There are books you save from childhood, a few that […]

'Not everyone who rides a horse is a jockey?' Is this the winning lines in a school poetry competition, or an excerpt from a worthy yet underwhelming canonical text? Neither of the above, for the would-be writer on the waters, the great visionary, is none other than Sheikh Mohammed Al Maktoum

Some of her favourite tunes were tinged by absurdity, but most were about love, many of the unrequited variety, as are most of the songs ever written. They are fading memories now, songs mostly forgotten, but not then, when I knew I was home from school and heard her voice issuing from the window at the back of our house as I turned in the front gate

"The wind increased and the rain became horizontal as we watched trees topple and tree branches take wing to join the sheets of roofing iron flying by. It was 1954 and I was watching Queensland's answer to the opening scenes of The Wizard of Oz"

After the first couple of days, I had to dismiss the romantic notion I could live a peaceful, contemplative life. Indeed, the pleasant quietude and routine revealed my own distractions more intensely, as if I were looking at a wound through a microscope. Monastic life, I concluded, is not a fairytale world where introverts like myself can go to live happily ever after

Traditional circus is dirty and alchemical, the ring a window on the underworld, and its characters are printed straight from the archetypewriter. It’s living history, a form of cultural nourishment that modern troupes such as Canada's twee and government-funded Cirque du Soleil don't attempt and can't hope to emulate

I was with Barry at the Rooty Hill RSL club for the very first appearance of the not-yet-knighted Les Patterson, the character he told me he most enjoyed playing because, as a long-time sober person, he could channel all of his many negativities into that dreadful drunkard. When Barry died in April last year, neither he nor I had touched a drink for 53 years

Canberra in those far-off days was regarded as a joke by the rest of Australia. The essence of this ridicule was the notion of a 'Bush Capital' making even less impression on the visitor than such neighbouring country towns as Goulburn. compared to the great coastal cities, whence most of Canberra’s population was embarrassingly unimpressive

Thursday Island is the setting for a story of courage and survival, of coming of age, of sadness and loss and renewal, of identity formation and reformation. It was my Great-Gran’s story. I’ve been hearing about it in family circles all my life, so now, indirectly, it is mine