portfolio

Here are a few recent publications I have worked on.

Click on the cover of a public document to open in a new tab.

Other covers are not linked, to maintain confidentiality.

A guide for health researchers working with Aboriginal people in central Australia (Oct 2021)

A comprehensive guide to working safely, respectfully, and appropriately with Aboriginal people in central Australia. Asked to advise on a draft, I guided a structural edit, rewrite and copy edit on a short deadline.

Directions Paper - NT Strategic Water Plan (Sept 2021)

The Directions Paper outlines pathways to enhanced water security for the Northern Territory. Public feedback on it will inform the NT Strategic Water Plan. As an invited specialist editor, I reviewed the draft and guided a restructure and partial rewrite.

History of the Friends of Araluen (May 2021)

Archival and oral history research documenting not-for-profit community arts group Friends of Araluen. From the mid-1970s, the influential body lobbied for land and steered development of the now iconic Araluen Cultural Precinct at Alice Springs NT, the result something of a political coup in Australian arts.

Cool off in the NT's Wild Watering Holes Qantas Travel Insider (Jan 2021)

Teaming up with noted Top End writer Sam McCue, this travel feature for Qantas' Travel Insider peeks inside Australia's growing interest in 'wild swimming' and takes a quick adventure tour of the best waterholes the Territory has to offer.

Borderlands: a literary journal of the NT Vol 1 (Sept 2020)

This first print edition of Borderlands Magazine, literary journal of the NT, was cited in Australian Book Review's Best Books of 2020. As founding editor I worked directly with more than 20 authors to bring their work to publication, and with co-editors Raelke Grimmer and Adelle Sefton-Rowston published the book in 2020.

The Territory, in its Own Write Sydney Review of Books (2019)

A personal essay describing why the NT so badly needs its own literary journal and the important role it might play. First published in NT Writers' annual Imprint, the essay was based on 2018 research funded by Arts NT, to develop a business case and rationale for the journal Borderlands.

Songlines and Fault Lines (2017)

'A treasure of a book … an essential companion on any journey into the Red Centre' - Anna Krien, author, journalist for The Monthly

'... questing, magnificently unquiet and quite unclassifiable' - Nicholas Rothwell, The Australian 2018

Writing Home (2017)

'Brilliantly written and argued ... a vast labour of scholarship, research and original thought ... will be a landmark in its field' - Robert Macfarlane, Cambridge

'A clearly written book that will spark other critical engagements with the ecopoetics of Australian regional lands and histories' - Oxford Review 2019

Our Water Future: A Conversation with Territorians (2015)

An early public discussion aimed at developing the Territory’s first overarching strategic plan for water. Meeting regularly with the NT director of water planning and staff, I advised on strategic matters, format, tone and content, then wrote and edited the paper to draft stage.

Surviving the Tatts Finke Desert Race (2014)

Often compared with the Paris to Dakar, this multi-million-dollar off-road racing event grew out of a 'bit of an adventure' in Australia's Red Centre by two mates in 1976. A magazine feature from interviews and archival research, for the Northern Territory's premier business periodical, TQ.

History: Centre for Appropriate technology 1980-2010

A commissioned essay documenting 30 years of the Centre for Appropriate Technology striving for better livelihoods for Indigenous people living in remote communities. Based on archival research by Prof. Alan Mayne spliced with my own interviews and further research, it appeared as a special edition of Our Place magazine.

Newsletter story - Aboriginal Housing project (Nov 2011)

Here is but one of many stories told during the $100m redevelopment of the Alice Springs Aboriginal town camps, 2010-12. Through consultant Michels Warren Munday, I provided engagement and communications support for the project manager, and contributed stories, profiles and stakeholder updates to a newsletter.

Sheds With Soul: Alice Springs Water Reclamation Plant (2008)

This innovative $6.3m water reclamation plant in the Australian outback helped change a few hearts and minds about recycling. And won architectural honours to boot. I reviewed the milestone project for Bluescope's flagship architectural magazine, Steel Profile.