Category: Short Story
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Chapter 3
A campfire burned between a set of three ramshackle old buildings deep among the gum trees. Barely more than lean-tos, the buildings were made from salvaged bits of corrugated iron and mismatched planks of dried-out wood.
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Chapter 2
John Menton didn’t like the heat. That’s why he wore a long-sleeved shirt, his wide-brimmed hat and drover’s gloves all day. John didn’t mind a sweat, didn’t mind the humidity that seemed to build the further you got north of the Tweed, but he couldn’t abide the way the sun made his skin feel like…
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Chapter 1
It was hot and humid, like every other day in the south west of the colony of Queensland, and the air shimmered and danced on the horizon as five men rode into view. Their features and faces were blurred by the heat, obscured by the distance, but it was clear to anyone looking they were…
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Acknowledgement of Country and Content Warning
I acknowledge that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are the Traditional Custodians of the Country I live and work in. I would like to pay my respects to the Elders past, present and emerging. I would also like to pay respect to Australian South Sea Islander peoples, who hold a unique position in Australia’s…
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Blackbirded
In the Colony of Queensland in the 19th Century, an Australian Native Police patrol is called in to track and retrieve an escaped group of blackbirds-South Sea Islanders, taken from their home and forced to work out oppressive contracts on sugar plantations. Experts in tracking and killing, the patrol ventures into the Australian bush to…
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The Robot Butler Did It
By Joab Gilroy “I’m very sorry to offer up such a dull cliché,” said Inspector Loggins. “But the butler did it.” He stood in the foyer of the stately home of Doctor Cecil Ceres, the world-renowned cybernetics surgeon who had pioneered the use of high-quality monofilament fibre optics to repair and replace broken nerve endings.…
Joabyjojo 