CHEESE PLEASE – By Mary Mageau

© Mary Mageau Another short piece from Mary Mageau – one of our best and most regular contributors – all about a simple day out. CHEESE PLEASE. A bright morning promised a warm, sunny day – we both needed a break – so what could be better than to head off in the car for […]

A Hold-Up. By Mary Mageau.

A Hold-Up A beautiful autumn morning greeted four passengers as they waited near their Cobb & Co coach. It was a new model, pulled by a team of four powerful horses.     ‘Good morning folks,’ the driver summoned the waiting group toward him. ‘Bring your baggage forward for Jess to stow on the roof rack. […]

No Place For A Woman – By Mary Mageau.

¨No Place for a Woman¨ is a thoughtful offering from one of our regular contributors, about the very real problems that faced and probably still do face, women who live on very remote farms. Marie sat alone. Finishing her evening meal she gazed at the sun, a rim of orange over darkening hills. Her two […]

Landscapes Remembered – A Short Story By Mary Mageau

Mary Mageau, one of our most productive contributors has ventured into a completely new area in the following story – she has tried the paranormal for the first time, and if this story is anything to go by, then she has found one of her many strengths – Read on and you shall see. Landscapes […]

The Theft of the Caledonia – 1831 Moreton Bay Penal Colony – By Richard Carroll

The news that convicts had seized a schooner and escaped swept through the settlement to reach convict Sean Kelly’s ears in the hospital where Dr Cowper had come to treat the Irishman’s freshly-flogged back. Fellow inmates had informed Sean that Commandant Clunie was a strict disciplinarian albeit not to the point of Logan, and circumstances […]

Flying Blind – Mary Mageau

‘This has been an absolute bugger of a weekend! Thirty-six hours without sleep, two days of tough negotiations and still no contract. Then I stupidly dropped my glasses down a flight of concrete stairs. When I collected them at the bottom, the frame was hopelessly bent and one lens was smashed. So here I am […]

JANUS God Of Beginnings And Endings. Julie Martin

  JANUS    God of Beginnings and endings. Julie Martin She turned her son’s eyes from the carnage in the village, away from the blood, the mutilation, the death of her parents-in-law. She put her hands over his ears so he would not hear the screams. She hunkered down over his tiny body and waited for […]

PAST PAST PRESENT FUTURE By Julie Martin

The climb up Cheekha Dar was everyman’s nightmare, rock-boned and blood-gullied—not even an ant could hide there. Its steep, unstable slopes exposed its attackers to unrelenting bombardment from the adherents of Islamic States Alliance embedded on its strategic ridge tops. Body-parts of comrades who’d kicked a footy together or challenged each other to chess a […]

The Big Dry – By Mary Mageau

Here we have a heartfelt short story from Mary about the current horrible situation in our part of the world….. The Big Dry  –  Mary Mageau This land, where not a drop of rain has fallen for over three years and the ground, cross-hatched with deep cracks and dry fissures, lies baking in the blistering sun. […]

Place of the Dead Houses. By Mary Mageau

Place of the Dead Houses Mary Mageau ‘Come along, Amity. It’s your bedtime now.’ ‘Mum, I’m trying to brush my hair but it’s full of snarls.’ ‘Let me tease them out of your curls then we’ll lie down together for a story.’ As Mary Thompson took the brush from her daughter she asked, ‘What tale […]