spread. It holds a tray upon which breakfast items, including a kettle, are intertwined with one another, a tangle of gentle lines. Liquid pours from the kettle’s spout, even though it isn’t tilted. Emerging from the angel’s chest is a small love heart in red watercolour. There are many lessons to take from this sketch, one being that it’s good to serve someone a small breakfast.   2 ‘This […]