Kailash Calling
First published in the Sun-Herald
It was early April when I took a jeep north from Kathmandu across the Friendship Bridge and into the kingdom of Tibet, still deep in the grip of winter.
Class Counsel
First published in the Sun-Herald
Long used in the juvenile justice system and high schools, restorative justice techniques are now teaching much younger children about responsibility and conflict management. By Kate Hamilton.
Omkareshwar
First published in The Sun-Herald, 2005
On the run from the glamour and excess of Goa, I arrive in the holy town of Omkareshwar at the heart of India, the ferocious heat of the plains like a wild dog at my back.
Goa
First published in The Sun-Herald, 2005
It has been six years since I washed the last of the Indian dust from my skin but when I step out of the Mumbai airport into that press of bodies, that laden air, it rises up in me from the vaults of memory. Ah, yes. This place.
Colombia – In Search of Lost Time
First published in the Sun-Herald, 2005
Relatives pleaded and wept. Well-travelled friends exchanged significant looks. Even the travel agent raised an eyebrow. I blamed my teenage obsession with 80s action flick Romancing the Stone (“She’s a girl from the big city. He’s a reckless soldier of fortune. For a fabulous treasure, they share an adventure no one could imagine… or survive”) and boarded a plane to Bogota, my own reckless soldier of fortune in tow.
Buenos Aires
First published in Black & White, 2005
We cross the Rio de la Plata in the blackness that comes before dawn, on a slow boat from the old Uruguayan smugglers port of Colonia del Sacramento. Before us, a pale stain lights the horizon: not the rising sun but the insomniac glow of the city.
Circling the Mountain
Kate Hamilton was awarded an Australia Council Emerging Writers grant in 2005 to work on a non-fiction book about her pilgrimage to Mt Kailash in the far west of Tibet.…
Playgroup
We have two playgroups in our week. One is a Christian outfit in a shopfront church, run by the minister’s wife: 20 kids on a quiet day, maybe 30 at the end of a week of rain. A plethora of plastic, in every possible colour and incarnation, spews across the floor: plastic sausages and grapes sizzle in a pot on the plastic stove, plastic dolls, victims of several generations of haircuts and scarification rituals, are walked in plastic strollers, toddlers teeter at the top of the plastic slide and have tea parties in the plastic cubbies.…
Angry
I start to notice anger. Hers and mine. I assume it’s just her age; her iron will; her desire to express her newfound power, or simply to thwart mine. But I seem to be getting more angry at my two-year-old, more frequently, since I weaned her.…
A Sob Story for All Ages
First published in Sydney Morning Herald, August 9, 2008
When Amber Jones* was a year old she was left to sleep in her own vomit by her parents as part of a popular baby sleep-training regimen known as controlled crying.