It’s hard to spot, but there’s a path into the bush in the far corner of the Quaama Cemetery. As you pass the main cluster of graves – the smart new granite of the Colemans, the Conways with their river rocks and shells, the green trellis over Pato Taylor – you may see it. Enter…
Nine dead wombats
There are nine wombats on the road between Bega and Bemboka. Nine dead wombats. And it’s not even a bad season, a dry season, when what little rain we get runs off the roads and pools in the ditches beside them, creating green oases in a land of brown. Those oases bring the wombats to…
Joan Horne, 1924 – 2011
A common sight in Quaama, until recently, was a big old blue Falcon doing the morning run from Fieldbucketts Rd along Bermaguee St to the store, apparently with no driver. But then you’d hear a friendly ‘bip’ as it passed – Joan spotting a friend. Joan Horne, the little lady with the big presence.
Terry Irwin 1943 – 2010
Picture, if you will, a forest clearing. The chatter of birds in the treetops. A dirt track, recently graded. Heavy equipment stands idle all around – bulldozers, knuckleboom loaders, chainsaws. At one end, a ragtag group of people in beanies and coloured clothing, with backpacks and thermos flasks, sits chatting. At the other, workmen in…
Stink bugs: the Hoover cure
There must be more efficient ways of ridding a citrus tree of stink bugs than with a vacuum cleaner, but certainly none more satisfying. Thwok, they go as they hurtle up the tube. Thwok, thwok! A slurry of tinkling thwoks as a column of the little orange-backed bugs is sucked up the metal tunnel.
Cemetery Reverie
I’m gazing across my desk and out the window as a hearse glides down my street, a seemingly endless parade of cars in its wake. I wonder briefly who has died in this small town, to attract such a crowd. I mentally list the old and the sick, reach no conclusions and return to my…