AustLit

'The email notification startles me. It is from Virgin Airlines. Get ready to fly soon. When I click into the notification, Virgin—an airline that has entered voluntary administration—tells me that my direct flight to Tasmania has been changed to three separate flights spread over eight hours. I will be flying from Brisbane to Sydney, then from Sydney to Melbourne, then, after quite a wait, from Melbourne to Hobart.' (Introduction)

'The photographs are tiny, still in their original envelope, never mounted in an album. They show the moment of departure for a traveller on the seas, as recorded by friends and family. Crossing hemispheres and great oceans was not so common in the early twentieth century, and depicted here is a rite of passage, a severing as sure as that of the flimsy paper streamers linking the travellers to shore, which would break as the ship left the quay. The photos track the farewell, the camera following the ship as it steams through the harbour, only ceasing when it vanishes from view.' (Introduction)

'In 2008 I started teaching English near Central in Sydney. A creature of loyalty, I soon began to frequent the same places for meals and snacks. I loved the old Russian couple at the pie shop on Eddy Avenue, those accents. ‘You want plastic bag?’ the old man would say, then his wife, ‘Thank you, thank you very much,’ every customer a penny from heaven. Next door to them, the guys slapped battered fish on my chips, and I’d slap them a tenner. At the convenience store Mohammed would tell me how hard life was here. I nodded sympathetically, my Coke in a sweat.' (Introduction)

'Australian nationalism often promotes a history in which the colonisation of Aboriginal lands was somehow complete before the white patriot turned his attentions outwards to the threat of the non-white foreigner. It’s a deliberate trick.' (Introduction)