OnDusk

I don’t mind how strange I seem when I answer the door. It’s my place. I didn't know the woman at the door in dove grey exercise gear and a worried expression. 'Do you have a cat?' I knew and she could clearly see that there were three bowls of cat food, a pet box and a cosy cardboard box of cat bed proportions that contained a floofed-up Qantas blanket. 'No. I don’t…have a cat.' Her story was a short one. She’d moved in to #3 earlier in the week and by late Friday afternoon was door knocking trying to locate the owner of a deceased cat she had driven past on the front steps of #2. I live at #5. The end of the line with the largest most glorious expanse of concrete I’ve ever had the pleasure of calling my front yard.   A fringe of tiers of manicured shrubbery reaching to the windows surrounds the property. I explained I fed the occasional stray cat from the vacant lot over the fence. It's true they did occasionaly go for a stroll alo...

Dear readers, I've some exciting news! I was thrilled to have been recently selected for one of the 2017 Feminartsy Writing Residencies . Over the next ten months I will be one of the writers producing an article a month.  I'll post the links here. My theme for the residency - the status of black women, specially Aboriginal women, in  Australia.  I'll be writing about women I know, the lives I am familiar with, and where feminism of all kinds has gotten us. I'll also be talking about activism - what works and where it has failed black women in particular, and the embedded violence within what continues to be referred to as the 'Aboriginal community' that needs to be exposed, for all our sakes. ... June 2017  Writing our truths – privilege and identity  as an Aboriginal woman Unless you know me very well, I am unlikely to be the Aboriginal person that you expected. How did a people who are constantly reported on and at the centre of Aust...

Two things I learnt in the first 30 seconds – there was going to be a delay in my flu shot, and the nurse had run out of lolly pops. I was disappointed in the lolly pop situation.   But I had scored a great parking spot so I decided to wait for the shot. There were five of us banked up in the nurses' treatment room. We quickly became acquainted with each other because the nurse broadcast our affairs as she strode around all over the place. A mother with her teenage daughter, waiting for a weekly weigh in because she wasn’t eating enough. Another mother of what we could only guess was a much older child. She was folding and smoothing a wide shouldered grimy work shirt across a knee and had a reaction each time her child let out a groan or a whimper.   He was the reason for the delay, having been rushed in with some injury that needed suturing. We couldn’t see him behind the curtain but his mother’s face told a story. Looked to me like she had gotten some worrying n...

It is the first weekend in April, Week 1 of Camp NaNoWriMo  and I'm wandering through old memories.  Something about writing while my virtual cabin is on fire - how I choose to picture my camp - has incendiary thought bombs going off in the heat. If I hadn’t set my heart, finally, on writing, I would have been a fashion designer. I feel the frustration at a career denied most acutely when I see badly dressed women on tv. God, in that off-the-shapeless-shoulder monstrosity, she looks like a boiled spud in a serviette. Aren’t we all judgmental of clothing, ours and everyone else?  Isn’t it part of the deal of people wearing their personality as their sleeves, around their hem lines, shouted or whispered in their colour choice and expressed in the drape of fabrics worn somewhere from head to toe?  Growing up, my clothes were second hand or mum made them. My finery was all made by mum, with the exception of a 50s suit I found at a second hand shop. It con...

At some point in the conversation, I clarified, so the choices are 'dead' or 'terrified'? Yes, she said. Well, I'd have to choose 'terrified' wouldn't I? Dead is pretty final. She asked me to think about it, over the next little while. My decision was required minutes later, as it turned out. I had barely returned to the bench seat which would have been so much more comfortable if only a few inches deeper. We'd been discussing recipes and the odds and sods of life for an hour or more. But on my return I had a new topic of discussion.  It is testament to this stage of our life that we can discuss life choices as calmly as any other topic.  With our raising, our dips and  our turns into confusion, and finding our way to a deep well of revelations, we now trust and care for each other in all things these days. Sisters who are our mother. They wheeled me in and the theatre stood by as I was asked for my decision. I said what I wanted, and w...

UMBRE HBO produced 8 part series New to SBS OnDemand This review is riddled with spoilers. Adapted from an Australian series, Small Town Gangster (which I can’t recall seeing), HBO made the decision to adapt an Australian story to a Romanian setting : Bucharest to be exact. Umbre translates as 'Shadows' in Romanian. I’d been drawn to watch Umbre after reading it’s irresistible marketing pitch – it’s a crime series, in the style of Breaking Bad.  First impressions were good, getting straight into a scene that was both intriguing and set the tone for the entire series.  The palate is dirty yellows and greys.   The opening scene gives us our first sight of our star, and it’s always good to see actors that are unfamiliar.    A good start from the opening scene, and then boom – the characters started to speak. Now, I know there are many conversations between men that I'll never be privy to, and I ...