Hibernate

During the slow trudge of midwinter, everything seems to drag on endlessly. Even getting out of bed in the morning feels like an impossible task, with the cold biting your skin. Far easier to stay under the covers. Exercise routines lay abandoned amidst icy weather, social outings dwindle during the dark and chilly evenings. Leaving for work in the morning becomes a protracted process, needing to allow time to clear stubborn sheets of ice from the windshield and warm up the car. In some parts of regional Victoria, even snow falls, layering the Australian countryside underneath an atypical white blanket.

storyTaylor Albioli22 August 2021Comment

Dante

The poem begins as Dante is alone and lost in a savage forest, encountering dangerous beasts as he fights to keep his courage from deserting him. Vulnerable and without guidance, Dante’s vision of himself in the Divine Comedy is perhaps somewhat autobiographical.

storyTaylor Albioli22 August 2021Comment

The Modern Table

The world of food is fast and getting faster. Your stomach rumbles, you check the time. Can you be bothered cooking? Your thumb hovers over the UberEATS app icon. Delivery is only a few dollars, and Maccas is already so cheap. A few taps are all it takes to live out this once exclusive experience of personal catering. The convenience of the modern food industry is intoxicating, though behind this alluring façade there lurk many ugly truths.

storyTaylor Albioli30 April 2021Comment

Fresh is Best

‘We knew that we had found the right place to call home when our neighbour came and introduced herself before the moving truck had even departed’, says Claire.

storyTaylor Albioli3 December 2020Comment

A Gift

Surely, we can all remember our most treasured toy from childhood. Hold it in your mind, now. The best toys are not necessarily the flashiest or the most expensive. Rather, we value one or two simple things once held close for so long, mementos of our youth

storyTaylor Albioli3 December 2020Comment

Late Bloomer

The phrase “unprecedented times” has surely pulled its lexical weight this year, gracing our ears and lips for months on end. It feels as though the term gradually lost some of its shine with each use.

storyTaylor Albioli31 October 2020Comment

When the Moon Fades

The old man had hung a small mirror from the door frame before he’d gone to bed, as he had done for as many nights as anyone could remember, so that would-be intruders would break it on the way in, thereby cursing themselves with bad luck for seven years.

storyTaylor Albioli8 August 2020Comment

Australian's Baron of Botany

Behind the botanic wonders of Melbourne and its regional surrounds, one scientific figure looms large over the history of plant science in Australia’s ‘Garden State’. German-born Ferdinand von Mueller, though he has long since fallen from public consciousness, remains one of Australia’s most accomplished and influential scientists, even over a century after his death in 1896.

storyTaylor Albioli4 July 2020Comment

The Longest Night

Drumbeats sound out a steady rhythm in the stillness of the midwinter morning, muffled by thick fog hanging like a blanket in the air. In all directions lie green fields, glistening with droplets of freezing condensation.

storyTaylor Albioli9 June 2020Comment

Lost in Space

As the sweltering summer recedes, March approaches with the complex prospects of autumn in tow. The days grow colder and shorter, typically inducing melancholy in many as the winter approaches, though this may prove itself a welcome reprieve at first, given the extreme weather of the past few months. The beautiful colours of spring and summer wither and die, cascading down in waves of brilliant oranges and yellows. Cosy autumn foods and winter fashion makes a return, though at the cost of daylight and warm evenings. It’s a contradictory time of year, and 2020 will be no exception, with at least two additional twists.

storyLost Magazine16 March 2020Comment

A Recipe for Wine

Just over an hour outside Melbourne, towards the southernmost end of the Great Dividing Range, lies the coldest region on the Australian mainland.

A perennial tourist destination, the Macedon Ranges exemplify Victoria’s natural beauty; broad vistas of undulating hills and forests, rolling green broken by volcanic granite, and row after orderly row of grapevines. This region’s climate conditions are among the most exceptional in Australia, and so it follows that the wine produced here carries unique qualities.

“Like human beings, a wine's taste is going to depend a great deal on its origins and its upbringing.” – Linda Johnson-Bell, wine critic.

storyLost Magazine10 February 2020Comment