Best Australian Yarn: An Unfamiliar Road with Kangaroos by Cameron Raynes

Vanessa took a sip of her coffee, bewildered by the memory that had just flashed in her mind like the death-throws of a sun, its light traversing the pitch-black of space. She was no more than four, walking beside her mother. Something told Vanessa it wasn’t near the family home in leafy East Fremantle where she had spent most of her childhood. There was a hibiscus and a corrugated fence. She could almost feel her four-year-old fingers run along it. It was extraordinary, she thought, to be so sure of that fence’s existence.

She tried again to focus on the paper for the Melbourne conference. Around her, in the little café in South Fremantle, people sipped coffee and picked at their food. A man nursing a latte in a corner looked the type who might come over, chest hair peeking out the top of his shirt, and ask her what she was writing. A bird-like woman in her late 60s with her hair done up, shoulders bare, sat opposite, reading.

The conference was on the 19th century novel, to be held in Melbourne in a month’s time. Vanessa’s head of school, the bulldog-jawed man who had supervised her doctoral research, had urged her to submit a proposal. ‘You need this,’ he had said, fingering her performance review and frowning. ‘You want to be considered for a teaching and research position? Yes?’