Cirrus@Austlit

'The Spanish Ambassador came to visit every morning through winter as I stirred the porridge—just before it was time to wake everybody up. Snuffling into the necks of sleeping children, flapping back quilts, tugging at big toes, letting in movement and noise in readiness for action. But this ritual happened in the still part of the day. It was the same every day. First he would flop onto the bough of a nearby Japanese maple; then, with a kind of casual precision, he would fly straight at the window to land on the narrow ledge before bringing one yellow eye, and then the other, up to the glass. He was inspecting me, and I was inspecting him. It didn’t matter how vigorously I stirred the pot—he was undeterred. But if I broke protocol by opening a cupboard or turning on a tap, he was off: back to the bough for indignant preening, or away; gone from the kitchen window until the next day.' (Introduction)

'In the summer of 2019–20 I worked in the customer service department of an Australian zoo. I was used to cycling to work, gliding past traffic and cutting through parklands in my khaki uniform. But I found myself driving much more than usual. Cycling resulted in weariness and respiratory irritation, as I breathed in toxic particulate matter. Bushfire smoke smothered the city, forcing us indoors. With the smoke settling for days at a time, I relied more on my exhaust-spewing vehicle to get to work. The dark irony was hard to miss.' (Introduction)

'The doctor is talking but I am not looking. I’m watching dust mites mingle in the glow. The doctor is telling me that my bones are breaking down into particles and that these particles are getting swept up by my bloodstream and because of this I am dying. Everybody is dying. Everybody is breaking down and turning into other things and that’s what makes everybody real. Our bodies are an ouroboros: a circling snake eating itself forever.' (Introduction)

'John Blay is a humble Australian bushman who is uncomfortable about comparisons with Henry Thoreau, but let me explore the parallel a little. Now in his seventies, Blay lives at Eden on the south coast of New South Wales with his beloved forests at his back. He has spent 40 years exploring them on foot and celebrating them in writing, most recently in his book Wild Nature: Walking Australia’s South East Forests (2020). The book completes a trilogy that began with Trek Through the Back Country (1987) and continued with On Track: Searching out the Bundian Way (2015). Most of his writing is inspired by close, sustained engagement on foot with rugged, wild, untracked bush.' (Introduction)

'I walked a small track along the edge of the Oyster Harbour estuary almost daily for more than 20 years. I saw the colour of the water change with the sun, the clouds and the tannin that came down the Kalgan River after heavy rain. I saw grey days when mizzle washed all the colour away from water and sky, leaving a dense silence. After storms, I saw sea grass wrack washed up high onto the shore and wrapped around the base of the paperbarks. On winter evenings, I saw clouds lift just above the horizon and a shaft of sunset colour the fishing boat’s circle of pelicans as pink as flamingos.' (Introduction)

'Powerful thighs. Golden eyes. Black robes. Swords. And fury. In romance fiction, it is not enough to have a set of muscle-toned thighs. They must also be powerful. Eyes cannot be brown, they must glow with the fire of a thousand suns. This is the world of desert dreaming. Of thinly disguised oil-rich kingdoms. Of exotic romance with the bad boys of the Arab world—ridiculously good-looking men with more money than sense. But—thank God—they can be saved by women of the West.' (Introduction)