At the time of writing (September, 2021), I’ve been living in Australia for sixteen and a half years. For the past nine, they’ve been spent in the Northern Territory, the last seven of them in Alice Springs and six of those as an Australian. These Territorian years have coincided with my attempts at writing and so reflect experiences, and attitudes towards them, a far cry from any conceived of growing up on British shores. My cultural identity is now firmly that of an Australian and, aside from some national sporting allegiances to England that reflect my upbringing, I forget that my accent betrays me. As such, in bringing much of my writing together, I hope that they speak of the man that I grew into rather than the one that naively boarded a plane in 2006 knowing little more than the address of a Sydney hostel. They are all written since moving to the Northern Territory, the first few whilst living in Tennant Creek and the rest since becoming a resident of Alice Springs.
As a central Territorian, I am now spooked by large crowds and big cities, red dust is embedded deep into all my clothes, I get excited at both rain falling and the sighting of the sea, and I think nothing of driving for hour over hour on dusty tracks. Hopefully, that sense of wonder and lust for adventure shines through in many of these. If not, I hope at least that they entertain!
