The child’s unconvincing insistence that he is happy is partly explained by the pleasure he takes in observing the natural world, but it may also be explained by the untrustworthiness of the doctor who his mother hopes will treat him for depression, given that this doctor has his own reasons for failing to listen to the boy’s experiences of degradation and bullying. By the end of the story the boy’s powers of observation seem like traumatic dissociation. Yet we are left with this unforgettable image of the child and the rainbow light that briefly makes him part of another creature’s protective exoskeleton.

Old Growth is deeply concerned with friendship, especially the complicated friendship between siblings. Brothers might be abrasive with one another – one punches his brother’s arm: ‘He wants maximum effect, to tattoo his brother with the sign of his power’ – but their bond is the most constructive thing they have. A shearer walks through the night to the house where his mate’s wife and kids are sleeping, to break the news that their husband and father has been killed in an accident. Sisters who don’t always have reasons to like each other manage to retain their connection. Women friends have a tender concern for one another and for the bush. And then there are mismatches: footy-and-pub friends with nothing in common, blokes angling for leverage by claiming to be a mate, children who are ‘Two best friends who weren’t fully friends, one of whom had an even better friend, really, and another who preferred the company of a distant cousin’, and a lawyer and his friend who is really a protégé, unable and in the end unwilling to live up to the more senior man’s oppressive expectations. There are more sinister alliances. The final, cliffhanging story, ‘Traps’, is about a theatre director who gets out of his depth in an encounter with a rabbit shooter. Friendship can be dangerous in the world of Old Growth, and the stories represent small and large transitions in relationships, moments of slippage and firm footing, usually in small rural communities.

John KinsellaThe communities in Old Growth are largely country towns, where Royalties for Regions funding has built ‘Sports infrastructure. More sports infrastructure.’ Children in gifted streams at school are socially ‘homeless’, teased by other children and actively targeted by sports teachers. It is particularly hard to be a boy or man in these environments, rife with alcohol and conformity. We are told that ‘Guns and sport were the mainstays of the local boys’ in the 1970s, when the fathers of the current generation were growing up. Small wonder that a boy, watching the alcoholic destructiveness of his parents, ‘broke into a cold sweat. A cold sweat. He became a cicada shell with eyes but nothing else left inside.’ There is an emptiness at the core of many adults. The entire collection, with its critique of the state of rural life, seems to be asking the question posed by an Aboriginal family in a supermarket where a Muslim girl is being disparaged. ‘This is an ugly town most of the time, but it can be okay as well,’ says an Aboriginal shearer. His niece, looking at the manager and the customers, says ‘howz it gunna be, people? How is it gunna be around here?’ The stories in Old Growth seem to be showing us the ugly and the okay in rural life, and to unsentimentally celebrate instances of friendship and enlargement of acceptance in a tough environment, where a great deal, including the protection of children and the environment, is at stake.