All expenses paid, no worries , take it easy. Sponsorship by Sheraton, airfares courtesy of Qantas. Ah those were the days, no longer though. A hotel room, medium size. A plastic card to slot in the door. A dinner paid for with a voucher. Junket junket junket – it smells of elements of corruption, but [...]

The boards are delivered in a flat bed truck. You have to organise a time where you and the delivery team will be in the same place at the same time. The doorbell croaks their arrival and heavy set men in iridescent green tops haul in the sheets. The boards are rectangular and long, not [...]

The smell of roasted meat fills the air, that same smell as back home when the chicken or the lump of beef or the strips of pork were sitting on the silver serving tray, the one with the spikes that held the meat firmly in place as it was delivered. Here the meat is ready [...]

Boxed quilted jacket, a green anorak. Walking to school on crisp winter mornings where the puddles had frozen over, stepping on the puddles and hearing the ice crack. Seeing the rainbow colours of petrol that had leaked form a leaded fuel tank. The smell of leaded car exhausts purring while waiting to exit the dirt [...]

Out at Bundoora Pets they’ve got all sorts of small animals for sale – kittens are particularly cute with their playful clumsy moves or their purring snores as they lay about in supa-comfy positions. There’s also a range of rabbits with big felt floppy ears, pet mice that seem to dart about like matchbox cars [...]

From about thirteen all I thought about was getting out, gaining my independence, being ‘me’  getting away from the boundaries of that tiny country town, where thoughts all were channeled into the same lines of football on Saturday, basketball on Thursday, badminton on Tuesday. Nothing else was going on, I didn’t want to conform, somebody [...]

It begins as an idea, a vision, an inspiration and begins to take form. Architects shape a dream on sheets of rough paper, modeling the idea. The fresh smelling sheets are handed around at board room meetings where a hard has has not yet been seen. The winning bidder creates more details, licks the ground [...]

It had to be a well planned operation, somehow he had to get back in the side window without making too much noise. He definitely did not want his parents hearing him, because as far as they were concerned he would be asleep in there already. Somewhere between the news and the next round of [...]

The only time we used to use a table cloth was either at Christmas or when the family came to visit for a special weekend. Normally it was Sunday lunch off a medium blue lump of laminate that dad installed on all the tables in our cafe/take away/Deli. On the special occasions the shop would [...]

Sometimes they just shouldn’t bother you know! Sequels that is, they just never measure up to the ‘blockbusterness’ of the original – though I did read that the latest ‘Angels and Demons’ – the sequel to the Da Vinci code – is pretty good go figure. There’s that whole procedure you go through at the [...]