Inner Flash

By G McDougall

After his 'Pilgrimage' travel series, this is Garry's Australian stories, experiences, insights and flashes gleaned from the everyday. It's poetry and story kept fresh and colourful.
Inner Flash: Get your Wordsworth. Lucid, affectionate storytelling found in a flash of brilliance and honed with craftsmanship. Includes two responses to the Je-Suis-Charlie events, plus Tribute to Kiama, Patting the Dog, Coconut Soup, Tipsy, (for those special occasions), Pasha Bulka, (a stranded ship on Newcastle Beach), Not Yet Treasure, Mangrove Mountain 1942, Canberra Chill, Potts Hill Lad, Parrot D'day, The Hour of In-Between, The Destiny of Frogs, For Zana and Sydney Harbour ekphrasis (look it up). Hey. Life is worth living. Poetry Saves Lives.
'Style is knowing who you, what you have to say, and not giving a damn.'
For a free reading of Patting The Dog, winner of the Peter Cowan Short story Prize, https://soundcloud.com/user-680876424/pod-1-patting-the-dog

• Language: English
• Publisher: G McDougall
• Release date: Jan 10, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310256264

G McDougall

The Author was winner of the Art-In-Unusual-Places Grant (2022), a Feature Poet at the Sydney Writers Festival (2018), Balmain Institute founder and President (2007-14), and winner, Ros Spenser Short Story Prize with Patting The Dog (2017). He is author of over thirty books, including six novels, fourteen poetry, travel and short stories, and numerous photo books. Founder of Pamela Press, he is published in international magazines, with photos exhibited in eleven countries.The Author is the Camino de Santiago's most prolific author with ten eBooks and several paperbacks. He has extensive travel and teaching experience, and won Australian ecotourism, community project and literary prizes and grants. He co-created an Official NSW Bicentennial Project, the 250 km 'Great North Walk'. After many years managing Great Australian Walks, he refocused on photography, painting and storytelling, with seven novels.'Belonging' is a fictional-biography of a 'black doctor' in colonial Australia. 'Starts With C' is a murder mystery where we don't who is the murder, who has been murdered, and who's telling the story. The third novel is the acclaimed 'Knowing Simone' set in Victor Hugo's France. 'Blacksmith and Canon' is volume one of the series '1503'. Inheritance is the second volume, with volumes 3 and 4 due in 2025. In between, he wrote, Sea Voices, inspired by a WW2 event in the Pacific.Recent Awards include; Winner, Art-in-Usually-Places Grant, 2022, Wollongong City; Winner, Peter Cowan Short Story Prize, with 'Patting the Dog', Highly Commended, Peter Cowan Short Story Prize; Second, Peter Cowan Poetry Prize, and Feature Poet in the Sydney Writers festival. Included in numerous poetry and short story anthologies, Garry was Balmain Institute's president for seven years, a member of 'That Authors Collective' and 'Diverse' poetry group. He lives south of Sydney in the great and beautiful Illawarra.

Book preview

I n n e r F l a s h

G a r r y M c D o u g a l l

First Press

Second Edition

2019

First Ed, 2016 ©

Words,

exponential opportunity for

making magic and multiplying meaning

In a Flash

The author's fingerprint is everywhere.

.........................................................

Thanks to all my fellow travellers, Virginia, Anna, and the Write-On Authors group.

.........................................................

Table of C o n t e n t s

1 - Tribute to Kiama, New South Wales

2 - Perpetual Train, Hawkesbury River

3 - Wyee, Central Coast, Newcastle

4 - I'm at Home, Australian Capital Territory

5 - This Week's Truth, Canberra, ACT

6 - Pasha Bulka, Newcastle, NSW

7 - The Hour of In-Between

8 - Patting the Dog, Lake Cargelligo, Western Plains, NSW

WINNER, Peter Cowan Short Story Prize, 2015

Judge: 'I awarded first prize to Patting the Dog, by a writer from New South Wales, Garry McDougall. Patting the Dog is a story about the decline of rural communitiesand the loss of Aboriginal culture. The author handles these big political issues with a deceptive lightness of touch. One of its main strengths is the use of a first-person narrator, whose laconic voice and seemingly detached observations slowly accumulate to create a sense of melancholy resignation and sense of helplessness in the faces of the changes he perceives. It’s also a very cleverly crafted story, which, in focusing on one individual’s observations, and by using fragments and small details of rural life, subtly suggests a wider sense of an unfolding social history.'

8 - Mangrove Mountain, 1942, New South Wales

9 - Canberra Soup, Canberra, ACT

10- In the Eye of the Beholder, (Four short poems), Lucy Collison exhibition, Sydney 2014.

11- Potts Hill Lad, Sydney, plus O'Neil Park

12- Parrot D'day, Sydney

13- The Legacy of Edward Gough Whitlam

14- Futurist Fairy Tale

15- Sydney Harbour, (three short poems), NSW State Library, 2013

17- A Hoya in Decanter (Ekphrasis, Destination Sydney, 2016)

18 - Je Suis Charlie and A Mourning's Work

19 - Mangrove Mountain, 1943

20- Gundagai Legend #29, Gundagai

21- Budget Airline

22- Jesus Insurance

23. Of Course You Do

24- Naval Night, Sydney

25- French Knitting, Port Phillip Bay, Melbourne

26- To my Toes

27- Revisit a Childhood Park, Yagoona, Sydney

28- Style...

29- Not Yet Treasure, for my Daughter, Balmain

30- Lead For a Pencil

31 to 34- And a few other things

35 In Deed Done (For My Daughter)

36- Paralleloverse

37- Clubhouse

38- Lovers

39- Tomorrow For You

40. Darwinian Numbaa

41. Tour de Dordogne, World Tour Record

42- They Call It...

42. For Zana

43. Shonk Ambitions

44. MicroWave

45. Give A Dog A Bone (song)

46. Away From You (song)

Garry Mc's Other Works

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(Back to Start)

1. Tribute to K i a m a

A two-hour train journey along Sydney's South Coast takes you to Kiama. All change please.

Our train hears your voice

deep to the sounds of the sea

shelly to harbour timbre

your librarians, sentries to pastoral hills

your gift shops, pebbles to the beach.

Kiama is brother to Bombo

hamburger to a pickle

fried fish to a taxi parked

by an intemperate blowhole.

How come your houses spread

like butter over bumping green hills

beef patties to holiday hopes

damper winter and mesmeric summer?

How come Sydney pioneers on a daytrip

coins in their sweating palm

seek your love in sunlight, salt and wind

on footpaths of chicken and chips

finger-licking minutes to your headland?

How come Kiama is brick to dignity

courthouse heart embedded in sandstone cream

visitors desirous of love-making

to passing footsteps

boomerang waves, tidal desire

kelpy enthusiasm?

You caress the highway shoulders

by-pass the Princes'

salute bakery, bunnery and barbeque.

Your admirers carry lamingtons

on paper brown rambles

by sports field and shore

linger at midden castles until the sun sets

their nights forever moon to a crimson breeze.

Walk on in envy

dawn seeing barnacle caravans

beached without wheels

married to sand between your toes

thonged, tanned, behatted

mouth around a headland sandwich

back of your head seeing fishing boats,

scaling knives and promenade

to a passing dream train.

Kiama shops are always open

oysters for pearls and part-time work.

Rub your matted hair

percolate the minutes

let us see the park and homes of heritage

the jumble sale of teak and timepieces

plates of lunch, seafood crunch

peer through coloured glass to sea

returning to Sydney in your

salad daze.

(Back to Start)

2. Perpetual Train

Hawkesbury River 2014

Youthful, homey sleepers

blind