Short Stories

At this point, the question isn’t whether the North Adelaide Public Golf Course development within our Adelaide Park Lands will go ahead. It is underway and will continue. These Park Lands are on the Australian Heritage Register because they have outstanding heritage significance to Australia , assessed against nine national criteria by the Australian Heritage Council. Just another thing we can thank Midnight Oil frontman and then Federal Environment Minister Peter Garrett for, who in 2008 formally approved the Adelaide Park Lands and City Layout for inclusion on the National Heritage List.  So how can we stop the beds from burning, face the facts, and set a fairer precedent for every other project that will closely follow, including the MotoGP works at Victoria Park? Because what we do now will matter for every future development proposal.  1. Stop tree removal until August National Heritage status makes the Park Lands a matter of national environmental significan...

I burst into tears when the jeweller handed me my late mother’s ring. When I brought it into the shop, it was dull and broken from years of wear. From years of daily abrasion. Stones loosen; settings weaken. Looking at it now, the star-split band is soldered, mended like a scar. Connection restored. Healed. Once three, now two, stones stay intact. Two grey-blue stone eyes like my mother's. Dad bought this friendship ring for Mum 45 years ago. A promise ring. The promise of things to come. When we were kids, my sister would admire Mum’s rings and wanted to wear them all the time. My childhood memories are connected to Mum wearing this particular ring. Calisthenics classes and concerts. Netball training. Birthday parties. Sleepovers. Cooking with spices. Sewing clothes and curtains. Shopping with our eyes first. Conversations at the kitchen table. Laughing at jumbled words and mixing up languages. Crying over bloodied knees and hurt feelings. I didn’t like wearing rings then, when I ...

I stood, staring down at an image of Duane Hanson's sculpture Woman with a Laundry Basket (1974) and was brought back to a memory of a school trip to the Art Gallery of South Australia during the nineties. At the time, I was just a girl, probably around ten. I remember the artwork's realism being quite impressive, but she unsettled me. She wears glasses, has curlers in her hair, a laundry basket on her hip, and is pregnant. Her face, cast downward, had the look of defeat. She was  terribly alone. She gave me a sick feeling in my stomach. I was too young to articulate why I felt this way. It wasn’t until last week during sculpture class, when I saw her again in a book, that I heard myself say out loud in conversation with my art lecturer and peers: I think she’s the reason why I didn’t have kids . The woman represented a life I didn't want for myself, a life of domesticity and mundane routines. A path that girls like me from migrant working-class families went d...

Stories are all we are , they’re all we have . I had just turned 20. He was 35. His words eluded my emotional comprehension back then but resonate with me now. These memories percolated while I watched Charles Foster’s online presentation at the G10 . I was reminded of unpacking ideas in a chaotic world , specifically, Donna Haraway’s book Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene (2016) when Foster said in his talk: “ It takes a story to know a stor y”. Haraway explores our interconnectedness with the environment and other species, advocating for new forms of kinship and collaboration in the face of ecological crises. She asserts: “ It matters what stories make worlds; what worlds make storie s”. Stories are tools we use to create and share our realities, environment, and how we interact. Stories are necessary for navigating our place in the world. By sharing narratives about our connections with other human and non-human beings, Haraway highlights how these sto...