(longlisted in the 2025 Sydney Hammond Short Story Competition) My name is Ben. My kids rarely talk to me; it’s not their fault or mine. Just wrong choices bringing pain to too many. Still, they know I love them. Let’s leave it at that because, right now, the pain that’s killing me is on my feet. Every step punishes. And I still haven’t found water. When I turned fifty, I began trekking to balance the monotony of clothes marketing and the misfortune of never taking a business risk in my...

(longlisted in the Newcastle Short Story Award 2025) For my ninth birthday they gave me a Seiko watch with a red and navy nylon strap. The sun sulked behind clouds all day, so its glow dots were sleepy. I guessed it was 1am, unless I’d read it backwards. That didn’t make a squeeze of difference. I was just glad to be awake. At the foot of the stairs, the hall clock pushed its minute hand like a labouring Sisyphus. I padded across the checked tiles, worn smooth by decades of small feet, and...

(Highly Commended - Peter Cowan Short Story Competition) A considerable amount of material had washed up from the night’s storm. The receding tide exposed a landscape of driftwood, ruined seaweed, and dead seabirds over the Archean basalts where the cliff line touched the ocean. At the first of the headlands below the brick lighthouse, a figure cloaked in oilskin and beaten sou’wester crawled across barnacled rocks with patient determination. A pre-dawn grey covered his world, with patches of...