File this story under op-shopper’s boast, except, you know, I wasn’t even in an op-shop at the time. But heavens, what a discovery. I can’t even remember the original reason I was in Reverse Garbage, now, but it wasn’t to look for paintings. Yet there they were, four or five boxes of them: all oils, […]
Greatest Hits
Favourite posts
Sifnos
Is there a word for that mixed feeling of envy and enjoyment you feel when looking at other people’s holiday pics? My friend tagged me in a post of her visit to Sifnos, which reminded me I’d forgotten to put this story up here… until now. It will also be published soon in a shorter […]
The common mango
There’s this guy who lives in my street. Called Dutch. Rides a motorbike. Looks like the type of cat who’s already gone through a few of his nine lives. Lives in the front half of a rented place at the bottom of the hill. Dutch, of course, is not his actual name. I don’t know […]
Winter sun
It’s one of those winter mornings when the slanting sunlight is a treasure. Our morning schedule is thrown sideways by the end of school holidays colliding with the 5am World Cup final, so I drop my partner at work over the Victoria Bridge. We are fortunate to spend a few traffic light changes waiting on […]
The beeman cometh
If West End has the highest occurrence of native bee hives in the country, it’s probably due to Dr Tim Heard. Tim’s an entomological original: one of the pioneer native bee-keepers who’s been dabbling since the 1980s. He wrote an early article about them in Nature magazine in the 1990s. He’s done time […]
Self indulgent chunk of flash memoir
Memoir. It really should be avoided by all but those with the most interesting, important, timely, or unique stories. Oh well, tough. I just pulled another old writing exercise out of its box. It’s none of the above. This one’s being set free today because it’s my Superbowl story. It’s also an Ekka story. Does […]
Grammar, grampa
I guess there is a reason why I ended up an editor.
Discovering Harvey Graham.
I’ve been back working with Brisbane Arcade recently, for its 90th birthday celebrations. I love Brisbane Arcade: its bloody history, its Art Deco bone structure, and its personalities — many of whom I got to know when I was marketing manager there a decade ago. For the 90th, I’ve had the exceeding good fortune to work […]
The Esplanade
Oh, there are no photographs, as we were enjoying the moment far too much to bother recording. As usual. But here’s a recipe for a cocktail we created last weekend. Get invited to two of your dearest mates’ place for a kind of housewarming on a Saturday night. Go to the Yandina farmers’ markets […]
Untitle, less title
Too many months have passed without self-indulgent writing, with no wordy rambling save skinny scratchings in a work-related notebook and the occasional sentence plugged into my phone’s orangey notes. Someone has left a whole watermelon on my doorstep. The eyes have been scratched out of a massive poster of Wil Anderson up the […]