The day it happened, Arlie wasn’t paying attention. An owl had visited, that was the problem, but Arlie had forgotten. It is going to be very difficult to top the three insightful and engagin…| This Reading Life
I meet my parents at a fish shop in an inner-city mall. By the time I get there, they are waiting in their windbreakers and matching hiking shoes. I greet their outdoor energy with a wave hello. &#…| This Reading Life
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single lady in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a husband. ‘Nonsense,’ Miss Caroline Bingley muttered into her empty teacup…| This Reading Life
I have hated my mother for most of my life but it is her face I see as I drown. But Rowan doesn’t drown and the face she sees upon wakening is the ‘rough and wind-bitten and scratchy…| This Reading Life
Heaven is never-ending light. It is jasper and crystal, pearls and gold. It is lightning and rainbos and a great, rushing river. It is white horses and doves and angels singing holy holy holy and t…| This Reading Life
OutsideDid you knowthat seahorseshave two skeletons:one on the insideand one on the outside?Imagine being able towear your skeleton on the outsidelike armour,making sure that predators knownot to c…| This Reading Life
Photo by Fleur on Unsplash After writing my recent post about Louisa Lawson and the elegant new statue now on display in her hometown of Mudgee (NSW), I found myself wondering how ma…| This Reading Life
Blackboards chalked ‘Positions Vacant’ hang against the wall. She feels like she has walked all morning to get here. She hurries past loiterers with worn faces and sagging hats. They sp…| This Reading Life
They found him through an advertisement on Gumtree. “For sale: nine-week-old fawn-coloured male mini lop in search of his forever home. Lovely temperament, well handled. Comes with transition…| This Reading Life
I woke to the breaths of a whale as it made its way through the channel between islands. The huff difted through my tent; in seconds I shed my sleeping-bag cocoon and sloshed down through the salal…| This Reading Life
Lena Derwent had worked at Mason’s for less than a week when they started making fun of her. Highway 13 is a collection of short stories by Australian writer, Fiona McFarlane. The stories are…| This Reading Life
On the second of January, in the year 1880, three newly-orphaned sisters, finding themselves left to their own devices, with an income of exactly one hundred pounds a year a-piece, sat down to cons…| This Reading Life
and so it begins / a new beginning / not quite genesis She is the Earth is described on the title page as a verse novel but it reads more like a long poem, and like most poetry, it bears repeated r…| This Reading Life
‘The Great Australian Silence’ was how the anthropologist Bill Stanner characterised the history of colonisation and settlement. In a series of consequential lectures in 1968, Stanner m…| This Reading Life
My love, we need to talk. I’ve tried and tried to call you from the Tesla’s dashboard phone, but I haven’t had a clear connection in over six years. There’s nothing but a low buzzing in my earpiece…| This Reading Life