1Melbourne, Australia
11th February 2009
Stop
As the toll of Saturday’s bushfires has emerged, I’ve found myself reacting in a similar way to the days following the attacks of September 11, 2001, where the constant re-running of footage clearly showing people dying in horrific circumstances caused me to recoil, and eventually shut down.
0Melbourne, Australia
4th September 2008
Anniversaries
This time two years ago, I was waiting at Melbourne airport for my flight to Madrid. As far as I was concerned, I was leaving Australia for the better part of a decade, if not longer. I said goodbye to my life here and boarded the plane with a note of sadness in a concerto of excitement and anticipation. Now, the anniversary of that event passes me in a cloud of bitterness for a second time, and I find myself wondering if it really was only two years ago.
0Melbourne, Australia
15th January 2008
George Burns was right
The new academic year is away once more, with thousands of new first year students descending on Melbourne to commence a year of learning (both in and out of the lecture hall). Tonight I went to collect Edgard from a function he was attending for new starters at La Trobe, and found I’d left behind my student days and not even realised it.
1Melbourne, Australia
6th December 2007
The Black Sheep is Pink
Had I written this in the present when events were unfolding, I’d almost certainly have had a different perspective. So I am writing to you from the future, when the most distressing parts of this are dispensed with and a degree of calm and normalcy has returned. We’ve moved to the stage I’d always imagined we’d be at. If only I’d foreseen the aftershocks, we may have got there a little sooner.
0Melbourne, Australia
17th September 2007
A search for the intangible
There's nothing more likely to motivate me to write, and by that I mean plunging headlong into my fiction writing rather than my journal, than a sudden crush of job interviews. As I sit at the airport and wait for my flight back to Canberra, I am watching a giant orange sun sink beneath the horizon. I've found myself thinking about the past several days and what I've done in that time, I find myself facing two inescapable truths: I am not doing all with my life that I could or should; and I am experiencing something of a disconnect from my profession.
0Melbourne, Australia
17th March 2007
The ghost of me
My work has brought me back to a major stepping-stone in my life, and in a rather peculiar way. For the seven years I lived at the Student Village, and in particular the five years I spent within the college of Chifley, we often contemplated what went on behind the high fences surrounding the Maribyrnong Immigration Detention Centre. This week, work gave me an assignment of actually finding out and reporting on just that. The temptation to revisit the village was too great to ignore, and I found myself revisiting a part of my life put to bed long ago, yet still feels like yesterday.
0Melbourne, Australia
4th September 2006
Now boarding…
I have left Australia just once before; when I was twelve, and it was only to New Zealand. My memory of the departure experience has long faded, and was long overdue for a refresher.