'Eighteen months ago, at the fag end of a mild New South Wales winter, I moved with my family from the Blue Mountains outside Sydney to South America : Chile first, then Argentina, and ultimately Easter Island, to research a book about my family. They were Scottish merchants, those forbears, Wee Free Protestants with a Bible in one hand and an account ledger in the other. Who set up business in Valparaiso, Chile, in the mid-nineteenth century and then went about becoming rich.' (Editorial)
Three hours before dawn, twenty five naked men crouched and shivered in the blasted heath of Baran Guba, an island off the south coast of New South Wales. The massive granite plinths of Guruwul, the whale and Narangga, the shark, loomed against the black sky and the sea wolves howled. (Introduction)
'I should have known straight away, the second I spotted him in the doorway. He was dressed in his dirty blue mechanic's overalls and standing very straight. he never stood this straight. Mum was always chipping him for slouching. 'Maybe if you got off my back,' he used to joke. On this day he didn't look jokey. He looked tall and confused, like a student who had been sent to the classroom on an errand but couldn't remember what it was.' (Introduction)
'Some people call them milk teeth, or baby teeth, though the scientific term is deciduous teeth. Deciduous, I think of the forest in autumn. An x-ray of a child's head is not so beautiful. Crammed with far too, any teeth, all the cavities and empty spaces of the skull crowded with them; they lie dormant like bulbs beneath a winter soil.' (Introduction)
'A meteor the shape of a fist went past the kitchen window at dinnertime. Its shadow passed over the whole suburb. Dogs cowered and shook beneath tables and cats climbed the folded trunks of curtains. The butter melted and the milk curdled and the peas shrivelled in their bowl. Cars in streets screeched to a halt. All manner if electrical equipment bombinated into life: phones rang, horns horned, radios relayed the static of the big bang and fluorescent lights flickered nervously on and off, on and off, on and off. And then the world went supremely quiet, as if the animate and inanimate alike were vested with the same spirit and knew somehow that something awful was about to occur.' (Introduction)
Gordon Peake experiences the lows of the 'trailing spouse'.
'The cold. For some reason, this I remember above almost anything else. I waited most mornings on the nature strip in front of my house for the bus to school. Te cold had a savagery about it, as if it wanted to mirror the jagged edges of the hills around the town then uncrowded by trees.' (Introduction)
'Listen like a miner,' Dad said, ' and you will always know your way out.'
'Yes,' I said, as if I understood.
I warmed him with broth by the fire. My eyes mapped the mountains of his shoulders and the cracked bowl of his hands hollowed out from the handle of the pick. I saw the dust of blue copper loosen from his fingers.' (Introduction)
Chris Wallace- Crabbe celebrates the life and works of fellow poet Peter Porter.
'This bus is rank,' Hamish kicked the cigarette butts in the aisle and caught a glance at Scaghead, who was clinging to the centre rail. They stared at each other for a second and Hamish's eyes watered. 'I don't even want to be on this bloody bus ', he added.' (Introduction)
