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.
A castle in Toorak
THE BOUNCER WAS cute. I gave him a wicked smile, he frowned, looked us up and down slowly, and...
Light dawns
And Lo! The Hunter of the East has caughtThe Sultan's Turret in a Noose of Light.– The Rubaiyat...
Snow White and the child soldier
'LISA THINKS SHE'S the hottest girl around.''She's so up herself. She doesn't even have a Facebook page.''Guys! Guys! Who's...
A glimpse of paradise
I WAS HEAD over heels about Steven, and that’s the truth. And having such a spectacular house didn’t hurt...
Snake in the grass
Selected for Best Australian Stories 2014I BAKE ON the smooth clay of dried creekbed. Soak in light the colour...
Black swan event
THE FIRST THING Dawn heard every morning was her brother stretching his wing. The soft whooping travelled down the...
The ghost river
When he was about to begin the river story Moses would stamp at the ground with the heel of his boot and call out to the birds in the trees, 'listen hard now'. He'd clap his hands together a couple of times, make a clicking noise with his tongue and the birds would lift off from the trees in the distance and move a little closer, to the wattles lining the riverbank. 'Back in the old time, before the humans,' he would begin, 'this girl, the river, she didn't stop her life where she does now, at the mouth at bay there. There is no bay in the time I'm talking with.'
Flying in. Flying out.
TOM PULLS OFF his respirator.'Know what it really stands for?'He is washing down his boots. They are fucked already,...
My paintings
I DIDN'T WANT to know why you left me. Reasons are ephemeral, and it's the consequences that I've been...
Disaster in Coal Town 1923
'AN HOUR EARLIER and it might have been four hundred men.''Does that make it any less filthy or cruel?'The...
River Street
What is not on the open street is false, derived, that is to say, literature.Henry MillerThere is always power...
Snake eyes
HE INTRODUCED HIMSELF as a photographer when he'd pulled away from a group of men to tell her how...
