Diary 15 September 2010. Sydney Fringe Festival – bursting out of the inner west suburbs. Or something like that which is the tag line. Bursting out into the art deco Petersham Town Hall which is echoing with the voices of the few who have shown up. The ceiling is magnificent. The tiling is gorgeous. Mr…
Funny how these pictures keep drawing you back (pun alert). To an age of innocence, which is not how anyone would usually describe 1969. Mind you I am not entirely convinced the date on the picture is correct – I like to think I would have been drawing my Dad in this way in 1965…
The travel of the mind is easily the most seductive. And the most dangerous. I am writing a biography of a man I once knew. Still do actually, though he ‘crossed the Jordan’ in 1996. If I was to be honest with myself I have not been prepared for the emotional dislocation that has happened…
When is a book launch not a book launch? When the author writes about his family and his upbringing then invites all those, and some, over to lunch to celebrate his parents, their love and tuition, the memory of them and all those (immediate family and others) who had some part in creating his story. Not the written one…
Dear Charles, I hope being that familiar so soon is okay. I just wanted to say thanks for the excuse to run up to Palmdale today. There is no town centre to speak of but I am sure the couple of women I crept past as they walked their Clydesdales in the shadow of giant…
Dear Mr Sayers, Here you are at last. Funny how a photo makes it all a bit more personal. Just a shame I had to rely on the Army to provide it. I am sure you appreciated the recruits haircut you received just as much as the rest of us did when we received ours. …
Scrubbed timber has no smell. The burnt brake pads and the metal wheel flange create their own dust and heat and smell which lifts in the warm afternoon, hangs in the humid air and is pushed aside by the train as it sighs up to the platform. I watch the handful of people who angle…
I rolled into Cobar with the sun sunk by twenty minutes and the clear autumn sky turned Indian ink blue. The rising moon was flashing through the trees on my right, distracting me from the roos taking a leisurely leap into my path. Thank goodness for peripheral vision. To my surprise all the “No” neons…
Snaky Creek, just out of Manna Hill (ironic given the arid country, but then, perhaps not so ironic: I wonder if quails fall from the sky around here?!). Not Snake Creek. Or Big Snake Creek. Or Black Snake Creek even. But an adjectival snaky, suggesting deviousness. A slipperiness. A snakiness. And perhaps a sense of…
Meet Monty. One of many nephews. Can’t recall the date – but about 1996 or thereabouts.