I’m gazing into a postcard of the mountains of Massachusetts, a bookmark with an Emily Dickinson quote in my other hand: ‘It’s all I have to bring today…’ the quote says. But there’s more. Before me are four pages of a handwritten letter, from a stranger in Birmingham, Alabama. …

This piece from 2015 was written some months before dad died, in the year of his last wattle and his last Father’s Day. The boy is now nearly 21, and our footy teams are both in the finals! Breathing in the bittersweet memories. Officially we hit Spring today. The other…

My child flies away, carrying my old backpack and her new dreams. When my daughter was born, fast and fabulous, she was placed unclothed next to me to gain heat, and I stared into her eyes. …

Grave pandemic exercise, from my pandemic journal, on this day in 2020. Keep moving through the graveyard no, no time to stop keep moving you’re only allowed to be out here exercising not meandering. No wondering about the nine month old and a four day old child the girl dead…

The Widening Crack– the cost of not acting on climate change. The little flame in our forty-year-old wall furnace, the one that was supposed to hold tight, hang on and persist, was being extinguished, again and again. The pilot light had become unanchored, blown away and shut down. We were in lockdown, in a Melbourne winter. We had been bunkered down…

Morning walk. I wake too late to do my nature writing workshop so I decide to get out into nature instead! Head off at about 7 am, sustained on half a cup of hot water with lemon, a banana and a snack KitKat. Make it to the backbeach in time…

When the branches of Eucalyptus botryoides fall, as they often do, they root again and continue to grow. The tree is its own ecosystem. …

Inside the pages of the old school atlas, the small boy holds the pencil, angling it as he edges around Australia’s shores. My father’s hand has been here, tracing the coast, the grey lead pencil pushed down hard into the paper. My father’s atlas appeared in the family house pack-up…

When I heard a woman remark ‘I’d rather die than not have my hair done,’ I wrote the words down, stunned. It’s strange what has been deemed ‘essential’ in the time of Covid-19. Shopping for food, sure. Medical appointments, yes, if necessary. Exercise, OK. And until recently, a trip to…