A perfectly ordinary dachshund observes the problem of being

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No name for the country

Non-fictionFor the past thirty-odd years, Hideo has worked exclusively in Japanese, publishing several novels and collections of criticism and essays. Why Japanese? is a question he is often asked. It harbours a kind of suspicion: why would a native speaker of the English language, the language of power and prestige and capital ... give it all up in favour of a comparatively minor language, a marked and ethnicised tongue?

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Seeding knowledge

In ConversationThere’s so much we can learn from the plants, even the little annual plants, and we don’t take notice of them. Gymea lily flowers can tell you when the whales are coming. One of the things I’ve investigated is why the ants can tell the weather – I carried out an experiment when I was at Macquarie University, and what I found was that if the groundwater level rises, you can expect rain, and the ants will pick this up.

Fish

FictionHe hasn’t caught one in twelve years or more, not since just before Ritchie – Hayley’s oldest – was born. The deboning alone can take half a morning and you have to strip that tail to its cartilage very carefully because there’s a layer of green resin, bitter. In small doses it ruins the meat; poisonous if you eat too much.

Taking the reins

Non-fictionThat’s when it started, I think. That evening at home I cantered on an imaginary horse along the lawn towards our back paddock, reciting over and over the lines I could remember. An unusual initiation, maybe, but it was ‘The Man from Snowy River’ that set a bespectacled, bookish ten-year-old on course to becoming a ‘horse girl’.