Published Stories
Worgan’s Piano
The day after our arrival in Sydney Cove, Mr MacArthur arranged with Governor Phillip for me to be attended to by the Colony’s Surgeon, Mister George Worgan. The surgery was located in a tent by the Tank Stream below the Governor’s hut, and by the time I’d arrived, three patients were sitting outside, upon a log waiting their turn: a Marine in dark trousers with braces crossing his white shirt, sans coat and hat, and two scruffy fellows in convict’s outfits….
Saved
Gubbal looks down upon the flowing Kedron Brook Creek from his favourite vantage point, outside the Zion Hill Lutheran Mission, where he is having a cook-up. Some whitefellas are dressing after bathing on a sandbank directly below. He is surprised, as always, that they bathe, clothed. He would tell, whoever would listen, that it would be far better if they didn’t wear clothes, because then they would be cleaner, ripen, become dark of skin and healthier, and fit-in better with the locals.
Imaginings
MY brother was a terrible liar. Not terrible in that he couldn’t tell good lies, or couldn’t disguise them, but terrible in that he told themall the time. It was difficult to establish fiction from reality.
‘Rian, if you’re lying about this, I’ll skin you alive,’ mother would say. ‘Alive you hear?’
‘That’s okay Mum. Once I had dragon’s scales for skin and I would shed them whenever I was trapped by a giant and could find no other way to escape. It’s why I now have this soft pink skin.’
Mick
Gee, when the police knock on the door, out of the blue, and tell us they have Mick in custody, I shatter.
‘With the evidence we have we’ll be able to put him away for a long time,’ the CIB detective says.
He’s bailed Dad and I up down the back yard. Something’s annoying him. He keeps swatting the flies that circle his freckled face, like they’re hornets, intent on killing him, and that a single bite from them would be the death of him: that we, like Mick, are guilty.
The Spark
Because I have known you so long, dear Camille, and you have never betrayed my confidences, I can leave you with an honest answer.
I loved Percy. In his presence I was truly alive, and even when he was absent, he was a giant in my imagination, always present, sometimes draped languidly as if in drugged torpor and sometimes erect, indecent, outrageous, but, always beautiful. He was as soft as mushrooms to the touch and smelled as fresh as mountain air, night, or day
A Hand of Bananas
A line in the sand
The sun beat unmercifully upon his tanned shoulders, his balding head. It boiled the blue waters in which he bobbed, a hundred metres from shore and had chased the dawn breeze, early, so the waves lolled in with a regular rhythm. Ashore, sunbakers who did move, scurried high-stepping, from wooden steps to towel, from towel to water’s edge, to avoid the hot sand, or to cool burnt feet.
The Mine Manager’s Wife
‘I see Tom got a letter from Jenny in the mail this morning,’ said post-mistress Gittie Nettles, a large lady with cake crumbs trailing down her front.
‘Moranbah Post Mark,’ she added, more to her ample bosom than to the gathering, as she busily plucked crumbs from her blouse.
‘Moranbah?’ questioned an incredulous Marilyn Mauny, her voice high-pitched. ‘Moranbah? What on earth did she want to go to Moranbah for?’ The gathering chuckled like butterflies dispersing in fright from a blossom.