AustLit

'In one essay, Richard Flanagan describes the phone call that alerted him to the death of wilderness photographer Peter Dombrovskis:

'I was driving to Salamanca through black clouds and heavy-dropped rain that sweeps and slaps rather than falls, while Hobart’s higher suburbs were being coated in snow. The radio news said a solo walker had failed to return from a walking trip to the Western Arthurs. I rang a friend who worked in police search and rescue.'  (Introduction)

'Here we are, in a freezing valley covered in grass and edged by snow-bothered mountains, sitting nearer to the bottom of the world than just about everyone. It’s a still winter day—fog blocks the morning and the air is nearly tactile. We’re not far from Hobart, but every hill between us is another door opening to chilled air; just like the airport, to come home is to step outside. We’re that much closer to the wet and windy south-west, where muddy buttongrass plains give way to tangles of green scrub and an audience of endless peaks. We’re a long way from the major urban centres, and glad to be. The air is worth breathing, the high places worth climbing and the world is worth touching with our hands. But what does this mean for our writing?' (Introduction)

'In the general feedback from Arts Tasmania’s Organisations funding round this year, applicants were told that ‘claims that overstated the importance of … an organisation were seen to lack awareness of the context of an application.’' (Introduction)

'I have been without any work for a long time and the listless days are heavy for being so bare: days when I’ve carved no steps into the story’s pages, days when I’ve annotated no clocks, written no words above the straight lines of minute hands and hours.' (Introduction) 

 (Introduction)

'We have been climbing for a couple of hours through surprising country, gaunt eucalypts have given way to myrtle and pink mountain berries, and a young celery top pine, about five centimetres tall, stands in the middle of the track with its leaves all fresh and optimistic. Soon we meet a ridgeline and follow it to the high point of Millers Bluff. This is the easy way to the summit - previously, walkers had to traverse along a very scrubby ridge which could eat up the hours. A few years ago, a group didn't make it back to their cars until after midnight.'  (Introduction)