There’s no way to bury a body in earth which is flooded. It is a fact consigned to history along with almost everything else.

It’s been raining for a long time now, for so long that the lands have reshaped themselves. Old places have been lost. Arcane rituals and religions have crept back into practice.

Sisters Isla, Irene and Agnes have not spoken in some time when their estranged father dies. A famous architect revered for making the new world navigable, he had long cut himself off from public life. They find themselves uncertain of how to grieve his passing when everything around them seems to be ending anyway.

As the sisters come together to clear the grand glass house that is the pinnacle of his legacy, they begin to sense that the magnetic influence of their father lives on through it. Something sinister seems to be unfolding, something related to their mother’s long-ago disappearance and the strangers who have always been unusually interested in their lives. Soon, it becomes clear that the sisters have been chosen for a very particular purpose, one with shattering implications for their family and their imperilled world.

4th Estate, 2024

In a not-too-distant future Australia, the eastern states have become the world’s newest autocracy – a place where pop music is propaganda, science is the enemy and moral indecency is punishable by indefinite detention.

Julian Ferryman, bass player for the Acceptables, returns to Melbourne after a year overseas and reconnects with his bandmates to record their highly anticipated second album. On their whirlwind tour of the east coast, he gets hooked on a new designer drug, F, a powerful synthetic hallucinogen that gives users a glimpse of their own future. Rumour says, the more you take, the further you see … maybe even to the end of time.

Big Time is an anti-fascist ode to the power of pop music, wrapped up in an unforgettable, psychedelic road trip.

University of Queensland Press, 2024

From austere post-war Britain to poppy pre-millennium Japan, Audio Erotica presents a nostalgic nirvana of the strangest and most significant period hi-fi brochures. Alphabetically listed, from Aiwa to Zenith, with Braun, JVC Nivico, Nakamichi, Sony and everything in between, this book will resonate with any music fan.  

Setting the tempo are the pipe-smoking, high-end separates (amplifiers, speakers, turntables) of the 1950s, followed by the swinging Dansette record players of the 1960s, the prog-brushed-metal music centres of the 1970s, and the sleek capitalist cabinet stack systems of the 1980s – not forgetting the aerobic stereo sound portability facilitated by the boom-box, and that final high-fidelity, hardware hurrah: the compact disc. All accompanied by questionable fashion decisions and acres of shag-pile carpet. 

The evocative brochures in Audio Erotica track the technological development of audio equipment before the digital download, while simultaneously revealing the way hi-fi was marketed to the listening public. With knobs on.

Fuel, 2024

So-called Australia is built upon a lie: that 97% of the population are human, and the others simply ‘Indigenous’, devoid of the same basic rights.

Human? is the story of acclaimed Wik artist Ziggy Ramo’s experience growing up under the weight of this lie. We’ve had 236 years of continued destruction in the name of ‘civilised progress’, under an oppressive colonial system that punches down on almost everyone. We all deserve more. But to move forward we have to be honest about the past.

Written on the precipice of becoming a parent, this is Ziggy’s offering for the future – an attempt to bridge a nation-wide knowledge gap, and start a new conversation. Prerequisite reading for anyone searching for a way forward, together.

Human? is a book, an album and an exhibition by one of the most exciting voices of this generation. With his powerful debut, Ziggy asks: Would you still fight for human rights if it meant giving up your privilege?

A groundbreaking, provocative call-to-arms.

Pantera, 2024

That ‘colossus of the bush’, the boab tree, has long intrigued visitors to the Kimberley. Where did it come from? How long does it live?

With its strong branches and gnarled trunk, the boab is a minor ecosystem, providing shade and shelter for other lives. Native bees and bagmoths, lizards and nesting birds, cattle and human beings, the boab embraces them all. Some aged boabs bear scars from long-past visitors: Aboriginal engravings, Muslim prayer alcoves, the name of a ship, the trace of an explorers’ camp, a desperate message to absent comrades.

Pat Lowe is a keen observer of the natural world. In this book she takes us through the science and history of the boab and into a realm of stories about the Kimberley’s most beloved tree.

Backroom Press, 2024