acknowledgements

The author acknowledges the following sources of ideas, images and references for these stories:

* Jack Dunbar for the title black juice

* Adrian Denyer for the cat bringing home a different creature every night (‘Perpetual Light’)

* Louis Creagh for hugging the elephant’s leg (‘Sweet Pippit’)

* Janice Dancey for the phrase ‘hairy story’ (‘Wooden Bride’)

* the Linstead family of Perth for the word ‘bonty’ (‘Singing My Sister Down’)

* National Geographic for the picture of a woman skinning monkeys (‘Yowlinin’)

* the SBS program ‘Global Village’ for tar-pits (‘Singing My Sister Down’) and for children making mud-jeeps (‘House of the Many’)

* Paddy Doran, Mike Waterson and The House Band for the song ‘Seven Yellow Gypsies’ from their album October Song © 1998 Green Linnet Records Inc. (‘My Lord’s Man’)

* Years 5 and 6 of 1999, Geelong Grammar School, at workshops with whom ‘Yowlinin’ and ‘Rite of Spring’ were begun

* the magazine Modern Bride, the misreading of whose title gave rise to ‘Wooden Bride’

Thanks to Eva Mills, Jodie Webster and Rosalind Price for editorial help with this collection, and to Rowena Lindquist, Marianne de Pierres, Tansy Rayner Roberts and Maxine McArthur for their valuable input at the inaugural wRiters On the Road (ROR) workshop at Montville, Queensland, in October 2001.