Butundi is bogus, but the fable is real. Colour Sergeant Atkins holds his ground in this humid Nowheresville, sworn to the colours of his flag, a staunch servant of King and country, guarding his carrot plot against marauding natives.
The Colours is a well-populated monologue-in-progress written and performed by stage dynamo, Peter Houghton, the final […]
Let’s say you want to write about a toxic love triangle, based in rural Australia. Two dysfunctional brothers – the drab opportunist and the blue-tongued bogan – carry a torch for a rustic spunk named ‘Rache’.
To spice the recipe, throw in the family home, add the family weatherboard just days away from developer’s dozers, […]
Offbeat Australia is off the truck and into the bookstore this week. Revamped, updated, the guide is Cassowary Crossing in new plumage, with new websites added, a smatter of new entries and the whole overhaul of ticket price and opening hours revisited.
The re-issue owes much to Ali Watts, my publisher at Penguin, who rightly insisted […]
If a sculptor makes sculptures, and an etcher crafts etchings, what type of artisan cranks out scrimshaws?
In case you’re clutching straws, scrimshaw is the art of carving whale teeth and walrus tusks, the favoured pastime among idle harpooners and their mates.
The answer is a scrimshander. Not a word you encounter every day. I’d never heard […]
Just in case you’re poised on a cliff-edge, musing the rockpools below, I thought it time to deliver those ‘Short Is Sweet’ clue answers.
To check the original clues, just scroll down the page a fraction. That way you’ll have a hope of figuring out the wordplay. Then again, if you’re completely and cryptically lost, see […]
For offshore surfers, Australians can’t speak today. Awfully sorry, but the nation holds its breath this afternoon - or for three holy minutes round 3pm as every punter stands mesmerised by the babbled poetry of Dolphin Jo/Eskimo Queen/Zipping/The Fuzz/Et Cetera over the SkyChannel.
Yes, the Melbourne Cup has shrugged off the side-effects of equine flu, drought […]
To paraphrase Polonius, brevity is the soul of a good cryptic clue. This week I’m running some of the shortest – and sweetest – clues culled from a range of cryptic sources, primarily The Times and The Guardian.
Usually, when a clue comprises only two words, a solver has every right to suspect a double meaning […]