It’s not much to look at, the beermat from the former journalists’ watering hole, Montgomery’s in central Hobart. It’s not as striking as the fiery red one from the Coopers brewery in Adelaide, with a beer barrel at its centre, or the shield-shaped one from Fullers in London, in ochre, advertising a bitter called London Pride. The Montgomery’s beermat is in monochrome, with a simple line drawing of the pub on the corner of Macquarie and Argyle streets, as unpretentious and … [Read more...] about Beermat of memory and loss
Going out in style
Bruce Leyland picked up the Chronicle style book, looked briefly at its ink-stained and worn cover and tossed it into the rubbish bin. Another piece of detritus from the past, the flotsam and jetsam of a life spent in newspapers, a life coming to an abrupt end. Leyland had been at his desk all morning, clearing out the set of draws and cupboard that supported the desk’s flat, polished top on which sat a computer keyboard and monitor. An ink well at one corner of the desk … [Read more...] about Going out in style
Rivers of gold
Don Bentley was one edition behind the times, lost in a world of newsprint and ink. The term “new media” was as foreign to him as the name they now gave the swaying trams in Melbourne. What was it? Urban mass transport? Light-rail? He didn’t care, and he didn’t care when people he knew in journalism, those who had embraced these new ideas, spoke of “dead tree media”. Newspapers could never die, they were dependable and certain like the wonderful old No. 35 trams that still … [Read more...] about Rivers of gold
Lightness from dark
The winter solstice brought a grey sky and a violent storm. Then a splash of sunshine, in an instant shining a light into the darkness, to the spring that beckoned in six weeks’ time. My primal animal instincts, and not the calendar, told me things could only get better after a particularly severe winter. They told the golden whistler, too, who for a brief moment sang his beautiful, descending melody before he fell silent again in the gloom of the fading light by late … [Read more...] about Lightness from dark
Wildwords, a history of “new nature” writing
Writers have been among the most astute observers of the natural world and the human place within it. The first wildlife writers – or writers of “nature notes” as they were more likely to be called in earlier centuries – found their inspiration embraced by forest, mountain and stream. Nature writers today, however, are more likely to be found in suburb and city. Like many of the animals, birds and butterflies they capture in word, they have migrated to an environment … [Read more...] about Wildwords, a history of “new nature” writing