Features
Investigative journalism, interviews, essays
Breaking Waves: Homesick for Bondi
Adam Gibson reflects on memory, belonging and a suburb becoming unfamiliar even as he remains within it.
Pretty Vacant A letter from New York
Are luxury stores the victims of success? Our most fashionable neighbourhoods appear like they’ve been looted: a third of the stores in the heart of the city are empty! This retail rot is a new form of urban blight.
Left Hanging How they’re killing the koalas of Wilton
“We have to work out what the transition is between protected koala habitat and urban areas... Let’s find a balance between conservation and development for housing.”
Eight Years On The Syrian war and its child refugees
“I’m working and saving up so I can save rent for a tent,” Ibrahim says. “The tent owner comes and demands his money. You don’t even get a chance to rest.”
5 Stars for Dominick
A motel review, an old cat and a meeting with a beloved friend in a fading town in upstate New York.
The Cost of Entry: What it takes to belong now
They still live in the city, work in it and move through it every day. But as rent, distance, time and the cost of simply saying yes continue to rise, more people are quietly editing themselves out of urban life—not leaving the city, but taking up less and less room inside it.
A Machine Has No Friends How soon before an AI robot takes your job?
“If machines are capable of doing almost any work humans can do, what will the humans do?”
Spectral Evidence A testimony in fragments
"How simple we seem, or at least pretend to be in front of others, and how twisted we are deep down. How paltry we are and how spectacularly we contort ourselves before our own eyes, and the eyes of others." - Roberto Bolano
Funeral for a Friend Farewelling Rajani Enderby
Rajani Enderby had a big life; not long but big. The way she lived can tell us much about love and friendship, as her husband, Scott, and her friend Steve Kilbey explained at her funeral. Rick Feneley, her long-time neighbour, reports.
Walking the Flint and Steel Track West Head, Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park
“There’s a big lizard down near the water, with a tin of cat food stuck on its head!”
Cigarettes & Turpentine An Ode to My Artist-Mother
She smoked Marlboro Reds and drove old cars that always broke down… She wore red lipstick religiously. She was never on time to pick me up.
This Perfect Day Losing Anthony Bourdain
Call someone you haven’t for a long time and tell them that you’re thinking about them. Invite someone over for a meal and cook for them. Let them know they can tell you anything.
The Sunshine Club Sleeping rough on the Hawkesbury
It’s sweltering as I walk across the grassy river flats. I can see Dean’s ute, people gathered round another vehicle. Beyond them a jungle of weeds, willows and wattle.
The Best Way to Ruin a Walk The grass is greener for Sydney’s public golf courses, but for how long?
Golf courses – particularly public ones – are caught in the middle of a three-way contest between a population largely unconcerned with golf, developers with eyes for well-located land and the six per cent of us that still play the sport.
Who’ll Stop the Rain? After the horrors of Myanmar, Rohingya refugees now face the monsoon season
Makeshift dwellings of bamboo and sheet plastic sit immediately above one another on slopes of silt. All this is likely to turn to mud as soon as the monsoon season arrives.
Waking Up as Someone Else How Kate Fischer became Tziporah Malkah
Now 43, Tziporah Malkah, once known as Kate Fischer, is returning to the media after six years spent working as a carer in Melbourne… Television executives are beginning to consider her potential as Australia’s new Oprah.