Dry River Writings
I was having lunch with Heather O’Connor at the Sundeck in Bermagui recently when a woman approached our table. Heather smiled and said to me, ‘Do you know Kathryn? Lois Irwin’s daughter. She’s visiting from California.’ I did – I remembered her from her father’s funeral. ‘Mum’s just finished your book,’ Kathryn said to me….
Latin came up during a recent physiotherapy session. It turned out that both Marianne and I had studied Latin in high school, she in the Netherlands, I in Sydney. That day, I was lying face down looking through the hole in the treatment table, so I could only see her strong, brown, Birkenstocked feet moving…
So the Mechanic’s pedalling up a steep hill on a gravel trail when a guy on a motorbike pulls up beside him. ‘You OK?’ He’s wearing one of those official orange T-shirts. ‘Yep,’ the Mechanic pants. ‘Doing fine.’ ‘Alright, mate,’ says Motorbike Guy. ‘I’ll keep checking in.’ And he does. Half an hour later he’s…
ICU nurse Kayla is hanging a big bag of opaque yellow liquid on my IV pole. ‘I call this one the banana bag,’ she says. ‘It’s packed with nutrients. If there’s ever any left over I take it home and put it on my roses.’ Another ICU nurse tells me that when you undergo…
When my father died after a brief illness, at 6 pm on 26 June this year, my brother rang immediately to let me know. So it’s probably a measure of my interest, or lack of it, that at this crucial time my phone was on silent and Matt had to leave a message, which I…
For anyone who read my memoir, Long Road to Dry River, and is interested in a bit of backstory, The Brevity Blog (US) has kindly published a short (very short) essay I wrote about a light bulb moment in the writing, and my precious aunt who brought it about.
With the first email on 13 March, my writerly ego to the fore, it was clear: Nobody Owns a Fire, I conceded, was a half-decent story and it just took the right judge to bathe it in the glory it deserved. And of course the Foundation needed some documentation – my residential address, my phone…
I’m forever grateful to Hansa’s old friend Wayne, who shared an experience from his motor-wrecking days one night over dinner — a seed that became a story, published this month in the digital Wordgathering journal (Syracuse University, NY), and also part of a novel currently looking for a publisher (more news on that soon, I…
No, it’s not my birthday … but it was, on the day that the Booranga Writers Centre (Charles Sturt University) launched their fourW anthology this year. And my story ‘Birthday Girl’ was shortlisted for the Prose award. Congratulations to local poets Linda Albertson and Kai Jensen, also selected for this long-running collection — Linda won…
It was a few days before the Referendum and I was wearing my badge when someone asked me, ‘So, why are you voting Yes?’ Well, after all those months I had a whole catalogue of answers to choose from, depending on the circumstances, the time I had, the demeanour of the person, the mood I…