Wooden Customs
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I haven’t always found Customs Officers friendly. When I was a twenty-year-old kajal-eyed traveller from India, Australian Customs cut my soap open.
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Elephant Memory
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‘I tried to imagine an easeful death, just stepping through a door, as they say.’
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The Citrus Tree
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Ropehair began to dream of a garden. At night, when the stars were brilliant, I could feel her happiness as she imagined food growing from the red desert earth.
Read MoreAlways the Sun
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It's an intrusive presence in the desert, that hot star. Things are different in Europe, where the Sun gives people a chance to miss it during winter.
Read MoreClaudia & the Sharks Pt 2
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For a moment I thought, ‘My heart’s gonna stop.’ It was a single shark, a lone swimmer.
Read MoreClaudia and the Sharks
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'I’ve never been afraid of sharks. They are among the most elegant swimmers in the ocean.
There are some exceptions. The Great White has got a face that only a mother could love.'
Bodies: inside and out
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I was allowed to stand above the patient's head to see his heart and lungs working while the doctors and nurses worked on him. I stood as still as I could, afraid I might fall in.
Read MorePlasticity
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My friend sounded like some kind of bitter extremist. Even if I knew she was right, she was spoiling our fun.
Read MoreOh Nutbush
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We’d pull up in the middle of the road to talk to other people driving their cars around, in case something happened.
Read MoreThe Space Inside Things
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I don't believe the plastic bags under the kitchen bench have consciousness. But I could believe it of the exquisite old wooden table on which I type.
Read MoreCreation & Expiration in a Tree
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My Aboriginal grandfather didn’t want to be buried in a graveyard with a headstone after he died. “Put me up in a tree,” he said, “Like the old people did.”
“They put dead bodies up in a tree?” I was incredulous.
The Lost Pearl
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Broome was the first place I saw hot pink frangipanis – their perfume swelling up in the waves of midday heat
Read MoreKa-ta Tju-ta and my Father's Map
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There are those who use the old names in the pursuit of a misguided principle — that English speakers have a right to hegemony, to be the unquestioned namers of everything on the Australian islands.
Read MoreWrong Turn on Uluru - Part 3 (Final)
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"I felt something on the top of my head.” Claudia said, “A claw scratching on my skull! I was terrified!"
Read MoreWrong Turn on Uluru Part 2
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“The Rock protects itself,” said our Anangu friend. According to him, anyone who did ignorant, disrespectful things to Uluru or Kata Tjuta would suffer mental illness in later years.
Read MoreWrong Turn On Uluru
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Far below them the three young men they’d come to rescue were stuck inside an enormous chasm.
Read MoreRed Desert, Healing Hands
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Looking out over the orange and pink sands, patterned by olive and citron greens of recent rains, I thought of our friend who died on that road. He flies with eagles.
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Thrown Out
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'Couldn’t immigration make some allowance?’ asked my wife. ‘They really don’t care,’ said the officer, looking Claudia in the eye.
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