Welcome to GR Online, a series of short-form articles that take aim at the moving target of contemporary culture as it’s whisked along the guide rails of innovations in digital media, globalisation and late-stage capitalism.
The quiet slave
Episode One: Near MutinyIn 1820, Alexander Hare, the owner of a household of slaves and an increasingly controversial figure...
Nullius
Leavings I: 1928THE CLEARING IS unknown to her, a flat irregularity in a broad swathe of rocky ground the...
Former glory
NOBODY PUT A ‘for sale’ sign in front of the only good building in town. Whoever had it on...
Whale station
I SPIED THE bull turning circles an hour out from Yellow Patch. I was alone on the Looma, the...
1919
1I WATCHED FROM our front window as a cart led by two sweating horses carried five hessian sacks, a...
When blossoms fall
Today in flower, tomorrow scattered by the wind – Such is our blossom life. How can we think its...
Refuge
Voices from a region of extraction
Miner Old Tin Lizzie was the first car in Kookynie ---– the fella owed me money and wanted me to take it in payment, the...
The city circle
I LIVE IN a suburb where no politician lives and therefore the trams run infrequently, often late and without...
Blue people
Selected for Best Australian Stories 2014I’M BACK WORKING with the Dragon Lady after we both went overseas, again, and...
Fit in or f**k off
I DIDN’T UNDERSTAND what the Pilbara was. I didn’t even know how to spell Karratha properly. I didn’t care...
Ticket-holder number 5
FOR AS LONG as she could remember, Tania had carried a canister of capsicum spray in her workbag. She’d...
The teacher
MICK FELT EXCITED coming down on the train but got cornered in the carriage by a tall heavy-boned old...
