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 colour of kerosene
IT HAD FELT wrong from the moment he'd picked up the fare outside the hotel on Marine Terrace.‘Turn here,'...
Visionaries, or The Cello of Katerina Valentine
FIRST, THE DIRECTOR made a pitch. The film finance people told him to get a scriptwriter. ‘I've got a...
Notes to a biographer
INK THIS: IN the afternoons he would begin to drink – not very much, but steadily – to gauge...
Sunlight
FOR THREE DAYS straight, Anna had stayed inside, limbs aching, senses dulled. She'd heard Tom come and go –...
State of emergency: Brisbane 1982
'WHAT DO WE want?' ‘The right to march!'‘When do we want it?' ‘Now!' ‘Joh must go!'King George Square is...
Who’s that dancing with my mother?
WE WERE LIVING in Napier at the time. My father pulled the keys down from the hook in the...
The real thing
OUR FAMILY'S NEVER been very good at ‘family'. When my nephew was conceived my sister and I weren't even...
The other side of silence
IT'S TRUE I wanted him dead and would gladly have done it myself. I wonder about the days before...
Four shots at silence
1HIGH STREET, PRAHRAN. An ageing Toyota Corolla heads through drizzle for Punt Road. Once past Chapel Street the driver...
The silent majority
IT IS A truth universally acknowledged, Jo decided, that a bored teenager with a permanent marker is a pain...
Finding Girrawandi
WHEN HE EMERGED from the rainforest after he, his brothers and father had set out eight months before, Simon...
The colour of death
SOME PEOPLE LOSE perspective regardless of the occasion. Brigit is prowling at the edges of Loney Tonkin's funeral and...
