Journal
Articles
Modern science, modern life
LIKE MANY CHILDREN born in the 1980s, I grew up playing outside, catching lizards and feeding tadpoles. My parents...
Breaking the cycle
ONE OF OUR family treasures, kept on my parents’ mantelpiece, is a photo of me as a baby being...
Born on Aboriginal land
I was born a white woman on Aboriginal land. Blood drenched land, white washed in omission. The land still stains my feet. I...
A luxury of choice
I’M TWENTY-SIX YEARS old, and recently stopped taking the birth-control pill. I react poorly to synthetic hormones – they...
Un-Australian
THURSDAY, 26 JANUARY 2017 is a grey, overcast day in Sydney. Along the harbour front thousands of people gather,...
The view from up here
SLIPPING OFF HER high heels, she sighs with relief – more out of habit than real affliction – and takes a...
A little too close to the sun
When this essay was reprinted on The Guardian website on 6 July 2017, the writer added the short introduction...
Still talkin’ up to the white woman
THE NAKED WOMAN is only visible when my manager’s door is open – when closed it is unclear what the...
Peasant dreaming
I’m currently doing a course on holistic farming near the southern New South Wales town of Braidwood. I had expected it to be full of ruddy-cheeked cattlemen in their forties and fifties; instead it is mostly people like me, tertiary-educated thirtysomethings who want to grow their own food to nourish their vocations. We are writers, a ceramicist and a filmmaker; a market gardener with a background in conservation; the manager of a local farmers’ market and her partner, who feeds his chooks on maggots from roadkill kangaroos.
Of monsters and men
ON A SATURDAY morning in March 2014, I found myself speaking in front of a crowd of five thousand...
Conversations with my sister
ON THE WAY home from Brisbane airport, my older sister Tammy turns to me from the driver’s seat and...
The spectator
I WENT TO a high school filled with smart kids. Kids who had been specially selected because their brains...
