I can still close my eyes and remember summer holidays as a kid. The car trip we made each year, to the small beach town on the other side of the mountain ranges. The smell of eucalyptus and the soaked earth under the vine tangled rain forest, swallowing up the road as our car made…
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I have never been one to free fall into addiction. The hook always skimmed close to my head, but it never latched. So many times, when I was battered and weak. You would think it would be so easy for me to then reach over an uncrossed line for a bottle or pill. I have…
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None of it matters. The plastic, the gadgets, the high glossed magazines; the heels with the right brand name, faded out on the soles, from all the running you do to keep in front. Things obtained to make life easier, dull a pain, stroke an ego; to make you feel like you mean something while you hurl…
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Writing a memoir is a monumental task. And I write that as someone who has never attempted to do so. Consolidating decades of one’s life into a work small enough to be held in one hand seems titanic, especially given the complexity of its primary source: memory. The subtle art of memoir has been beautifully…
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This is the final instalment of Really Honest Postcards from Lyon, April Smallwood’s six part series on life as a young Australian expatriate in France. You can look back over the series here. Dear Ike, I love that the French expression for placing an object down so as to not surprise you is, ‘Op!’, and…
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It is a wintry August evening and I have my window open to let in the crisp city air. I am chilled to the bone, but my room smells the way car tyres do after a burnout and I hate it. It smells this way because I have my own home gym. When I think…
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The colour of the tomatoes is changing each day. There are two on the vine; plump sisters, green-golden in the dapple beneath the frangipani tree. They were green yesterday, and now they have changed. I plucked a large tomato from the vine a few days ago. It was almost bursting, skin taut, still somnolent with…
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Last January I met with a friend who had just completed a year of No Retail. I’ll give a little backstory before explaining the challenge. Kari spent time volunteering for the Good Will and learnt something surprising: the crap you donate thinking you’re some virtuous Mother Theresa – jettisoning your H&M blouses that never fit…
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When I think of backpacking, I think of dragging a battered backpack along the road and changing from buses to trains to coaches to trains to buses. I’m not sure if this next admission will make me lose my Backpacker Cool Points (Ha… like I had any of them) but in the whole time I’ve…
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**TW: rape, violence** It’s been one year, one month and ten days. One year, one month and ten days later and I am not afraid of going to sleep anymore. Like a child, I was afraid of the dark. It’s fair to say that I haven’t really known myself in this time. I have been…
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At the moment, I’m in a rather enviable position compared to most foreign backpackers in Australia. I have just had the last of my 88 days signed off for my second year Visa and I have only been here for just over four months. Now I have almost eight months up my sleeves to…
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In celebration of Father’s Day, Holly Lazzari shares a story about her dad and reminds us to appreciate the people we have in our lives. I’ll admit it; I’m a complete Daddy’s girl. My dad and I find the same things funny, we always have stuff to chat about, we have loads in common, and a…
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People seek out the warmth of the sun. They bemoan their bad luck when it’s too hot, and hate it when an overcast sky blocks the light it emits. We don’t hide from the sun, but we have a respectful fear of it. The sun’s a lot like life. When it’s perfect, we revel in…
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One of my favourite things about Australia, and something that I didn’t realise before I came here, was how diverse its landscape is. I knew Australia was vast but my idea of this crazy country was pretty much similar to one of those maps you see on Tumblr or Buzzfeed: People living on the coast,…
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