Very old QCC invitation from the 1970s
Environment Writing

QCC: A 50 year history of Queensland Conservation Council

In 2019, Queensland Conservation Council (QCC) celebrated a milestone — Queensland’s peak environment body turned 50. To commemorate the event, I researched and wrote a (reasonably brief) QCC history. It took a lot of willpower not to let the research take over! Fascinating information is hidden in the hundreds of boxes of documents held at […]

Books COVID-19 inspired

Our Inside Voices

I was delighted to be invited to co-edit Our Inside Voices: Reflections on COVID-19 recently. It contains essays, fiction, and poetry from a wide range of Queensland writers. My mate Brad Marsellos, whose amazing locked-down playground pic features on the cover, said he felt calm after reading the stories. Getting back behind the red pen […]

Netiquette: guidelines for online behaviour
Writing

Netiquette: 3 essential guidelines for online behaviour

I’m frequently asked for advice regarding online communication, and, in particular, social media etiquette. It’s a conversation I’ve had with people of varying online experience over many years, about a conversation about communicating with clarity, with regard for ethics and etiquette. Plenty of guides exist, as a simple search would reveal. For example, the BBC‘s netiquette […]

west end Writing

Wordsmithery

  At this delightful soiree a few weeks ago, mid-anecdote, I was whacked with one of those personal life realisations: not quite an epiphany but probably not far off. It was a fabulous shindig: a local landscaper, nursery owner, and all-round bon vivant threw a party to celebrate his premises expanding from the heritage brick […]

Writing

Writing update

If you’ve been following this blog for a few years (and hello to both of you!) you may remember I finished a novella draft over a year ago. And promptly hid the bugger in a drawer, sick of the sound of my own headspace. Well, I just gave it another edit, and still don’t like […]

wool parades 2013
fashion Greatest Hits memoir Writing

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 […]

Everyday Uncategorized Writing

Fraud?

It will be the year of structure. I will make time to write, corral little chunks of hours. Things will be produced*. (*I will find an alternative to the passive voice to avoid that overexposed personal pronoun.) I have been guilty of calling myself a writer with little to back it up. Let’s be honest. […]

Writing

From the dusty vault…

…in the spare room, covered in cockroach crap, I found a stack of old work from around the turn of the millennium. I uploaded this one for fun (and in utter self-indulgence). I’d forgotten all about it; I’d forgotten how satisfying it was to write. And I’d forgotten exactly how much I despised Sex and […]