by JEANNIE HAUGHTON history in small towns – indigenous stories fixed to barbed wire fences in the shade of fuel pumps and cabbage trees… cigarette endings wayside stops – fly on the roadhouse door same fly yesterday bitumen boomerang curves…
by RON WILKINS Out bush walking, suddenly, involuntarily, I stop. Could I be half remembering some essential item left behind? Rather, it feels as if there is another presence. Something invisible, yet palpably existent. No apprehension. No slithering in the…
by LILLI WARD Outside: a crumbling hive. Inside: the air like shredded silk. An argent blouse of smog is torn by the red finger of a stalagmite. (soupy) A humid dew that curls my hair, relieved of my senses, I…
by SOPHIE EMMA TAYOR Pinned to the horizon by distant ships, the ocean billows like a baby blanket, its laced edge fluttering against the caramel crag. The heathland swallows the hilltop whole; shrubbery sprawls, banksia bundled, green tufts tumbling off…
by VANESSA PROCTOR A scattering of snow attempts to white out memory. Even the fog is half-hearted this morning. Charred tree trunks and branches create sculptures of loneliness and silence falls heavy on the land. Yet shoots, brilliantly new, are…
by LILLI WARD This social experiment seems like something I want to do or at least something I should want to do. I should want to wade knee deep in muddy puddles, watching dozens of udders face a silky tunic…
by Tony Steven Williams The afternoon sea breeze is superstrong, the surf messy, confused,grumbling like a hung-over mind.On the beach, I see a veteran surferheading towards the café on the dune. His Cairn Terrier stays back, watchingher master with anxious,…
by Kate King The signs were there – in the crackle of the humus and the harshness of the air, the clearing of the forests and the drying of the soil. The bugs beneath the bark scattered. Leaf beetles flickered…
by JEANNIE HAUGHTON Night walk to the cloisters, constellations of dark women, hips swaying to the rhythm of carry bags the evening meal or tomorrow’s lunch no car boots filled with a week’s supplies no click and collect around here…
by DIJANNE CEVAAL Walking along a path through recuperated bushland Small birds sass and chirp, dancing in the shrubby undergrowth Dew drops glitter up high in the native cherry, nature’s tinsel Fungi emerge from the underworld, briefly dazzling in their…
