Published in Overland Issue 224 Spring 2016 · Uncategorized Stranger, Grandfather Zoe Barnard Never knew you properly in the fifteen years our lives overlapped. This great expanse of country always lay between us. Don’t even know what I don’t know about you. About the life of a military man who seemed so gentle and quiet that I couldn’t picture him in uniform. And I don’t want to ask because it’s been years but tears are still fresh in everyone’s eyes and it seems a bit late now. One thing I do know besides your need for thick glasses and your indifference toward disappearing hair, was your love of the garden below your house. Of the cherries you grew and picked and presented to me in a mug one morning during my visit, six months before the cancer came. I’ve never liked cherries. And I couldn’t swallow them even for you. I left them there in the fridge, left you with them and flew back home. Zoe Barnard Zoë Barnard is a freelance editor and writer, who lives and works in Perth. More by Zoe Barnard › 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 First published in Overland Issue 228 27 September 2023 · Sport When the sport circus comes on Country Jenny Fraser The next huckster in the carnival of sport is the upcoming 2032 Brisbane Olympic Games. If we want aspects of it to be in line with Aboriginal protocol, we need action from across the four winds of the world. If it’s not done right we need solidarity and protest just the same. We are each other’s safety net in this theatre of sport. As a senior Aboriginal woman activist once told me, ‘we are all only as good as we negotiate’. First published in Overland Issue 228 25 September 202326 September 2023 · The university Solidarity but only among managers, or the future of the university sector Hannah Forsyth The process continued during Covid. Jobs were being cut due to the threats posed by the pandemic, yet more scholars were being recruited. Nice people, good at their job. But why are we doing this, we kept asking. Management kept telling us we have a funding crisis (which often turned to a surplus in the end), so why are we also on a hiring spree? All along it looked like it could end badly, for all of us.
