Published in Overland Issue 217 Summer 2014 · Uncategorized Dinosaur Brendan McDougall curled up in a dead world now underground, stroking brontosaurus’ long, fictional neck & you can’t help but see yourself in the kitchen light’s reflection on the screen. He eats leaves as you watch his wise eyes watching for predators blink & the wind tears away his name like flesh, heating and cracking apart his bones & you’re sad, for a little while, or at least until you remember the papers your father signed at birth proving you were something and that that something was his & besides, this is Australia, a country built on digging up skeletons so even if they lose the paperwork your bones will always be your bones & when they come back for you because some southern-crossed lover needs unleaded to floor himself into the same tree his dad did all those years ago killing himself & passengers, well, then you’ll roar Brendan McDougall Brendan McDougall studies literature at the University of Melbourne and is from Ballarat. More by Brendan McDougall › Overland is a not-for-profit magazine with a proud history of supporting writers, and publishing ideas and voices often excluded from other places. If you like this piece, or support Overland’s work in general, please subscribe or donate. Related articles & Essays 1 6 November 2026 · Friday Fiction Headland Harry Goddard He must have still been sore. I could tell from the winces he made as he scooted down the trail. Some unspoken agreement of not hitting other people’s children — and the circumstances of me not being that type of kid — spared me from the same punishment. I was taken to my parents who agreed I would have to work off the damages, and I must have mowed the lawn once, or cleaned the family car. 4 November 2026 · Film MIFF, Minotaur and the politics of maternal reception Alicia Byrnes Maternal labour is, in the terms I’ve set out here, not labour at all. Noisy, unfocused, mobile, perhaps even sleepy — it is an affront to arthouse film viewing and therefore unserious.
