It's the pointless things that give your life meaning. Friendship, compassion, art, love. All of them pointless. But they're what keeps life from being meaningless.

For every moment the sea is peace and relief, there is another when it shivers and stirs to become chaos. It's just as ready to claim as it is to offer.

Overfishing is an obvious threat to our capacity to feed ourselves.

Australia was once a leader in taking global warming seriously. The former PM [Kevin Rudd] called it 'greatest moral challenge of our time'. But in the past couple of years the national consensus has been eroded and Australians are being encouraged by the polluters and their mates in Parliament to forget it was ever mentioned. It's heartbreaking.

Will you look at us by the river! The whole restless mob of us on spread blankets in the dreamy briny sunshine skylarking and chiacking about for one day, one clear, clean, sweet day in a good world in the midst of our living. Yachts run before an unfelt gust with bagnecked pelicans riding above them, the city their twitching backdrop, all blocks and points of mirror light down to the water's edge.

It's dark already and I'm out here again, talking, telling the story to the quiet night.

Wherever I went I felt like the last person awake in a room full of sleepers