Memoir
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My 500th essay went up on Quadrant Online last week, all searchable on my public archive. Years ago I had in mind retiring at the 500th, but doing these things is a nice hobby for an 83-year-old in his lean and slippered pantaloon, so I've re-set the target to 1000. Here, if you'll indulge me, a few favourites
March 23, 2024
19 mins
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When an editor sent me out in a cyclone to report on the local damage and disruption, I made a silent vow never to contact any employee after hours, which Labor intends to ban, and demand they set to work. Upon reflection, though, maybe he had a point
February 25, 2024
6 mins
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An unexpected voice called out, 'Hey, boy, what you got?' I looked up and standing on the top of the bank was a black man wearing navy shorts and a khaki shirt with the arms cut off at the shoulders. Crocodile Dundee must have visited the same tailor several decades later. 'Boy, that’s a nice Mangrove Jack you caught, but look out for the teeth, he can bite your little fingers off!' A lesson in fetching dinner Aboriginal-style followed
July 15, 2023
8 mins
The latest
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Some years ago I heard a commotion in a tree in our front yard and found a young and obviously injured crested hawk calling frantically to its mother hovering nearby. Today, amid the commercialism of Mother's Day, let me tell you about love and how the pair of us, the hawk and the human, entered into a co-parenting arrangement
May 14, 2023
9 mins
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The Aborigine with the white locks and flowing beard stopped, stared at me and said, 'Did you ever play rugby at Leeton?' I replied in the affirmative and he went on to ask, 'Do you remember Harry Penrith?' Of course I did, I replied, recalling the fleet-footed fly-half of my youth. 'Well that was me,' said the activist whose guiding principle held that colour-blind decency is the greatest force for good
October 29, 2022
5 mins
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'At the plovers' initial swoop half the first company scattered shamefully. The rest had not yet reached the notional line marking the birds’ territory but were soon met with an even more ardent ferocity. One brave, war-hardened sergeant tried to stand his ground but soon assumed a submissive crouch while no doubt wishing there was a white flag handy'
July 23, 2022
5 mins
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Back when Julia Gillard was PM during the Rudd-Gillard- Rudd shuffle, I was head-hunted out of the blue to fill the shoes of an LNP member’s vacationing media officer. Can't say I did all that much to advance the cause of Australian democracy but, all in all, it was both an education and an entertainment
April 13, 2022
7 mins
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Hermia was 5 feet of heftiness, about 40, well-spoken, sporting a nose ring and a gallery of sapphic-themed tattoos, all this wrapped in a grubby T-shirt. Fully conversant with the inclusive and accepting ways expected of enlightened citizens in the 2020s, I set reservations aside and welcomed her into my home, even getting out the nice china. And then she stole my laptop
April 12, 2022
12 mins
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Mid-winter in Central Queensland normally means mild temperatures and blue skies, but the day in 1979 when Japanese developer Yohachiro Iwasaki threw a vast party to mark the start of work on his Yeppoon resort was none of that. It didn't just pour, the rain came down in a soaking, all-day deluge equalled only by the amount of alcohol consumed by a junketeering press corps. It was a debacle
March 5, 2022
9 mins
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I was 25 and had never been north of Geraldton, so it was a brave decision of my editor at the West Australian to send me on a three-week reporting trip to Portuguese Timor with photographer Richie Hann in tow. With the exception of a rapid exit in the interests of my health and longevity, I made a complete ass of myself.
February 2, 2022
14 mins
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9 June 1966: Consul tells team to quit Timor Darwin, […]
February 2, 2022
25 mins
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The mysterious blockhouse in the scrub was valued as all-weather protection by feral goats, the occasional snake, amorous cane toads and the odd adventurous boy. It was only later, long after it was blown up in the interest of post-war progress, that I learned of the contribution the site and those who worked there had made to the defeat of Japan
April 24, 2021
6 mins