Memoir - PacificEdge

Same but different

In the bright light of an early afternoon in the summer of 1970 I stood atop that long flight of stone stairs that connects the valley of Woolloomooloo to the ridge of Victoria Street. There I stopped and looked out onto a city that then seemed full of skyscrapers...

Two families, two lives… so similar but so different

HOW DO YOU ACCOUNT for the different way that life turns out for people, even when they share much in common?

Solitary, long ago

Story & photos: Russ Grayson IT’S PERVERSE, REALLY. To walk these mountains you start by descending rather than climbing.

A tale of sad liaisons on the high seas

I remember Pierre well but I’m not sure that his memory of me is as sharp. I got this impression one Saturday afternoon in the late summer of 2007 when a friend and I were walking the foot track that follows the Tamar River. It was on the banks of that river that we encountered him...

An excursion into shared memory… a house, a mystery package and a……

Discussions of the past raise questions about memory... is it unique or can it be a reconstructed reality? A mystery package, a burning fuel drum and a Red Phone stimulate our wonderings...

Like faces at a window

It is now 1970 and now, at 168 Cathedral Street, people were to come and go through the year, however there would remain a core of permanent residents to bring a sense of continuity and stability to the share house...

A decade turns

It is almost 1970 and this is Sydney. Focused on the present moment, we afford too little thought to the next ten years... the next five years... the next year. I guess we imagine, if we actually do this, that it will be a continuation of the past few years...

Partings

For most, it was the last experience of communal life before long term partnerships (or a succession of longer-term relationships for some) and families...

On Kerouac, Hemingway and a literary friend

First published in 2008. IF YOU HAVE TIME TO HANG AROUND, I’ll tell you a little story about literature and coincidence. It’s not a significant story nor an exciting one, rather a recounting on one of those minor occurrences that sometimes appear in our lives.

Misadventure on the way to the Walls

Tasmania, some time in the 1970s. CLAAAANG! Someone slams the car door and the party sets off into the early evening gloom of the rainforest. A short slope leads from the forestry road to the Fish River.

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