AustLit

'Wadu matyidi began in a curious, perhaps unique way. Jillian Bovoro and I started the Adnyamathanha language course Inhaadi Adnyamathanha Ngawarla. It had been running for a term and a half. Most of the students were beginners, some had a smattering of language. Most were of Adnyamathanha background. There were no published resources for beginners and so, class by class, we made our own out of what Uncle Buck and other elders gave us, using linguist Bernhard Schebeck's unpublished dictionary.' (Publication abstract)

'Abstract: Picture one: There are eight people sitting around a table on the top floor of a high-rise building in the heart of Adelaide's CBD. Four of us are from a humanities research project looking for new ways to account for the value of arts and culture to government and the community. Four are economists from the Department of State Development. We are having a laboured conversation about assessment indices for cultural institutions. It is bleak mid-winter in 2015, the worst possible day for us to be having this meeting. The end of mining at Leigh Creek has just been announced. The economists are looking at us with irritation. They talk about robotics, innovation labs, digital special-effects firms. They want to know what we have for them, how arts and culture are going to replace manufacturing and minerals in our stuck-for- an- answer post-industrial economy. They lean forward to hear what we have to say.' (Publication abstract)

' 'So what? there's no story here,' the marketing consultant snapped down the phone. 'I mean, bloody hell, the premier's forever banging on about Asia, and everybody's heard it all before.' (Publication abstract)

'Rumba wondered why his parents were taking so long. He was both elated and anxious because he could keep drinking until he heard their car come up the driveway but was worried they might know that he broke into the science lab. Bloody Charlie wanted to light the Bunsen burners because he said they would be able to see better and the torches they brought might have been too bright and would attract attention. Because this was the first time they had done anything like this, they left in such a panic he thinks they left the drawer that housed the scalpels open...' (Publication abstract)

k'A writer has come to town. A reputation for greatness precedes him. His prize-winning books are plainly spoken, yet demanding. In person, he is a man of few words. He looks fit, with a sweet smile, and perhaps a little shy. He gets a bicycle and rides, under a blue sky, on the path by the river in the linear park. He doesn't need to know that the lake he passes is artificial, formed by a weir across a flow of water that becomes a mere trickle on the other side, where tortoises sun themselves on the rocks...' (Publication abstract)

'Two years ago, a spiritual experience punctuated my otherwise secular existence. I was standing in a strange hallway. The walls were covered with framed prints of the most absorbing detail and colour. The floors were bare, so it looked like an upside-down house with many rugs up high and the ceiling beneath out feet. The hallway belonged to the sculptor Jo Steele, partner of the late Barbara Hanrahan.' (Publication abstract)

'Adelaide's west terrace Cemetery has its share of famous residents, not all of them human. The sell-out release of the cemetery's own boutique olive oil, grown on site, has drawn attention to the established groves of olive trees that populate the grounds of the city's most visible burial place. These trees, like the cemetery itself, date from the mid-nineteenth century, a time when death was not something to hide but was incorporated into the everyday lives of the living. The siting of a cemetery on a prime arterial road of the growing city suggested to its citizens that the past would remain visible, but in a settled, eulogistic form. The olive trees, in turn, spoke of the future, with their potential to live for thousands of years. They flower and fruit, and flower and fruit, on and on, silent sentinels over the dead.' (Publication abstract)

'One warm London afternoon last autumn, a large group of avantgarde Australian winemakers took over a nightclub in Shoreditch, the capital's current hipster hotspot, for a raucous tasting of their latest wines. The idea was to expose the UK trade and media to some of the buzzy small-batch Australian wines crackling through our own hipster hotspots back home. It worked a treat too: the response to the event was overwhelmingly positive.' (Publication abstract)

He felt it first when the horses shifted and cried. They had been muttering among themselves all day, but this was different, a note of panic in it. The horses aren't yours to care about, George, he reminded himself. He went from cabin to cabin and collected the crockery and cutlery smeared and encrusted with an early dinner, the passengers getting ready for bed...' (Publication abstract)

'This is a story about a new, breakaway state that was proposed in 1861, taking 18 million acres from Victoria and nine million from South Australia. It was to be called Princeland.' (Publication abstract)

'As an archaeologist working in the remote areas around Woomera and the Nullarbor Plain, my understanding of South Australia was first informed by rocks and soil. There were fossils of extinct boneless animals underfoot, caught in the shadows of a long-evaporated sea. The angles of deliberately fractured stone betrayed a human intent, the sharp blade discarded where it performed an unknown task. Beer cans lay rusting around the remains of a campfire. A mound ribboned with broad tyre prints marked a grave full of radioactive aeroplanes. On a dusty barracks window, someone had used short strips of masking tape to spell 'Chernobyl'. The adhesive still held, although the tape had become splintered and dry.' (Publication abstract)

'It was in a Melbourne museum that I realised I didn't know the traditional name for the area in South Australia where I'd grown up. I was leaning over a large map of Victoria carved into wood and displayed on a low table. On it, the boundaries of the state's thirty-eight Aboriginal language groups were marked out. Within each one was a button. Touch it and a voice pronounced the name.' (Publication abstract)

''The wind is my hairdresser,' says Sue Coleman Haseldine, known locally as Aunty Sue, stepping out into her dusty yard and letting the hot north wind rush through tangled thick black hair. A wire clothesline stretches across the dirt yard, tractors and car carcasses rust away in a nearby paddock, dogs run out to greet approaching cars, and in the middle of this scene Sue stands with a cigarette in a curled hand. She lives on a wheat farm with her whitefella husband, Gary, near the small, isolated South Australian town of Ceduna. From her yard, a strip of flat grey-blue sea can be glimpsed to the south. North of the chip-dry paddocks, 'out the back', lies a vast stretch of bush - stunted mallee shrublands roll away on sandy waves.' (Publication abstract)

'A small printed card offered extra towels, if they should need them. They hadn't been provided in the first instance, Leah read, because the guesthouse was eco-friendly. The card was cream coloured, expensive and embossed with an unfamiliar font. Leah rubbed the corner between thumb and forefinger, tilting her head to one side. Normally, she could pick card stock with her eyes closed. Oh well: she propped it back on the marble bathroom vanity, angled just so. In the mirror she caught a glimpse of her wrist tattoo, old and shabby, the black heart more blue smudge these days. She rotated her forearm back and forth, watching the tattoo appear and disappear in the mirror, like it belonged to someone else, someone a long way from here...' (Publication abstract)