Published in Overland Issue 220 Spring 2015 · Uncategorized Paradise losing Georgina Woods Le paradis n’est pas artificiel, but melting and fermenting, it seems. The panting, perishing white lemuroid possum can’t get enough water, can’t cool her febrile body, drops from the canopy of a thousand-year-old tree, in a white whoosh of rushing light. Le paradis n’est pas artificiel, but unpredictable, these days. Short-tailed shearwaters cruise southward, but their fruitless fishing for squid during this too-hot November, leaves them knackered, and the shore-break delivers them to us, as they give up the ghost. Le paradis n’est pas artificiel, but becoming simpler, no doubt. The great blue homeland acidifies and corrodes its little calcite prawns, absorbs them, with a sigh, into the same soup that sloshes over the coral beds, turning them a general algal brown. Georgina Woods is an activist and poet working and living on Awabakal and Worimi land in Newcastle, Australia. An earlier version of this essay was shortlisted for the 2016 Nature Writing Prize. More by Georgina Woods › 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 10 February 202510 February 2025 · open letter Open letter on academic freedom, in solidarity with Randa Abdel-Fattah Scholars against political repression We, the undersigned, write to express our condemnation of the decision by the Education Minister Jason Clare to request the Australian Research Council (ARC) to investigate the Future Fellowship of Macquarie University academic Randa Abdel-Fattah “as a matter of priority”. 7 February 20257 February 2025 · Friday Fiction The gap between the trees Jenny Sinclair At first it was because I was angry. It might have looked like I was running away but I wasn’t. I was punching the earth with my feet. The faster I went — the harder my soles hit the ground — the better it felt. Because punching people is, you know, illegal. And wrong. But mostly illegal.
