I’m Kaye, fifty-seven, and Mum is eighty-three. She lives in a small unit near Wollongong with a balcony full of plants and a fierce opinion about how much water a lemon tree needs. My brother Ross lives fifteen minutes away.…
For a moment I thought the bakery had made a mistake. My daughter, Elise, had booked the small function room at the bowls club in Ballarat. She had invited my old neighbours, my former colleagues, even the woman who taught…
Dad had driven a school bus in Geelong for thirty years. He wore his best navy suit and arrived early because he was afraid of holding up the ceremony. He’d contributed to the reception after I told him we were…
I volunteer at a small public library in regional New South Wales. One rainy Tuesday, I opened a returned gardening book to check a torn page. An unsealed envelope slipped out. Across the front was my first name, Ruth, and…
My name is Colin, and I live in a small apartment block in Newcastle. After an injury, I use a walking frame on difficult days. The space near the lift is assigned to my unit in our building records. It…
I had worked at a family-run fish-and-chip shop outside Adelaide for eleven years. I was leaving to care for my father after his operation, not because of a quarrel. On Friday morning the owner, Sam, asked for my apron and…
Her name is Priya. She’s eleven, quiet until you ask about painting, and has spent most of the year making pictures of the mangroves near our home in Queensland. The school emailed to say her landscape had won the junior…
I live on a small block near Bendigo. My brother Aaron owns a caravan he rarely uses, and our parents have been looking for somewhere to stay while repairs are done to their house. I’d offered them my spare room…
It was for a small jewellery repair shop in Hobart. The amount wasn’t large, but the date was the anniversary of a terrible argument we’d had early in our marriage. I’d believed he stayed at work because he didn’t want…
I had not collected a cent. For thirty-two years I had managed the office at a small regional agricultural supplies business outside Wagga Wagga. I knew which farmers paid on Fridays, which invoices were usually late and where the spare…