Journal
Articles
Across the Bass Strait
Mum was sitting by herself on a bench attached to the wall of the ship under a Perspex roof. We sat next to her holding on to the bottom of the bench. I told Mum that I had been sick and she wiped my forehead and cheek and said, 'I'm sorry. I'm so sorry,' and it looked like she was crying. She said it was just the sea spray and the cold. And it was cold. It was freezing and the wind cut into my back like I had no skin at all. I could hear the water crack against the ship, feel it hit then hear the spray shoot up. Only I couldn't see it. I couldn't see anything past the light cast out on the deck. Out there the world was raging in the blackness.
Channelling Mannalargenna
Winner, 2013 Walkley Award, All Media Coverage of Indigenous Affairs 'YA PAKANA KARATI, pulingina milaythina pakana-mana-tu.' ('Hello all blackfellas and...
The science laboratory
THE CAPTAIN STEERING Australia's Antarctic science program into its second century can't risk getting caught in the wake of...
Status anxiety
'JO, WHY ARE you going to the west coast of Tasmania?' a puzzled friend asked me in 1974. 'That's...
Outside looking in
I QUITE LIKED living on the periphery when I was growing up in Tasmania and I quite like living...
Hotel Royale on Liverpool
WITH A NOD to those jokes about Tasmanians (yes, you know the ones), it's been said that as a...
The digestion of history
WE ARE WEDGED around the edges of my grandmother's dining table. It is a large and imposing table, but...
Censored conversations
A DOG runs up to my husband on a windswept beach on Sunday morning. Tess is a Jack Russell...
When the apple cart tipped
APPLE BLOSSOM BLESSING were an annual event for our family in the late 1960s and early '70s. They were...
Capitalism in conference or democratic gridlock?
THE WORLD TRADE Organisation (WTO) suddenly gained notoriety in Seattle in 1999 when demonstrations against it appeared on every...
We need to talk about the northwest
IT HAD BEEN raining the first time I visited far northwest Tasmania. Which isn't unusual. Rain, that often-fickle decider...
Insecurity in the new world order
WHEN WE AWOKE to the new century on January 1, 2000, after fireworks had ricocheted around the globe for...
