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Experience Realms
One of only two writers to have won the Northern Territory Literary Award four times, I have built a body of work spanning fiction, theatre, spoken word, screenwriting, and health education.
At the heart of my work are short fiction, spoken word, songs, and music—each a facet of storytelling that challenges, transports, scintillates, and illuminates.
Whether through evocative short stories exploring human connection and transformation, thought-provoking spoken word performances, or original songs that deepen the emotional layers of narrative, my goal is to create immersive and transformative experiences.
Dive into A Billabong Swim to the Subway—a collection of short fiction, spoken word, and songs, crafted for those seeking fresh, genre-defying storytelling
REALMS
SHORT STORIES
AURAL FICTION
SONGS
PLAYS
FLASH FICTION
PICTURE BOOKS
FILMS
RADIO
SHORT STORIES
I was first published in Australian Penthouse in 1988 with Mates, a brutal and absurd piece examining male insecurity and its destructive impact in a work camp on the edge of the Simpson Desert. Since then, my short fiction has appeared in Beyond the Louvres, , A Northern Perspective, Kyoto Journal, Short and Twisted, Hare's Paw and the Furphy Anthology (2021), among others. Since returning to Australia in 2007, I’ve won the Northern Territory Literary Award four times—twice for Flash Fiction and twice for Theatre—and have been shortlisted on four other occasions.
SONGS
Shaped by the grit, glamour, and sleaze of Sydney, the freedom of the continent’s highways and beaches, and the vast solitude of Central Australia, my songs began to grow lives of their own. Then came Papua New Guinea and Tokyo—where they grew even stranger and more distinctive: okapis sprouting swan wings, trumpeting loud as elephants.
Scrape Me A Coconut is a bittersweet folk song that accompanies two short stories set in Papua New Guinea. The song aims to conjure Dylan Thomas sailing the Coral Sea with Derek Jarman—where longing and human connection are felt as deeply as they’re seen.
FLASH FICTION
Inspired by folktales and driven by the lyricism and punch of poetry, I began writing flash fiction in the 90s while living in Tokyo. Several of these pieces were published in Kyoto Journal and later adapted for the Aural Fiction series, The Ikebukuro Suite, which was broadcast on ABC Radio National. That early dedication to the form paid off—making me the only writer to have twice won the NT Literary Award for Flash Fiction. One of those stories, The Colours of an Arm (2019), was inspired by my mountain bike crossing of the Western Desert to Broome—and by Yasunari Kawabata’s haunting short story One Arm.
A comic example of my flash fiction, Goannas Living the Dream, is set once again in the Australian outback. In this absurd tale, a goanna hijacks a man’s car and critiques his art, triggering a chaotic chain of events that pokes fun at themes of self-worth and identity.
FILMS
Writing cinematic fiction for over 20 years naturally led me to screenwriting in the mid-2010s. A mentorship with Greg Woodland (Script Central) helped refine a short film script based on a play that won the NT Literary Award. That script evolved into a web series, A Uteful of Twilight—six tales of revenge set across the Top End.
The pilot episode, Lured, was selected as part of St Kilda Film Festival's Best 100 Australian Shorts (2017) and was a semi-finalist at the Sydney Indie Film Festival. Another script, Getting In, scored second place in the international film competitions, Moondance and Vail.
LURED
Two mates fish off a riverbank in the Top End of Australia when they snag a prized lure—seemingly a small catch. But only an hour earlier, they've spotted a 3-meter croc, yet there's something darker, nastier, and far more dangerous lurking between them.
AURAL FICTION
En route to studying music and storytelling in West Africa, I got waylaid in Tokyo—a detour that turned into a 16-year residency, during which I explored ways to blend narrative with music and sound.
Drawing inspiration from the musical storytelling traditions of Japanese Biwa players and West African griots, I gave these forms a modern twist in The Ikebukuro Suite—a collection of sociological folktales set in a futuristic Tokyo subway. After six of these were published in Kyoto Jounral, I developed them into aural fiction. The series was picked up by Tony Barrell at ABC Radio National and broadcast across Australia.
Years later, I remixed one of the stories, The Grass Blade, which was produced by renowned New York bassist and producer Bill Laswell (known for his work with William Burroughs, Paul Bowles, Yothu Yindi, and KODO, as well as remixing Miles Davis and Bob Marley).
PICTURE BOOKS
All my writing can be traced back to my very first story—a piece of children’s fiction. I’ve continued working in this genre, with stories published in Whatever, an NT Anthology of Kids’ Fiction (2010); performed, such as A Cloud Over Alice (2009, Kids Performance Lab, Alice Springs); or adapted as aural fiction, like Tarzy-Boy vs Arch-eee-PONG!!! (1997/2021). That early spark has since grown into a passion for picture books, which I’m now actively pitching to publishers.
I’m also developing a ten-part series for young readers, inspired by the story that started it all—The Dog Who Thought He Was a Fish and Went Moo.
Another work currently being pitched is my children’s chapter book Getting In, which received a 97% rating at the 2024 Children and Young Adult Conference.
PLAYS
My first play, Wall’s Hill (1998), was performed and toured by Corrugated Iron Youth Theatre in Darwin. After returning to Australia in 2007, I began writing for both film and stage, which led to Our Story being staged in Darwin and Melbourne (Short + Sweet). The same play was a finalist for the NT Literary Award and later published in the anthology Short and Twisted.
In 2011, I completed the children’s musical comedy Tarzy-Boy vs Arch-eee-PONG!—a finalist for the NT Literary Award / Brown’s Mart Theatre Award. In 2017, my stage adaptation of the film script Lured won the same award, and in 2023, my tragicomedy The Last Anthill of the Wild Wild North—a music-driven work loosely inspired by Rod Ansell (the real-life basis for Mick Dundee)—also took out the prize.
RADIO
My professional creative career began as a radio producer and announcer on 2JJ from 1979 to 1980. In 2017, I launched Radio KarasGkatsu! (formerly Radio Karagarga)—a series blending the best in music, poetry, comedy, interviews, audiobook excerpts, soundscapes, and film audio, transporting listeners to sonic landscapes where their ears can walk in wonder.
One of the most popular episodes has been RKG Noir.
A shadowy, cinematic sound collage blending film history, noir, and experimental audio. Hitchcock and Truffaut dissect Psycho while sound artist David Toop brews eerie textures. Interwoven are voices of Polanski, Towne, Burroughs, Roberta Flack, and Scott Walker, with cameos from Kafka, Raskolnikov, Celine, Fleming, Chandler, and Graham Greene. Bernard Herrmann and Miklós Rózsa score the darkness, Nina Simone sings for Brecht and Weill, and Kubrick reflects on cinematic truth. The show ends with Orson Welles watching it all unfold—then stepping in with his legendary lines from The Third Man.
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