AustLit

'Footsteps thunder down the passage and the bedroom door is flung open. I hold up one side of the doona. There are good aspects to this: a sleek back snuggles into me; a downy nape is lodged against my nose. There are also bad aspects.' (Introduction)

'A literary criticism of the book "Tracker Tilmouth: The Vision Splendid" by Alexis Wright is presented. It explores Tilmouth's political view on Australian Prime Minister John Howard's government as well as concerns and issues linking the Labor Party. It also provides an overview of Tilmouth, who belonged to the generation of Aboriginal leaders in the country.' (Publication abstract)

'We make Westerns for the same reason the Inuit make igloos: because the landscape disposes us to. The immense sky, the rust-coloured earth, the vast, barren spaces of our interior ... how could Australian filmmakers not feel compelled to use these! Hollywood claims the genre as its own, as distinctly American as jazz and school shootings, bat history argues otherwise: the first Australian feature film - the earliest feature-length narrative film in the world, in fact - was Charles Tait’s The Story of the Kelly Gang, made in 1506. (And two years before that came a sort, Bushranging in North Queensland, made by the Salvation Army's Melbourne-based Limelight Department. Which, improbably enough, was one of the first dedicated film studios on the planet.)' (Introduction)

'A man arrives to live in a country town “just short of the border” with a resolve to “guard my eyes”. To explain how he came by the expression “guard my eyes”, he begins a narrative of the past, of himself as a boy, then a youth. At the end of the book the origin of the expression is clarified. And the reader is stilled, humming with a new alertness.' Introduction