We adopted a dog during the pandemic. That’s right, we were one of the record numbers of Australians who consoled themselves during lockdown with a new furry friend. We didn’t go into it lightly. We had lost our two very loved dogs to snakes in the space of a year and left it a while … Read more

A couple of decades ago, I stood for some time looking at a petrol bowser in Bedourie, Queensland, where petrol cost more than $1 a litre. We were amazed at this astronomical price, but the service station owner had motorists in a corner. There was no fuel in this direction for about 200km, and no … Read more

It does not take a pandemic to show us that we all live in the same world. Here, in New South Wales where we live, sunflowers grow in paddocks and on roadsides. Some of them are wild, ragged things that turn their faces to the sun heedless of the traffic, the trucks, the cars full … Read more

We have come to a sad place in our evolution when we are having to list one of our best-loved animals as endangered.Who wants to imagine a world with no koalas? They are part of our national psyche, a creature whose features conjure up gum leaves and the serenity of the bush – ironically some of … Read more

If there is anything that has proven to be an indicator of the changing times of COVID, it is education. We are now two years into this rotten adventure and the ups and downs, the fears and small triumphs, the confusion and the ripple effects – all of them have manifested in the classroom. From … Read more

As a species, we are legends in our lunchtime. We are pretty sure the world is ours to do what we want with, whether it is throwing Hungry Jack’s wrappers into the Mariana Trench or dropping atomic bombs on each other. We are free to expand into every tiny corner of habitable land, elbowing out … Read more

Once, the inappropriate car driven by my husband and myself became lodged in the mire of a blacksoil road between Charters Towers and Aramac. It could not be dislodged. People smarter than ourselves did not use that long and unreliable road. We watched, from memory, two sunsets from the front seat of our car, surrounded … Read more

It has often come to my attention that we do not lead regular lives. Visiting other families is like going to a foreign country – different food, different customs, generally a whole different level of responsible living. My daughter is also aware of this. I noticed her fascination with other families in her early years, … Read more

A friend has just opened an exhibition of paintings based on Dorothea Mackellar’s famous poem My Country. The exhibition and the poem have made me look at our own paddocks in a new – and old – way. How is it that a homesick girl of 19 wrote words that still resonate with us today, more … Read more

One of the things I love about social media is the personal record of your life it gathers. Photographs, milestones, thoughts from the past all pop up on anniversary dates that you had almost completely forgotten. One of the memories that came up the other day was of my daughter in a sprinkling of snow, … Read more