When the revolution comes, it will more than likely be on a Monday. But we’ll need the weekend to prepare. And a soundtrack. Here are some suggestions; feel free to add your own. When the revolution comes – The Last Poets Jailbreak – Yothu Yindi (We don’t need this) Fascist groove thang – Heaven 17 And […]

Today I finished reading KJ Parker’s 2008 novel The Company. And, as usual when I finish one of her novels, I wondered why the hell I had. It’s not that they’re bad novels (although I felt this one was somewhat inferior to her other books), it’s that they are relentlessly depressing. I’ve never read novels […]

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a fiction writer in possession of a good tale must be in want of an audience. In the absence of a publishing contract or an appreciative family member/housemate, such an audience can be difficult to reach. Equally so, if Sydney’s lovers of literature fancy a night out to […]

Although we may not always recognise our bondage, we live, in modern times, under a tyranny of numbers – (paraphrasing) Nicholas Eberstadt Numbers are appealing. They equate to fact and accuracy; they help us to interpret the world and its workings. We can dispute the significance of numbers but we can’t dispute they exist, nor […]

I used to work for an order more clandestine than the Knights Templar, more invisible than the Invisible Woman, more prone to secrecy than Jason Bourne. We did our work in secret, erasing our identities before and after every job, writing confidential reports and often never meeting the human they concerned. I’m sure there are […]

The interesting thing about a novel is, that like the Tardis, it’s much bigger on the inside than on the outside. Books look linear, and we are often tricked, as readers and writers, into making them linear. Novels muck about with time, and time is never as straightforward as it appears. Currently there looks to […]

There’s supposed to be a number of ‘signs’ that the dry season has finally banished the wet season, or the build down season for another year. (There’s some argument as to how many seasons there are in the Top End. Some say the ‘wet’ and ‘dry’, others the ‘build up’, the ‘wet’ and ‘dry’ and […]

I’m in the market for a new job. I’m not sure if you’ve ever noticed, but there really isn’t that much information out there to help me narrow my search. Employers generally don’t advertise what the salary is, and if you phone them they’re often coy. So I’m going to have to wait until I […]

A few weeks ago, I posted a review on the Melbourne book launch of Andrea Demetriou’s haunting book, The mountains couldn’t walk away. Andrea’s poetry collection is a reflection of her experiences escaping Cyprus as an eight-year-old girl when Turkey invaded in 1974. Since posting my review, I’ve received requests to post some of her […]

What can you expect from a couple of musicians – albeit, ‘well-schooled, culture-crossing MCs drop[ping] nuggets of sharp social commentary’ – with a self-described style of ‘deconstructionist’, who cite Edward Said and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak as their influences? If you were thinking: possibly a critique of race, class, ethnicity and pop culture framed through a […]

In 2009, a choreographer from the television programme So you think you can dance said his routine involved ‘a bit of a peep show’ explaining, ‘They’re such hot looking girls, why wouldn’t I portray them as sex kittens?’ I then pulled the face that causes my teenaged daughter to exclaim, ‘I hate watching television with […]

Driving through the golden, locust-infested centre of New South Wales on Sunday, Radio National broadcast The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilmer. It was first published in 1892 in the New England Magazine. The story is a series of journal entries told in first person by the narrator, a woman locked in a room, after […]

My friend Cadie, a Garawa woman, and I are on a six-month road trip. We’ve been staying in Woorabinda for the last week with Cadie’s friend Ida, a nurse. Woorabinda (‘kangaroo sit down’) is an Aboriginal community of approximately 1000 people. Situated between Blackwater and Rolleston, about two hours’ drive from Rockhampton, Woorabinda came into […]

Writing for the Internet is not like writing a novel. Seriously, they’re galaxies apart. Writing an essay and writing a blog post aren’t galaxies apart; more like the distance between the nearest open cluster of stars and me. Clearly, I’m referring to non-fiction here, rather than fiction or poetry or experimental writing. I’m not talking […]

I am a wog, and I’m proud of it. I don’t call myself an aussie and I was born in Australia. This may be difficult for some to digest, but that’s how I feel, and I’m not alone is saying it either. A few weeks ago, I emailed a review of the George Michael concert […]

The proof is in the painting. It has been ‘revealed’ that this year’s winner of the Wynne Prize for Australian landscape painting is a fraud, a fake, a phoney, a copycat, and worst of all, unoriginal. Yep, it’s true. Proposal for a Landscaped Cosmos by Sam Leach is almost an exact replica of a work […]