Drugs

At the Condamine Crossroads Motel

By Janette Turner Hospital

Meg parks right between the goal posts of the Welcome to Condamine sign. Small print below Condamine, white against green, announces: Population 375. For the past two hours, the road has been unpaved, its surface the colour of bloodied rust. “At least we know where we are,” Natasha says. She studies the road atlas in her lap. “Intersection of the Leichhardt Highway and the Condamine Riv

Meeting Andrew Fraser

Line of Appeal

By Jack Marx

There is perhaps no justice quite so poetic as when an errant lawyer goes to jail. Like the image of a prancing matador being hoist to the heavens on the horns of a bull, the barrister trading his cape for prison garb somehow tells of a world where justice knows no bounds and is at long last driven right up the arse of those who get rich on the sport of it. Andrew Fraser was one such player,

The Rush to Diagnose ADHD

Prescribing Behaviour

By Gail Bell

Allan has been in the game for over 30 years and currently works at a special school, discreetly tucked away on the edge of a sports field. It’s a bland, Department of Education semicircle of prefab buildings that nevertheless, on the day I visited, set off a familiar prickle of uneasiness in my throat of the kind I felt as a child when we dared each other to push through the tangled oleander bushes and set foot in the mad lady’s ga

'In Treatment: Season Three'

Couch Habit

By Robyn Davidson

If, like Frederick Crews of the ‘Freud wars’, you think Freud was a crank, and his legacy a “spurious, ineffective pseudoscience”; or if, like Nabokov, you “detest” Freud (“I think he’s crude, I think he’s medieval, and I don’t want an elderly gentleman from Vienna with an umbrella inflicting his dreams upon me …”) then this is the sh

Stardust Memories: In Search of Real Italian Food

By Peter Robb

Tony Bilson has done incomparable good for eating in Sydney over a long time. The gold-coated egg yolk was a Melbourne boy’s astute pitch at Sydney’s easily bored diners – he talked of “keeping them interested”. Yet you wondered whether Bilson, who h

Choosing the Right Path for Adolescent Mental Health

Minds at Risk

By Lisa Pryor

This included $419.7 million over five years for the expansion of two services for young people championed by Melbourne psychiatrist Professor Patrick McGorry. The number of Headspace centres is set to triple to 90. These centres focus on young people aged 12

Reflections on the Breeding House

In the Rat Room

By Gail Bell

In many ways it was the perfect job for a young recovering panic merchant. Geographical isolation, hours alone with non-speaking mammals, a heavy door between me and the other primates, and a routine to learn and master at my own speed. Nominally, I was a laboratory ass

Suresh Nair

Through the Cracks

By Tanveer Ahmed

Lonergan, who had appointed Nair three years earlier, had only a vague idea that he might suffer from a mental illness. Nair was also employed by the public hospital adjacent to the Nepean; the Medical Board had stipulated Nair must work under supervision and

Robert Rodriguez and Ethan Maniquis' 'Machete' and Sean Byrne’s 'The Loved Ones'

Tools of the Trade

By Luke Davies

“Every time an illegal dances across our border,” says Senator John McLaughlin (Robert de Niro) at a rally, “it is an act of aggression against this sovereign state.” This Texan politician, the “Independent from Cocksucker County”, is running for re-election

'Freedom' by Jonathan Franzen

By Michelle de Kretser

Artists in fiction are coded confessions. Freedom gives us Richard Katz, rock musician and homme fatal, pitched suddenly, just like Jonathan Franzen following The Corrections (2001), into fame. Since this is a novel that doesn’t fear platitude, liberal doses

Jimmy Barnes's 'Rage and Ruin'

Barnsey's Blues

By Robert Forster

What do Sarah Blasko, Silverchair, The Grates and Jimmy Barnes all have in common? Their latest albums were all made outside Australia using overseas producers. Other bands such as Powderfinger and Bridezilla brought in the overseas producer, while Tame Impala

Nick Kent’s 'Apathy for the Devil: A 1970s Memoir'

Rock and Roll Babble On

By Robert Forster

To read the New Musical Express (NME) in the ’70s was one of the great joys of the decade. It was an insider’s choice and the seriousness of any new acquaintance’s enthusiasm for music could be instantly gauged by whether they read it or not. The readership of the

Heart to Heart

By Gail Bell

My sister is in town, on leave from her burn-out job and hankering for family. We both work in health provision, which is to say, we serve (in different uniforms) at the great community welfare table. She manages a team of crisis counsellors; I hand out drugs to anyone with the right piece of paper. We are poles apart in orientation and style but time has er

Hair Apparent

By Alice Pung

Mr Abe Lourie is 81, and tells me that he is in perfect health. Every morning he walks up two flights of stairs to open his store. The lift has been broken for quite some time and yet customers continue to come up, because for half a century he has helped fill a lack in people’s lives. Stacked from floor to ceiling with over a thousand heads of real and synthetic hair, Creative Wigs is one of th

'Lives Like Loaded Guns: Emily Dickinson and Her Family’s Fueds' by Lyndall Gordon

By Michelle de Kretser

Central to Lyndall Gordon’s biography of Henry James is an extraordinary scene. As daylight fades over Venice, James drops a dead woman’s dresses into the lagoon. But the garments fill with air and won’t drown, pressing up against the novelist’s gondol

The Methadone Program at 40

Liquid Handcuffs

By Gail Bell

Two old hands who dose at the pharmacy where I work (a couple, Danny and Carla) have been using since they were 18. They are in their forties now, have raised their kids (the eldest is at university), and keep a neat house in the suburbs. This is their third g

The Child Gangs of Tweed Heads

The Wild Frontier

By Mandy Sayer

Martin climbs off his bike and walks through the piles of rubbish towards the verandah. It’s then that he sniffs a deeper, ruder stench: his front door and its handle are smeared with shit. He lets himself into the house, grabs his shotgun and loads it. Gun in hand, h

Beautiful Waste

By Robert Forster

David McComb, who passed away in 1999 at the age of 36, was the lead singer and songwriter of The Triffids. The band began their career in Perth in the late 1970s and broke up in 1989, and although McComb released a solo album, Love of Will, in 1994, and wrote and played with other musicians over the years, it is his first group that made him his reputation. The ripple that goes out from great art