There's a sort of absurdity to Australia and the so-called New World nations. I sensed it all the time growing up in Western Australia, which is really remote.

I don't get really inspired the way some people do, buzzing with ideas - it feels like hard work to me... but once I get hooked into the universe of a particular work it becomes almost like an aesthetic addiction.

Yes, we all know that there's a good chance the missiles won't work properly when the government people finally come to get them, but over the years we've stopped worrying about that. Deep down, most of us feel it's probably better this way. After all, if there are families in faraway countries with their own backyard missiles, armed and pointed back at us, we would hope that they too have found a much better use for them.

So you want to hear a story? Well, I used to know a whole lot of pretty interesting ones. Some of them so funny you'd laugh yourself unconscious, others so terrible you'd never want to repeat them. But I can't remember any of those. So I'll just tell you about the time I found that lost thing.

As an artist, even if you are putting out something really dark and disturbing, that's good because it's opening a discussion. Always in the back of my mind is this thought that the world has to be a better place with you in it.

Sometimes the day begins with nothing to look forward to.

The Federal Department of Odds and Ends: sweepus underum carpetae.