They said you committed infanticide, but you don’t remember a thing. You were a loving mother before it happened. Postnatal depression, said the experts. It swept into you and one night five years ago you “snapped”. You fractured your son’s skull …

How the Morwell coal mine fire has made unlikely allies

JM Coetzee’s ‘The Childhood of Jesus’

John Safran’s new ABC TV project

Hiking the Milford Track, New Zealand

When bankers fly in to Kiribati, a fine evening spread is put on at the main hotel. Blue-cardboard ironies are erected: squat sandwich boards and billowy banners advertising ANZ home loans. Yes, home loans, in a place global warming is meant to be washing …

Sonya Hartnett’s ‘Butterfly’

Life under Fiji’s interim government

“How do I look?” my mother asks. “You look beautiful,” say the nurses. “Quite the stunner, young lady.” She looks every day her 84: crumpled paper for skin, red blue eyes in a pucker. Dementia is never about telling the truth. …

You miss out on medicine by five points and so you dedicate your life to trivia. Don't get eccentric on us, with your pointy bald head and smart-arse grin - we don't like those sorts of antics, mister. This is Melbourne, Australia, not England. But you, …

You might have missed it a few months ago, this amusing aside in the daily news: during the auction of a flash rural property in the old-money recesses of the northern ranges outside Melbourne, two beefy blokes turned up, nosing about the place as if …

Inside New Zealand’s social laboratory

Humans love getting something for nothing. Failing that, next to nothing. Picking up a $1-million inner-city Melbourne house for a $15,000 outlay, for instance. No, not by gambling, not in some casino's high-stakes spin-the-wheel game. There's a loophole …

To be unforgiven is no great shame. A cramp of nausea your bowels can’t clear. Sweat itches your hairline, stains your pillow. Take heart - you’re not going to wither in your bed. Your eyes soon open on a blue, breathing day. Your taste for food …

Nose down in the froth of his clover beerthe grey horse sups alone.He ignores a butting calf with its patched coat,and the flitting tarts the wagtails - how he must hate their chirpy songs;they can't really hold a tune,only some pitiful, high-pitched …