Memoir MY MOTHER’S ASHES got scattered at the end of Australia’s Black Summer. She’d been dead for eighteen months. But her family – my five foster siblings and their twelve children – hadn’t been together since the funeral. Now we belatedly congregated...

Memoir MY CHILDHOOD ENDED when I was ten. It was 21 March 2002. The subdued beauty of an autumn afternoon in Toowoomba. Cool enough to be winter. Dying light and green leaves. A yellow dome glowing in the western skies. Mort Estate...

MemoirThe median strip led to the other side of the highway. We emerged boot-first into a flood of oncoming headlights. Screams howled from the back seat. ‘I’m dead,’ I thought. Then it hit. Another car, speed meeting speed, like two protons colliding. I didn't get the luxury of a concussion. I stayed awake the whole way through. There was a glimpse of black, a few seconds max, when my head reeled from the soft impact against the dashboard. White pinwheels spun on the inside of my eyelids. Blood flooded back into my feet and fingers. After that everything went berserk.