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It’s basically empty!’ Tim says of my spare room. He’s touring the house, although he’s been here many times. We’re both looky-loos. He holds out his arms to assess the size of the space, then turns back to focus on me. ‘You could totally fit a baby in here!’ I mime shooting myself in the head.

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I’m not too concerned at first, not really. I make jokes, like I do in any difficult situation: about how I’m an introvert anyway and can’t think of anything better than staying away from other people, how I’ve more than a decade’s experience in working from home, how this is my time to shine. I roll my eyes when my parents cancel their overseas holiday.

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At first we laughed at ourselves. The way people looked disapprovingly at a bulging shopping bag. The moral agony about whether to take the last tin of kidney beans. The jokes about toilet paper. None of it was real for me until the day the airlines said they were cancelling all international flights.

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May 2020 The email notification startles me. It is from Virgin Airlines. Get ready to fly soon. When I click into the notification, Virgin—an airline that has entered voluntary administration—tells me that my direct flight to Tasmania has been changed to three separate flights spread over eight hours. I will be flying from Brisbane to Sydney, then from Sydney to Melbourne, then, after quite a wait, from Melbourne to Hobart. The problem is I thought I had cancelled the flight. We are still in lockdown. Borders are closed, travel is restricted to within 50 kilometres. After a long and complicated call to […]

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I’m here: Everest, Camp II, plus about 40 metres. At my feet, a crampon gripped the ice in perfect 12-point French-technique position; exemplary style except for the fact that it lacked an attached foot. Crampon failure can be lethal, but on this slope, not much steeper than a black ski run, it rated only nuisance value. I sighed, and slumped to the snow for the awkward asana and cold-fingered fumbling required to reattach it. It took a few seconds for what I saw to register: a dawning disaster. The sole of my right boot had delaminated. It flapped off the […]

I was seven and had just finished swimming practice at Sutherland Shire Leisure Centre. There I stood in the shower rooms—brown, nervous at the sight of so much white flesh, and very embarrassed. Mum and I were looking for an empty shower stall when I saw her: a broad-shouldered Anglo woman, naked, tall and strong, with pale skin that had scorched an angry red from the steam. At first she seemed relaxed, easy. Then she looked at me and froze. Her lips pursed and her nostrils flared. She looked at Mum. ‘He shouldn’t be here. He’s making us uncomfortable with […]