I grew up in the wide, sun-bleached spaces of western Queensland, where the horizon seemed to go on forever and news from the outside world arrived only once a week, folded neatly beneath my father’s arm. Every weekend, he’d sit at the kitchen table with The Australian spread wide across the worn linoleum, the pages crackling like distant thunder as I watched him trace the headlines that spoke of cities, politics, art, and lives far beyond our dusty world. To me, that newspaper was a portal—a magical gateway through which the vastness of the world spilled into our small corner of it. Decades later, to find my own work and name printed within those same pages feels like a quiet circle closing, as if that child’s wonder has finally stepped through the paper into the world he once only imagined.
