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John Arthur Nichol

  • A small girl stands on the foot platform of a pram, facing forwards and reaching an arm above the roof. She talks and makes slow, considered movements with her hand, as if explaining a difficult concept.

  • A blue cattle dog crosses the road on a lead. A ruler-straight line runs down the centre of its face and muzzle, and everything on one side is black.

  • A woman with short grey hair stands rapping a hand against her thigh as she watches the traffic. She has short grey hair and a yellow ochre dress with matching bag. One eyebrow is up, and her face implies that nothing good will come of this.

  • A small boy makes a break for it, running flat out through Triangle Park in Dee Why. His mother thunders after him, spectacles awry and sandals slapping on the concrete. At the edge of the road she catches him, and they cross together.

  • Good Times

    Upstairs at Abbey’s: Star Wars and The Language Bookshop, Sydney

    A life-size Star Wars startrooper stands at the top of a staircase, surrounded by book displays, a greeting card stand and posters. Beside the trooper is a pile of catalogues in an angled tray. The posters feature ‘Lonely Planet’ guides and current fiction titles like ‘It Starts with Us’ and ‘Spice Road’, and an Asterix title lebelled ‘Nouvel Album’ in French, with cutouts of characters below.

  • Reptilian Russian, a repto,
    Sends force, unprepared and inepto,
    To ransack the store
    Of the nation next door
    In the classic, Attack of the Klepto.

  • Hard Times

    Three dark stone steps lead up to a restaurant door and window. The interior is warmly lit and filled with customers. In the cold, grey light outside, two pugs huddle together on the top step. One lies with its chin on the step while the other, behind it, half sits and half leans against the window like a wounded soldier, its head turned towards a man about to walk inside. The dogs are small, but have thick black rope and strong brass clips locked onto their collars, enhancing the impression that they are condemned prisoners abandoned at the door.

  • Three families are off to the Easter Show on a day that promises rain. A girl arrives at the stop in rabbit ears, hopping and grinning. Another breaks into a spontaneous dance. Above such childish things, a young teen swishes crisp, flared trouser hems bare millimetres from the ground, ready to wow those farmyard animals in the mud.

  • A young man, blonde, wears a briar thicket of dreadlocks at the back of his cap. He has a black umbrella.

  • A woman brings her emotional baggage onto the bus, in a labelled shoulder bag.

  • Bicycles hang like bats on a Dee Why balcony.

  • Trapped in a stroller on the bus, a child throws back her head and strains against the harness, threatening to eject her new blue dummy. She wears a pink top, multi-coloured leggings, and brown pigtails touching her jaw.

    She twists to the side. The dummy’s about to blow when a phone appears in her hands and she looks down at the screen. Her body relaxes. One hand rises to clasp a pigtail between thumb and forefinger and remains there, twisting a strand, pulling gently.

    The dummy stirs in thoughtful sucks.

  • Reflection

    “Looking

  • Putin’s trains run on secretive tracks,
    Lest his populace venture attacks.
    Russia’s fearful and grim,
    But it terrifies him,
    And the tyrant can never relax.

  • Echo

    A slender young Asian woman stands against a wall of huge, solid granite blocks with deep channels between them. She wears a short black skirt trimmed in white with a wide white sash at the waist, and a black top leaving her midroff bare. Her weight is on one leg so that the skirt hangs higher on one side. Her shoes are white lace-ups and her hair is back. She holds a phone near her face in one hand, and a big white envelope rests in the crook of that elbow, all but concealing her torso. One corner of the envelope touches the white waist sash. Her head is bent towards the phone and her free hand is lifted, one finger touching her eyebrow. A long, skinny white shoulder strap suspends a tiny white bag at an angle on her skirt. Above the girl is a huge window framed in wide granite verticals, smaller side windows, and a solid metal panel beneath with geometric designs. The window contains a huge fashion poster depicting four people in the background and a woman in front whose pose is similar to that of the young woman below, but reversed, with the weight on her opposite leg. The woman in the poster wears heels and a matching brown, knee-length dress, and her hand holds a brown purse against her thigh. Her free arm is lifted, crossing her chest and reaching behind the opposite shoulder. She stands as tall as the real woman below. Carved into the stone between them are the words ‘Barrack Street’.

  • A man rides an electric scooter through Triangle Park in Dee Why. He wears a t-shirt and thongs and light, baggy boxers patterned with spots. They flap in the wind. His daughter, standing in front with hands between his on the handlebar, is a black-haired, skinny nine-year old in blue tracksuit pants and a red top. Her fringe is straight and her eyes are deep, and dark, and everywhere.

  • A tall, brown-haired schoolgirl walks the pedestrian way in easy strides. Her top is white and her backpack is blue, like her long, skinny trousers. She shakes her head and lifts one arm in a gesture, moving her lips in silent rehearsal or review. Now and then, a syllable goes live.

  • Two very old ladies are on a mission, powering along Dee Why Parade with walking sticks, urgent looks and identical rolling gaits. Their height and hair colour match but not their outfits. One wears a kind of mesh with black lace over dark slacks, but the other is almost casual by comparison. They exchange terse comments.

  • A middle-aged man in York Street: grey trousers, light blue t-shirt, short hair pinched on top and held with a rubber band. He lights a cigarette. His coffee rests on a garbage bin and he lurks there, watching the street.

  • A father is trying to shop in Aldi while his smiling daughter clings to the trolley and walks her shoes up the chiller shelves. The girl has dark hair, red-framed glasses, red corduroy jeans and a pink jumper. As they turn a corner she still hangs on but the red corduroys are at full stretch, one leg behind and balanced on a toe, the other foot wedged on the trolley.

    The father remains grimly focused.

  • A Ghost Gum (I think).

    A tall tree on a grass slope in the shade. The tree is an Australian Eucalypt, a ghost gum, with smooth, pale grey bark, a forked trunk and long, thick branches spreading and forking over a wide area. The branches narrow gradually into clusters of twigs covered with leaves. The background is blue sky and green shrubs.

  • If Putin were vegetable, gee,
    What manner of plant would he be?
    As a poisonous seed
    He could grow to a weed,
    But he’d never amount to a tree.

  • Established

    The base and the spreading,curling roots of a Moreton Bay fig tree fill the foreground and the bottom three quarters of the photo. The tree is light grey and dotted with patches of pale green fungus. Lines of green moss spread along the ridges and valleys of the nearest roots, which reach down from the trunk with dark fissures between them and widen into broad, organic structures, which themselves are home to smaller roots. On the left, several thick roots have curled together into an amphitheatre shape whose wall is solid but crossed with shadows where the roots have joined. It’s a very old tree. Beyond it, in the top left corner, a grass slope climbs towards a dark-stained sandstone wall and a building with a huge, stone-arched window, sandstone edging and white-mortared red bricks. The roots of other fig trees trail across the grass.

  • A youngish woman prowls along the bus like an angry bird. She has short, curly blonde hair and eyes locked in a frown.

  • Strange white installations rise from a cruise ship’s deck at Circular Quay. They look like giant cotton buds. Proof of Covid testing.