The taxi comes to a halt outside Gimme Shelter, an underground rock’n’roll bar in Canggu, Bali. The booze I consumed pulses through my bloodstream and my fried eyes sting and grow heavy with cheap mascara. My lashes crash, reopen, crash. Unsteady and unsure, my frantic fingers get lost inside my wallet and tangle around my…
Celebrating an independence vote in the country I called home
Dili in August is always dry, dusty, tired; parched brown after months without rain and still facing weeks before the wet season rains arrive. The wide flat land at Tasi Tolu on the city’s western edge is a dustbowl; we’re walking there from where we…
The sky was sun-soaked when the gong sung out at eight, rustling the big gum and alerting the kookaburras. We trudged from our sleeping spaces and cereal bowls to gather at the meeting space. It was like every other morning at Binbee, but August brought an uncharacteristic anxiety to our staunchly empowering home.
“Blockade Adani…
“I used my backpack to shield a young girl from the police’s rubber bullets, because she was about to get hit and for sure she wouldn’t make it out of there if it wasn’t for me. Oh, and the pepper spray really hurt my face, especially my eyes, but I have already used dishwashing liquid…
“Olivia's effort and concentration in class have been variable. At times she has participated well, but at other times, has been off-task. In her future studies, I would like to see Olivia ask more questions and seek help if she is unsure. Her absences have unfortunately hindered her progress quite significantly.”
That was my maths…
Sometimes, I’m proud to be an American. When repping my country abroad, I’ll admit to rubbing the domination of the USA Women’s Soccer Team in the faces of cheeky Brits and wine drunk Frenchmen.
But for some other things, aka Trump-related things, an entirely different emotion radiates from within. Shame.
In a time of worldwide…
A love letter to my she-wolfpack
This is an ode to the 29 women whom I just travelled with. 29 babes. The 29 femme fantasies, 19-to-29-year-old horny, but mostly hungry college co-eds; two-and-a-half dozen unapproachable beauties, the kinds that slack jaws when they walk in bars, make men gape agaw and bend over backwards…
It all started with a story. Dancing across the front of the book was a colourful bird with black feet. Green, red and blue, if my memory serves correctly. How The Birds Got Their Colours is an old yarn – a small thread in the vast and intricate web of The Dreaming. Growing up, it…
It was a Thursday and it was late. What’s worse is that it was cold, and we were hungry.
At this point, we had spent the better half of a month meandering across the United States: stopping in one locale for three nights, and another for four. But on this cold Thursday night, we were…
“They are here because you were there. There is an umbilical connection.”
– Stuart Hall, Black Chronicles.
The following is a reluctant journal of my time volunteering on the Search and Rescue boat ‘Mo Chara’ for Refugee Rescue off the shores of Greece. I originally wrote this so that I would not have to speak…
In Sydney suburbia, a friend and I stroll past a public rubbish bin. The three holes are clearly labelled for the thrower’s convenience: paper, recyclables and general waste. As she looms closer, my heartbeat starts to quicken. She throws a coke can in the general waste.
I cringe internally. This is now my life.
At…
Enormous clouds cling to the peaks of snow-capped mountains. Winking prickly pears and violet wildflowers greet us on either side of a path that looks as if it were opened up by the gods. It’s early afternoon, the sun is low in the sky, and our bellies are full to the brim with Peruvian avocados,…