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.
Old stars
I found Archie by the shallow end wearing a short terry-towelling robe open to the waist. Time and tide had left him shipwrecked and bloated, but you could still recognise him from the pictures on his album covers: same dark pouf and ducktail and duotone tan, only now he got his colour from a bottle and his hair from a can. He’d been drinking gin and tonic since happy hour started, brought out by an over-attentive waitress.
Last of the rational actors at the end of the unnatural world
Was it Douglas Mawson who compared Antarctica to Mars?... 'Outside, one might be a lone soul standing on Mars', or something very much like that. 'All is desolation and hard.'
Convergence
The holiday brochures talk about ‘the sound of silence’ in Antarctica. That it is an experience, elliptical and expansive. This has become a long-running joke at the base. Everyone knows that life here relies on making noise.
Hope sends a message
I am here to get the feel of the place; to understand why they are here, at the edge of the world, keeping hope alive. I need that hope and I think I am not alone in that sentiment. That is why I was sent, why I agreed to come, why this piece is being published – unless it has been suppressed. I am displaced as much as the people here; my family have not been to our homelands for generations.
Mud reckoning
THERE IS NO such thing as bad Country; there just happens to be bad custodians.
Beating the bounds
‘LIKE THE BROLGA Dancers at the Mullet Run,’ Murree grinned, squatting easily against the base of a gum tree...
The Terrible Event: A Memorial
I OFTEN ASK myself: had we simply stuck with The Memorial’s original name, would things have taken such a...
Double
ALL THE ROADS in this part of town are bitumen, so Odette’s piece-of-shit Toyota does fine, even in the...
Real fobs
Listen to Winnie Dunn read her short story ‘Real fobs’. ONLY BOGANS AND dumb ethnics go to Western Sydney University. Real fobs won’t...
University material
JEFFREY AND MY mother were together for three years. I lived with them for their final year, when I...
Vestigial
THE BOY RAN past the house just as Sherwin held the clothes pegs up to the line. The sheet...
Dramatics
ANNIE DOESN’T RECOGNISE the old teacher at first glance, not consciously. She only registers a vague sense of disorientation...
