Featured Writing on Tall And True

In May 1992, the Australian literary news was full of Tim Winton's success and his novel, Cloudstreet. And I thought it was an omen. Winton was thirty-one years old, and I was thirty. He'd grown up in W.A., and so had I. He'd just won his second Miles Franklin, and I was having a second crack at being a writer!

I set off in my son's old HiAce van on a road trip to Uluṟu with my 14-year-old dog, Jet, in September 2025. We spent six days at Uluṟu's Ayers Rock Campground, Jet resting while I walked and rode a bike at Uluṟu and Kata Tjuṯa. Neither of us was keen on the long drive home in the van.

As I wrote in last month's blog post, I don't believe in omnipotent beings or contact with alien lifeforms. I also don't believe in heaven and hell or an afterlife. But like the three stories I shared in the August post, that hasn't stopped me from exploring the possibilities of an afterlife in my short stories.

The door slid open with a whoosh, and I stepped through the time portal onto the landing field. A light rain was falling, and floating in the grey skies, the Hindenburg manoeuvred towards its mooring tower. I groaned. The world is full of history. Why can't I witness cheerier moments?

He stood sweating on the stone bridge, catching his breath and riffling through his hiking pack for his heart pills. It was a still, hot summer day, like their first visit to the bridge. But he was forty years older now, and alone.

No disrespect to you and your beliefs, but I don't believe in an omnipotent being. And although logic tells me there must be life elsewhere in the universe, I think it unlikely that aliens will ever contact us. But that hasn't stopped me from exploring these possibilities in my short stories.

Friday evening peak hour, and I'm driving home via the local Chinese restaurant. The queue at the nearby petrol station stretches until the weekend. I'd skip it, but Mel reminded me about the kids' Saturday school sports when she texted me to collect takeaway for dinner tonight. And I won't have time to stop for fuel while ferrying Tommy and Tess across town tomorrow morning.

Before I became a dad at forty, I was an uncle in my thirties. I loved playing uncle with my nieces and nephews, and from the experience, I knew I'd love being a dad, too. Some of my nieces and nephews are now in their thirties. But my youngest niece is nine, and she likes to write stories with Uncle Robert.

A trip to springtime Japan clashed with the April 2026 Not Quite Write Prize. I've submitted a story for every flash fiction competition run by the Not Quite Write Podcast since July 2023. But I couldn't dedicate a weekend to writing a 500-word story while holidaying in Japan with my family. So I wrote a haiku.

Episode 107 (8 December 2025): Bernie sat by himself on the far side of the emergency department waiting room. Elsie and Rita were sitting together, near the doors to the operating theatres. Elsie was sobbing, and Bernie wanted to console her, but he couldn't face Rita's wrath again. "It's all your fault, Bernie!" she'd shouted at him.

In 2019, approaching the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, I found a timely book in a secondhand bookshop: The Berlin Wall, 13 August 1961 – 9 November 1989 by Frederick Taylor. The book inspired me to write about my contrasting visits to Berlin as a backpacker in 1987 and 1995.

Two disclosures. Firstly, I've known Ashley Kalagian Blunt for several years, from her work at Writing NSW and conversations on social media about our writing projects. Secondly, I am not a big reader of crime fiction. But I know it's a popular genre, and after binge-reading Dark Mode, I can see why.