Welcome to Notes From Pig City. This is my online archive for as much of my journalism as I can keep up with. Published pieces will be reposted here as soon as they can be. I also write exclusively on my Patreon page; those pieces are not republished here.
I’m the author of two books: Pig City (2004), a book about Brisbane, and Something To Believe In (2019), a music memoir. I'm currently employed by AAP. I continue to freelance occasionally for other publications, mostly Guardian Australia, where it doesn't conflict with my full-time gig.
I have a wide variety of interests, and they’re reflected by the number of tabs in the main menu. You can click through those, or the archive list at the bottom to find what you might be interested in, whether you’re a casual visitor or looking for something specific.
If you want to get in touch send me a message here.
The images went around the world. The snapshots of the Great Barrier Reef, from Cairns to Torres Strait, looked more like a pile of bones than coral. Professor Terry Hughes, director of the Australian Research Council’s Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University in Townsville, was surveying the reef by plane […]
The great barrier bleach Read More »
You can understand Richie Ramone not wanting to walk under ladders, much less wanting to open that door, and absolutely not wanting to go down to the basement. “I thought there was a curse,” he admits. “I was really careful walking down the street, you know, because everybody went that young.” Born Richie Reinhardt, the Ramones’
Richie Ramone: Too tough to die Read More »
Widely regarded as one of the finest Australian albums ever made, the Triffids’ second album Born Sandy Devotional turns 30 this month. Most famous for its beloved single Wide Open Road, the album uses the empty desolation of the Australian landscape, and particularly the band’s native Western Australia as a metaphor for loss and loneliness. To gauge
“An absolute masterpiece”: the Triffids’ Born Sandy Devotional Read More »
Almost every day in October for the past 33 years, Richard Kingsford has climbed into the passenger seat of a single-engine Cessna to count the waterbirds of eastern Australia. The aircraft buzzes the wetlands from 50 metres above the ground while Kingsford, the director of the Centre for Ecosystem Science at the University of New
Duck, duck, Brolga, duck Read More »
When right-wing columnist/performance artist Andrew Bolt heard the Drones’ single Taman Shud, he wrote that the band was “stamping on the ashes of the West’s musical traditions”. Supposedly offended by the thought that singer Gareth Liddiard didn’t give a toss about anything he said, he added: “critics like these make me feel like I’m offending
The Drones: Feelin Kinda Free Read More »
How to sum up the life and times of Ian “Molly” Meldrum? If you think four hours is an extraordinary chunk of airtime to devote to a television biopic on the cat in the hat, you probably didn’t grow up in the 1970s and ’80s. If you did, you almost certainly grew up on Countdown,
Molly: the mini-series Read More »