Dry River Writings
Write what you know, they say—and I know night. Jet black, dark of the moon night. Crisp shadows on bright, silvered lawn night. Still night of hush and mopoke hoot. Howling night of seethe and crash. Doona-burrowing, extra blanket, bed-beanie night. Night of sweat and swelter, sheet-tangle, turn and tumble. On a steamy summer night,…
1.30 am, New Year’s Eve. The FiresNearMe text: Put your plan into action. I hear a vehicle down on the road, coming in from the forest. Then another. Soon, a constant stream. 2 am. We’re backing down the driveway, in two cars. I have the dogs, food for them, water, my walker, and the Mechanic…
Thanks for your kind enquiries—my initial Ocrevus infusions are done, and nothing to report, no adverse reactions. As for any benefits, I won’t know until March. But something new—our neighbour’s bees have been descending en masse onto our birdbath, the shallow one. It must be the only accessible water source within range. They mostly cluster…
Hilary Mantel, on winning Bookers for her consecutive novels Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, compared it to waiting for a bus: ‘You wait 20 years for a Booker prize and then two come along at once.’ Two major events, years in the build-up, are culminating for me in the next couple of months.
It was my dirty secret for a while. Then I mentioned it to a friend … who confessed to a similar habit. And slowly they came out of the woodwork—other addicts. Or aficionados. In any case, many friends and neighbours with a predilection for jigsaw puzzles.
Did I say ‘carer’? The Mechanic balks at that word. ‘I’m a husband,’ he says. ‘Caring’s just part of the job description, isn’t it?’ Anyway, roles were reversed last week. He woke up on Tuesday with a stiff calf muscle. He’d done an eighty kilometre ride the day before and thought he’d try some gentle…
Someone from the National Disability Insurance Scheme rang a couple of months ago. ‘Good news!’ she said. ‘Funding for your wheelchair has been approved!’ Well, great. Please forgive me for my mixed response to this news. There are days when I notice myself casting envious looks at people in wheelchairs. Pushing my wheelie walker around…
Every year in late August, convoys of semi-trailers converge on two big almond farms outside Mildura on the Murray River. They have journeyed from Queensland, South Australia and from all over NSW and Victoria. The cargo? Bee hives. ‘Almond growers have built a landscape that’s very good at creating almonds but it doesn’t have the…
Al salam Alaikum. Peace be upon you. And peace be upon all of us … For many of us, the memory of the terrorist shooting in Christchurch in March will always be softened by the grace with which New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern applied herself when addressing Parliament, Christchurch families and her nation. So…
Australia’s 28th Prime Minister Tony Abbott and his cabinet were sworn in on Monday, 16 September 2013. His first act was to abolish the Climate Commission. ‘We knew it was going to happen and we had a plan,’ said Professor Lesley Hughes, a founding commissioner. ‘We had already registered the name “Climate Council”.’ She was…