Debi Hamilton

Back in the early 1980s, when I was working in Canberra as a public servant in an open-plan office, I obtained a doctor’s certificate declaring that I was allergic to cigarette smoke. I wasn’t – not at least in any strict medical sense. I was merely a healthy non-smoker who found being enveloped in clouds of second-hand cigarette smoke distressing and unpleasant. The doctor’s letter was ... (read more)

It was watching the empty buses leave in the dark outside the restaurant that did it. I was eating with my lover and my daughter on a June evening in Altona when I found myself being distracted by the rooms of light, quite empty, that floated behind my daughter's back. Every ten or fifteen minutes there would be another one heading off into the night, passengerless, to complete a huge orbit of Mel ... (read more)

Digging in the garden I found a mothalbinoed on a piece of bark by the fence.Those were my radiation days; it was goodto lay down the spade and kneel in the soil. ... (read more)

Last week I received an envelope in the mail, the address written in my father’s hand. My heart accelerated a little and it struck me as unseemly, at my age and in my circumstances, to be still so easily rattled by a parent. The envelope was light – inside I found only a newspaper clipping and a small note. I spread them out on the kitchen bench. A friend was staying with me – a recent acqu ... (read more)