People from South Australia carry with them a peculiar fondness for home. There’s a curiousness about it, a kind of living cult status to endemic sentimentalities. It’s literally not possible to have a conversation with a crow-eater without saying the words ‘frog cake’ and ‘Farmers Union Iced Coffee’ and ‘Popeye’. Each time I meet someone who’s crossed the border into *spit* Victoria, we find a commonality in our Adelaide experience: we went to the same pubs, we caught the same bus, we smoked cones with the same bands.

Rebekah Clarkson’s Barking Dogs (Affirm Press, 2017) is nothing like my Adelaide childhood, and yet there it is on every page.