Bronco, a horse that is untamed , that needs to be broken an reined in,. Bronco , the Australian version – a Brumby- a rough wild bush horse, sweeping in herds across the plains of the Kosiuzsco National park, the snow capped tallest mountain in Australia.  The wild bush horses, Banjo Patterson writing about them [...]

Short hair, buzzcuts so sharp you could slice a loaf. Green dungarees, oversize pockets, walking the parade ground with the megaphone sergeant major yelling at hurricane force. Legs pumping up and down. Endless drills , rifles , bayonets, clean your bed, check your locker, wipe for dust , any speck might mean a twenty kilometer [...]

Almost every place has one – not that they’re used for their intended purpose any more. Grand old facades, festooned with sculptured weaves of a bygone era. The Melbourne Town Hall for example, still standing soilid and proud with its regulation clocktower mapping out the life of the city for the day. Sandstone parapets and [...]

You know how the saying goes – give ‘em enough and they’ll hang themselves. You know it – don’t you – when someone’s bullshitting? At first their conversation seems to have some sour moments and then it becomes obvious the whole thing is a crock and you start to challenge what they’re saying. It’s almost [...]

The knife is delightfully sharp, fresh from a duel with the sharpener, it is merciless with the cucumber, slicing through like a star wars lights sabre. The olives need skinning, they’re stood on their end and their brown squishy bodies are made devoid of the pith that rests within. Another attack from the well sharpened [...]

Because they might have some significance at some point in the future I now buy my notebooks in hard cover. At officeworks they have them in all sorts of luminous colours a bit of a neon selection really, buzzing away on the shelves for my attention in lime green, Ferrari yellow and postman red. There’s [...]

Its a brick,  a compress of flattened out words and meanings bound between heavy cardboard covers. There’s that moment when you’re not quite sure on a word or a meaning and you go seeking it in the bookshelf. It’s been sitting dormant for a while, but always ready , primed like a loaded gun or [...]

Before the drought I’d go to Russ’s farm- about a mile and a half out of town. Gangly teenage legs pedaling on a converted dragster bicycle, the pedals knocking against the frame from so many Action Jackson stunts gone wrong. Out past the speed limit signs I rode,  being passed by unfussed cars that nearly [...]

Wrinkle free doll face in pasty white. Blooms of red cheeks, hair in buns with chopsticks through it. Flowing  gown in worm woven silk, floral prints emblazoned. Moving like a silent sailing ship through a garden full of shrunken trees and shrubs ceremonial bridges and pagodas. What is she? A confidante? A mistress?  A body [...]

There it was four hundred and fifty feet of it. From a distance almost vertical, and face less, but as we got closer,  yes, there were crags and crannies and airies and places that one might rest on the ascent. Did I say ascent? After spending a morning abseilling and clambering up and down a [...]