A Tooth Teaches
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She felt in miserable communion, then, with all of her patients afflicted by toothache. She understood why they knocked on her door at night or woke up the nurses.
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Things We Found in the Move
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After ten days of phone calls not returned and emails unanswered, we realised that some of the people involved in letting the house might dislike gay people.
Read MoreTen Ways of Being Wealthy
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The damaged shopping trolley was full of the worldly possessions of the house-less person who had been sheltering there.
Read MoreThe Worm and the Albatross
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Unable to sleep, I went outside, barefoot in the squelching, rain-saturated grass.
Read MorePattern Recognition
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If you’ve been in a car with Aboriginal hunters, you’ll know the way they can see a snake or lizard, or something else good for cooking, on a stony gibber plain, perhaps two hundred metres from the road.
Read MoreWaking Up with the Pelicans
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What a mess you can get yourself into, stealing so that you can inject chemicals to feel like you got a hug. That’s about as lonely as it gets.
Read MoreWooden Customs
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I haven’t always found Customs Officers friendly. When I was a twenty-year-old kajal-eyed traveller from India, Australian Customs cut my soap open.
Read MoreElephant Memory
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‘I tried to imagine an easeful death, just stepping through a door, as they say.’
Read MoreThe Citrus Tree
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Ropehair began to dream of a garden. At night, when the stars were brilliant, I could feel her happiness as she imagined food growing from the red desert earth.
Read MoreAlways the Sun
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It's an intrusive presence in the desert, that hot star. Things are different in Europe, where the Sun gives people a chance to miss it during winter.
Read MorePlasticity
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My friend sounded like some kind of bitter extremist. Even if I knew she was right, she was spoiling our fun.
Read MoreOh Nutbush
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We’d pull up in the middle of the road to talk to other people driving their cars around, in case something happened.
Read MoreThe Space Inside Things
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I don't believe the plastic bags under the kitchen bench have consciousness. But I could believe it of the exquisite old wooden table on which I type.
Read MoreCreation & Expiration in a Tree
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My Aboriginal grandfather didn’t want to be buried in a graveyard with a headstone after he died. “Put me up in a tree,” he said, “Like the old people did.”
“They put dead bodies up in a tree?” I was incredulous.
Thrown Out
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'Couldn’t immigration make some allowance?’ asked my wife. ‘They really don’t care,’ said the officer, looking Claudia in the eye.
Read MoreShaking, Falling, Being Held.
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In his new reality in the hospital, he was being captured and taken away, tortured and traumatised, every night.
Read MoreTouristic Travail
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She was psychologically worn down, too -- expected to drink with guests, entertain them and be entertained by them. The bar staff helped by hiding the alcoholic drinks clients bought for her.
Read MoreBig Flag Day at Home
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They are playing that slow-baked game called cricket — the pace of which accommodates inebriation and lethargy so well.
Read MoreRented Boxes by the Bay
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It’s a four-and-a-half star hotel, they say. Our room has a spa bath with 2 of the 4 jets working and it is only as loud as a lawnmower. The working jets are oddly placed. My ankles and knees are very relaxed.
Read MoreCity Special
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Many of my doctor colleagues work on one part of the body only and get to know that system or that set of organs very well. I used to wonder, as a student, how you could spend a career that way.
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