Told in the bush

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The sin room

FictionWhen they left, carrying Will on a stretcher, I closed the shop for the day. My thoughts were all a swirl, and the most important was that Will would be all right, despite concussion and a broken jaw – and the source of the blood, a shallow flesh wound in his back. I saw it when an ambo pulled up Will’s black shirt tail and thought: that’s not road trauma. I know a knife wound when I see it.

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The ghost river

FictionWhen he was about to begin the river story Moses would stamp at the ground with the heel of his boot and call out to the birds in the trees, 'listen hard now'. He'd clap his hands together a couple of times, make a clicking noise with his tongue and the birds would lift off from the trees in the distance and move a little closer, to the wattles lining the riverbank. 'Back in the old time, before the humans,' he would begin, 'this girl, the river, she didn't stop her life where she does now, at the mouth at bay there. There is no bay in the time I'm talking with.'

Return of the rings

MemoirIN THE MID-2000s, my elderly parents died within eighteen months of each other. First Donato in his mid-eighties and then Lidia, who was younger...

A glimpse of paradise

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