In 1492, Spain believed itself to have discovered the New World, as they referred to Abya Yala. Even in European terms this was not a discovery, the Norse explorer Leif Erikson having travelled through North America in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Archaeologists, historians and academics still dispute when Abya Yala was first inhabited.

My mother and father missed it all. Bunnykins to bomber jackets, dummies to cigarettes. I was raised somewhere else. Given another mum. A different dad. Handed around until I stuck like a stickle brick to my brand-new brother, who was also riding the magic carousel of secret adoption circa 1970. Our shared reality was a […]

In January 2021, one day after thousands of Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol, I underwent a craniotomy far from home in Loveland, Colorado to remove a low-grade tumour from the front left of my brain. In 2016 the World Health Organization stopped calling such tumours ‘benign’ as, when it comes to the brain, anything where it should not be cannot be classed as benign.

Blurbed as ‘The stunning, explosive new novel from the bestselling author of The Museum of Modern Love, winner of the 2017 Stella Prize’, Bruny is, according to the Allen & Unwin PR department, a ‘searing, subversive novel about family, love, loyalty and the new world order’, ‘a cry from the heart and a fiercely entertaining and crucial work of imagination’, one that dares to ask ‘burning’ questions like ‘How far would they go? How far would you?’ and ‘What would you do to protect the place you love?'

The children are not sure they want to go, but the long morning shadows of their parents cheerfully say it is an adventure. There is turquoise sparkling at the earth’s fingertips, there are sausages to brown on a fire. Together they will walk the arm of land called peninsula.

A faint scent of coffee. The warm seat by the window. The light rumbling of a train ready to depart. These sensations had a very soothing effect that helped me relax. It was a fine beginning to my three-day journey across the country.

There’s a memory I have of fricassee. This may sound like the start of a joke but I am deadly serious. If you don’t know what fricassee is, congratulations. Also, too bad. I’m not going to describe it to you. Talking about the memory is bad enough without going through the recipe.

The ginger cat has killed again. All that’s left is a small pinkish organ lying on the carpet—everything else has been eaten. The cat climbs into Faye Bedwell’s lap and urges itself at her, working its hindquarters and pushing its face at her neck, making her dream of a foxtrot on a purple carpet and the pink neck of a dance partner. Her mouth opens with a thrill.

Ray puts his mouth up to the gap between the window and the car door-frame. Still, everything smells of burning. Smoky air grazes his throat, punches his lungs. His head spins and he slumps back into the driver’s seat. No matter what he does, he can’t stop his hands from shaking. I could go out, he thinks, find her.

He pushes his chair back and stretches his limbs, turning himself into a multiplication sign before taking his glasses off and rubbing his eyes. He knows how they must look: red, irritated, thirsty for a few artificial tears. Has he just snapped at a student? In an online class which was recorded? God damn it! He slams his laptop shut, opens his desk drawer, picks up his eyedrops, and walks to the window. His father still squats where he’s been for the last hour, under the shade of the fig tree, a garden trowel in his hand.

Today my laptop registers like an organ like I can feel it, even from the other side of the house I should find my own rotten way back to some kind of mindfulness practice I should open the windows of my dark room I should read more of the works of celebrated poet Mary Oliver she wrote about geese—which is huge

‘Overlanding’, as in droving cattle across country at distance, waxed as a literary trope precisely as it waned as a means of labour. Like its dialectical opposite the Squatter, the Overlander is etymologically multiple, meaning both the drover who is employed and respectable, and the sundowner, who is itinerant and suspect.