Monday, August 17, 2009 at 11:45PM Armed with a book called 'Free Camping in Australia' and towing a 6x4 box trailer behind our Commodore VH, my partner Jan and our three children; Felix 10, Fenn 8 and Matilda 4 departed inner Sydney in October 2002. We headed west, slowly. Jan's parents in Perth were celebrating fifty years of marriage just after Christmas and had promised to stay together till we got there...
Sunday, August 6, 2006 at 11:46PM There was a book high up on our father’s shelf that we weren’t meant to look at, called The Knights of Bushido - but of course, we did. It was about Japanese atrocities during the war and contained drawings of tortures and photos of people being buried alive. When I was still quite small, my big brother had stood on a chair and pulled it down to show me. He told me that our dad had seen stuff like this...
Wednesday, June 15, 2005 at 11:45PM I had worn out my elastic-sided boots and was taking them to be repaired at Whyalla’s biggest shopping centre, called Westlands (the place where Bob Hawke in his ‘91 election campaign called someone a ‘silly old bugger’). Nico stopped me, saying, ‘Don’t go there...
Tuesday, June 7, 2005 at 02:00AM The post-war arcade off Cowra's main street where for 35 years Olive Cotton had rented her two-room photographic studio was up for demolition. Developers were building a bigger and better one, they said; and in recognition of Olive's status as a 'living national treasure' had offered her some space in the new one, rent free...
Wednesday, June 1, 2005 at 11:46PM On the way in to Kempsey en route to South West Rocks, with Fenn and Felix listening to their book tape in the back seat, I pulled off the highway to drive slowly past the house where a girlfriend once lived. It was back in the early seventies...