A lion, last one I saw was behind a sheet of thick plated glass, lying down with its bald body looking like an escapee from Ashley and Martin hair clinic, while the dominant male with his laughing elf beard paraded around. It was a mock up African scene. You sat in a dilapidated land rover [...]

Clouds floating on a sky of sheets, puffy clouds waiting to be walked on by a trek of dreams and unrelated images. When the sheets have been changed and the smell of fresh linen is new that first night it’s like drifting to lemon scented heaven when my head  hits the pillow. It nails itself [...]

Radios and loudspeakers on cars define the latest exploits of the ‘dear leader’. The words are bullets shooting into the hungry bellies of people. They know the hollowness of the words like the hollowness of their stomachs, but some who’ve never had the opportunity to see the world any different believe, wholeheartedly. The U.S. is [...]

There’s a lane way leading up to Wellington College private school, probably now paved, in those days it was just a dirt track, maybe just big enough for one car, but as kids we’d go and play down there after school. Either side of the lane was a ditch or a moat whatever you want [...]

The cupboard is full of them, sealed hermetically tight. When the pantry door swings open, they’re all upright as if they’re a football crowd caught in freeze frame, as if some projectile or word of abuse about the umpire is about to spew forth. All done out in their team colours, Tunas stacked up in [...]

At a distance but close, leaning in but eyes are slightly closed, a bomb shield is raised up to prevent harm or injury. Don’t want to say too much don’t want to say too little.  Scales juggle in my mind, weighing and balancing outcomes and probabilities. The consequence of failure and the consequence of success. [...]

Like a science laboratory jars sit inside the arctic refrigerator, their rainbows of colour brightening the dim interior. Placed on the kitchen table they remind her of experiments in school science class – passing around jars with the preserved fetuses of rabbits and rats and other long forgotten creatures.  The toes of a capsicum are [...]

Saturday night and a helicopter is yawning around in the sky. The engine rising and falling in pitch as it goes past, proving the Doppler effect. A thick searchlight beam lighthouses its way across dull suburban roofs that have gone to sleep for the night already. On the ground pristine police vehicles with patchwork blue [...]

The thrill of flying at age nine. Asking for a window seat on B.O.A.C. flight 7022 -  London to Melbourne 1974. That first amazing sensation of flying through cotton wool clouds and raindrops appearing on the window, then flying up above them,  so high, the world down below in miniature, the sun chasing behind us, [...]

Something which conveys. Belt – something that holds up your pants – or something that gets done to naughty children in the 70’s – when I was a kid. Images of mining operations in the middle of airless waterless deserts, dust rising like a Sahara sandstorm, dust as thick as a chocolate mudcake. Choking. When [...]