At my workplace not long ago, an elderly poet inadvertently hung his walking stick on the photocopier’s keypad and, instead of one copy of his mint-new poem, ended up with 413 of them. Gideon Haigh’s latest book is a bit like that. The success of …

Queen Elizabeth’s Melbourne Visit

It comes as a surprise to realise that The Mountain is Drusilla Modjeska’s first novel, since her writing – acclaimed and awarded as non-fiction – has always inhabited the tidal zone between fact and fiction. Set in Papua New Guinea, The …

The Docklands and the Broken Wheel

The state library of Victoria’s card catalogue

An obelisk, I always think, sounds as if it ought to be squat and round. I can’t help knowing otherwise, though, since I live in the shadow of one. Fifty metres from my back gate stands a soaring obelisk dedicated to memory of the doomed explorers Burke …

Late on a blustery Tuesday afternoon in July 1932, three customers entered Black’s Café in Bourke Street, Melbourne. Despite the season, the young man ordered ice-cream for himself and his female companions. “With readings?” asked the waitress, …

“When I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house, I had only two things on my mind: Paul Newman and a ride home.” How many times must I have read that opening line during my last year of primary school? Enough that, …

God works for V/Line, the Victorian country rail service. Actually, it's God for short; full name Godfrey, he's an ex-conductor now employed on station duties. "Pass us that stapler, God," you'll hear a colleague say to him. But not even having God on …