Family Eyes 112 is enough, he said, and died on the day of his 112th birthday. He left behind quite a mess. 112 years of accumulating possessions, renewing stem cells and photo IDS, returning/not returning phone calls, taking leaks and craps is not nothing. Five children, twelve grandchildren, thirty-two great-grandchildren. It gets up there. My […]

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In winter in Hamburg—the busiest port in Europe—when gangways are slippery and frozen handrails take the skin off an ungloved hand, when the wind along the Elbe is like a razor around your ears, and in the many harbour channels where traffic is least, you can find sheets of ice as big as a tabletop […]

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I stepped out of my front gate this morning and found a twenty-dollar note lying on the footpath. “Happy Father’s Day!” I told myself and pocketed the note. I thought I heard my mobile phone ring and patted my pockets to find it, but the ringing stopped. I heard my neighbour answer, “Hello,” and then […]

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I’m not proud of what happened. It’s like when a small dent in your windscreen becomes a spidery crack. It grows and spreads and before you know it you can’t see a damn thing any more. I met Michael on a blind date. My friend Lucy set us up. Lucy used to get around but […]

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He walks in towards the city from Richmond station, across the roof gardens over the old railway yards with the MCG on his right. He’s a little nervous, very nervous, because he’s meeting his son for the first time. He looks over his left shoulder to check the time on the digital clock on top […]

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Everyone noticed him as they walked into the chapel. He sat six rows from the front, a solitary black man, dressed in a slightly dishevelled suit, a gnarled walking stick resting on his knee, and his glasses held together by grimy pieces of Elastoplast. The deceased’s daughter was the first to speak, “Ag, shame, man, […]

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Watching an American TV documentary on the Second World War, I am both horrified and fascinated as the carnage of trench warfare explodes on the screen. A kaleidoscope of death and destruction, punctuated by the rat-tat of machine-gun fire and the terrible cries of the injured, it is a disturbing reminder of my girlhood years. […]

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  Irony is unstoppable. A swish. A whack. Chop goes the axe. A needle drops into a vinyl groove, and like a Japanese flower unfolding in water, the simple magic of paper and dye, I am thirty years younger in the New York apartment of a friend. We are four. Finishing our drinks. Donning our […]

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  It is half past ten on Saturday night and I am alone in the living room of the run-down terrace house in Surry Hills that I live in. Belinda is spending the weekend at her boyfriend’s flat again and Natalia has gone out. The sickly orange light from the Chinese paper lampshade fills the […]

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  On my first day as a volunteer with Meals on Wheels, the supervisor—a fat retired bloke—told me, “You’re delivering to Mrs Sampson: good luck with that!” I searched for some clue to his meaning in his florid face. He smiled but did not elaborate. My Meals on Wheels partner, Bryan, explained: “Mrs Sampson’s house […]

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