AustLit

In Sydney I grew up with my parents' stories as the ghostly backbone of the city, the warmth of the vanished art and drug culture shimmering just out of reach in the laneways behind Oxford Street or somewhere in the sandstone prison walls of East Sydney Tech. A decaying Martin Sharp print, a wedding present from the artist, leaned up against the wall of my dad's shed; he would tell stories about taking me as an infant to visit Robert Klippel, who burst into tears when he heard my name. My mother would invoke her time spent in the hippy-era Greek Islands, tales complete with run-ins with Leonard Cohen as well as a man who was later arrested as part of the Manson Family Killings.