Category Archives: autobiographical

Flood the city: notes from a nervous Perth climate protestor

12 Saturday Oct 2019

Posted by in autobiographical, politics and current affairs

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I was one of those despicable climate protestors blocking the Perth CBD yesterday. I hate inconveniencing people, but this is an emergency. I was feeling dread in the days leading up to the protest. For security reasons, there weren’t many details given out to rank-and-file protestors like me about what we were going to do. And you never know how the police are going to act. They can be fair and respectful to protestors or they can play hardball and be unpredictable. And who was going to look after the kids if we both got arrested? Continue reading →

Perth School Strike For Climate: notes from the middle of the crowd

23 Monday Sep 2019

Posted by in autobiographical, politics and current affairs

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It was humbling to be led by school students, born this century, in the Global Climate Strike on Friday. But also inspiring. The turnout in Perth was estimated at 10,000, and Forrest Place was filled to the brim. Even this impressive turnout was overtaken by smaller cities, Hobart and Canberra, but that’s just a sign of how big this day was, how many people are concerned enough to make a stand. Continue reading →

Year five of my quest for Katharine Susannah Prichard

21 Wednesday Aug 2019

Posted by in academic, autobiographical, My KSP biography, news and events

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You can’t really see it, but I’m holding a copy of my thesis and the “PhinisheD” mug on the day of my submission. Of course, I’m not really finished  – not even the thesis, which will probably come back with corrections after examination!

It’s five years today since I officially started my biography of Katharine Susannah Prichard. This is starting to be a long time. The decade was young when I began and now it’s finishing. In fact, I was beginning just at the start of the centenary of the Great War, and I submitted my PhD thesis on Katharine’s early life in late June, just before the centenary of Armistice. My thesis lasted the length of the Great War; the whole biography – extending the story to the end of her life – will take somewhat longer. Continue reading →

My poor fallow blog

05 Tuesday Mar 2019

Posted by in autobiographical

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My poor fallow blog, my poor neglected readers. I thought I was busy before child number two arrived at the end of winter. But since then, I have been busier, and exhausted with a tiredness that has settled in. (I was going to tell you her name in a previous post, because we still hadn’t chosen it – it’s Sarah, and she’s now six months old, and crawling the length and breadth of the house.) Today is my birthday, and I have a tradition of writing a blog post on my birthday – that and going to a movie, once a regular occurrence, but currently an annual one. I have no wisdom or wit about turning thirty-eight, I’m rather sad about it really. Well, and glad to still be here on Earth in reasonable health. Continue reading →

Letter to my newborn daughter

05 Wednesday Sep 2018

Posted by in autobiographical

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Baby Hobby, born 27 August

Dear girl,

You came into the world on a Monday afternoon at the end of winter. That winter felt like it had gone on as long as the pregnancy, days of rain and gloom and your mum perpetually sick. Wanting to bring you into the world was an act of hope on our part – yet it comes with the long anxious reality of waiting in uncertainty. Will you be okay? It doesn’t end now you’ve come out into the world; it’s only been intensified in these first nights of late-night television and islands of sleep. Oh, hope and fear usually go together – maybe by the time you read this, you’ll have started to understand that about the world. Continue reading →

The 28th, 29th, and 30th prime ministers: a memoir

24 Friday Aug 2018

Posted by in autobiographical, politics and current affairs, Series: Saturday 10am

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Lauterbrunnen, Switzerland, September 2013.

The day Tony Abbott became prime minister we were in Lauterbrunnen, a town in the Swiss Alps, the most beautiful place I’ve ever been. For the second night, we were eating at a restaurant run by an Australian. He was jubilant about the result. I was quiet, melancholic, and suddenly unhappy to be in his restaurant, sitting outside in the dusk. He was going on about the mess the ALP had made of things and I couldn’t possibly be sorry to see that over. I was sorry, sorry it hadn’t worked out better, sorry for the tragedy set off by Rudd’s character flaws. But the ALP wasn’t my party and I made no more than a cryptic suggestion to him that it was complicated for us; if he thought Abbott was a good idea, there was no point telling him how far left we’d voted. We went to a different restaurant the last night in Lauterbrunnen, even though his food had been good. Continue reading →

Winter: a memoir

07 Saturday Jul 2018

Posted by in autobiographical, Series: Saturday 10am

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1897 Winter

“Winter”, Melbourne Punch, 3 June 1897, 18. http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article174626116

Saturday 10am #6

The trip to Canberra in July two years ago is my most vivid winter memory. We were staying on the outskirts at the edge of the mountains, and on our first day we were walking at midday in cold, crisp air while the sun shone in a cloudless sky, a lemony light. I love winter sun and this was its most pure expression. Other days of true cold, where it hurt to even be outside, wind, rain – all those winter things. Perhaps I glimpsed snow for the first time on a hilltop. And nights – I’d never experienced negative six degrees before. But the slate floor was heated, a warm presence.  I could live in Canberra, if the chance arose. Continue reading →

Going out of print: a brief history

09 Saturday Jun 2018

Posted by in autobiographical, Series: Saturday 10am

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Saturday 10am #2

The publisher of my novel has destroyed the unsold copies, I suspect. They haven’t told me this; they haven’t told me anything for years. But first I happened to notice it going cheaply late last year and bought some copies. Then, last month, I was visiting the publisher’s online store and saw the promising heading ‘TAG Hungerford Award Winners’, of which I am one, and clicked on it, only to find my book and the other winners before 2003 wiped away. I started searching for other books which used to be available and almost anything more than ten years old was gone. And finally, a bookseller told me she had tried to order a copy of a book from this publisher, only to be told they no longer had any stock; perhaps she should contact the author directly. There are two things for me to deal with, then. First, my grievance that the publisher didn’t offer me a chance to buy copies before their destruction – a final insult, but I won’t dwell further on that. Second, the fact I have gone out of print.  Continue reading →

‘1940 handwritten diary / unknown female / New York’

14 Wednesday Feb 2018

Posted by in archives and sources, autobiographical, creative nonfiction

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handwritten diary

Photo: 1940 Handwritten Diary, taken by 6cats4sandi, Ebay

I stumbled upon a diary for sale on Ebay, described like this:

This is the 1940 diary of an unknown female. There are 127 days of entries. It looks like there might be enough information inside to possibly research and find out who the author might be.There are also a couple of newspaper clippings inside.The diary is in good condition,considering its age,with only a few pages darkened from age,and the clippings.

It wasn’t the only handwritten diary for sale, but the bidding for this one was more intense than others. It ended up selling for US202.50. Was it the mystery of the diarist’s identity that brought out more bidders? The quantity of entries? Or interest in that year and place?  Continue reading →