EssayThe vast continent is really void of speech...this speechless, aimless solitariness was in the air. It was natural to the country. DH Lawrence, Kangaroo   UNLIKE MANY CITY-DWELLING Australians, the desert holds no terrors for me. Instead, like DH Lawrence, I find...

EssayEACH YEAR I drive from my home near Canberra to the Tanami Desert and spend several months in an Aboriginal community that has become my other home. The trip takes a week or two, allowing for the incremental adjustments...

EssayON THE VARNISHED surface of the table at which I sit to write someone has scored the three quarter view of a naked girl looking over her shoulder. It has a certain copyist facility; the hand spread coquettishly on...

EssayTHERE WAS A time when, if asked what I did, I could reply without hesitation that I was an artist. In recent years, writing has taken up a greater proportion of my creative energy, but visual art is still...

MemoirK: Kartiya, desert term for white personK: Kumanjayi, word that substitutes for a name that can't be spokenWHEN K RANG the station to see if they needed her to bring anything, the manager said, ‘Yeah, good, can you pick up a...

Essay'Kartiya are like Toyotas. When they break down we get another one.' – remark by a Western Desert woman about whitefellas who work in Indigenous communities UNLIKE THE BROKEN Toyotas, which are abandoned where they fall, cannibalised, overturned, gutted and torched, the...