The Dispatch
No XLVIII · Separation · 5 min
The first 30 days after she says it's over
A blunt field guide to the first month after the conversation. Sleep, paperwork, the kids, and the part nobody warns you about.
No · · LEGAL
The court day, what to wear, what to say
The first time I walked into the Federal Circuit and Family Court at Lionel Bowen, I went the wrong way through the security gate, set off the metal detector with my belt buckle, and dropped my phone trying to put it...
28 Apr 2026 · 7 min
No · · LEGAL
AVOs from the man's perspective
Most AVOs are not contested. The reasons why, and what the consequences actually are, deserve more honest discussion than they usually get.
28 Apr 2026 · 8 min
No · · LEGAL
Consent orders vs binding financial agreement
I had a long phone call with a friend in early April, the kind of call where one person mostly talks and the other person mostly listens.
28 Apr 2026 · 8 min
No · · LEGAL
Legal Aid eligibility for men
I sat in a Legal Aid waiting room in Parramatta last winter with a man who had been told three times by three different people that he would not qualify.
28 Apr 2026 · 7 min
No · · LEGAL
The power of attorney conversation
My father had a stroke at sixty-three. He survived. The man who walked out of rehab eight months later was not the man who walked in, and one of the things he could no longer do was sign his name in a way the bank would accept.
28 Apr 2026 · 7 min
No · · LEGAL
The living will, Australia
My uncle was on a ventilator in Royal North Shore for nine days before the family agreed about what he would have wanted.
28 Apr 2026 · 7 min
No · · LEGAL
When she files first
The envelope arrived on a Tuesday and the man I was sitting with at a kitchen table in Penrith had been carrying it unopened for six days. He thought if he didn't open it, the clock didn't start. The clock had started.
28 Apr 2026 · 7 min
No · · LEGAL
When you file first
I sat in the car park outside the Brisbane registry with the application printed and unsigned on the passenger seat. The engine was off. I could feel my pulse in my jaw, the way you feel a bruise when you press it.
28 Apr 2026 · 7 min
No · · LEGAL
Duty of disclosure, explained
I had three banker's boxes on the dining room table at 11:40pm on a Tuesday and a cold cup of tea I had forgotten to drink. My solicitor's checklist was open in one tab.
28 Apr 2026 · 7 min
No · · LEGAL
The one-stop divorce myth
I was at a kid's birthday party in a park in Toowong, holding a paper plate with two sausages and a piece of carrot cake, when the bloke next to me said "yeah we got divorced last month, all sorted." I asked him, casually, how the property...
28 Apr 2026 · 7 min
No · · LEGAL
Subpoenas and third-party disclosure
The first subpoena I saw up close wasn't mine. A friend in West End rang me on a Sunday night and said, in a voice I had not heard him use before, "they've subpoenaed my GP." Then a long pause. "And my accountant. And the CBA.
28 Apr 2026 · 7 min
No · · HABITS
The first 90 days without alcohol
It was a Tuesday in February, about ten past nine, and I was standing in the kitchen with a glass of soda water that was supposed to be a beer. The fridge hummed.
28 Apr 2026 · 8 min
No · · HABITS
Why quitting drinking is different after 40
I stopped drinking at twenty-six for about six months and remember the experience as a kind of mild novelty. I stopped drinking at forty-three and a fortnight of body work happened that I was not prepared for.
28 Apr 2026 · 7 min
No · · HABITS
The 3am test, day 3 without alcohol
It was three eleven a.m. when I woke on day three, and the bedroom ceiling had the particular grain you only see at that hour, when your eyes have been open in the dark long enough to start finding patterns.
28 Apr 2026 · 6 min
No · · HABITS
Alcohol and anxiety, the loop
I sat in a café on Glebe Point Road in the late autumn, watching a man at the next table order a flat white with hands that were almost steady. I knew what he was doing because I had been him.
28 Apr 2026 · 7 min
No · · HABITS
Moderation vs abstinence
I had a conversation in a pub car park in Newtown about three years ago with a friend who had decided he was going to "moderate". Two drinks on Friday. Two on Saturday. Nothing in the week.
28 Apr 2026 · 8 min
No · · HABITS
Weed, the functional user question
It was a Wednesday in November, half past nine, and I was on the back step with a mug of tea and a bloke I have known since school.
28 Apr 2026 · 7 min
No · · HABITS
The first month without weed, honestly
It was a Sunday in March, just past eight in the evening, and I was lying on the couch with my eyes open at the ceiling, irritable in a way I had not been since my early twenties. The TV was on. I was not watching it.
28 Apr 2026 · 7 min
No · · HABITS
Weed and sleep architecture
It was a Tuesday in May, somewhere past eleven, and I was sitting on the edge of the bed with a half-smoked cone in my hand thinking about the conversation I had at the doctor that morning. She had asked me how I slept.
28 Apr 2026 · 7 min
No · · HABITS
Porn, the 90-day audit
It was a Thursday night in July, somewhere just after ten, and I was sitting in my office with the door closed running through a spreadsheet I had built two months earlier. Three columns. Date, duration, mood after.
28 Apr 2026 · 8 min
No · · HABITS
Porn and the dopamine recalibration
It was a Saturday morning in September, just after seven, and I was sitting at the kitchen table with a coffee and a stack of journal papers I had printed off the night before. My partner was still asleep.
28 Apr 2026 · 8 min
No · · HABITS
Relapse without the shame spiral
It was a Friday in August, just past ten at night, and I was standing in the kitchen with a glass of red in my hand and the bottle open on the bench. Sixty-two days clean.
28 Apr 2026 · 6 min
No · · HABITS
The tools that actually work for quitting
It was a Tuesday afternoon, October, and I was sitting in my car in a Coles car park scrolling through the App Store with the engine off. I had just driven past the bottle shop a second time, come back, sat down.
28 Apr 2026 · 8 min
No · · HABITS
The trigger map
It was a Sunday morning in May, a clear sky, a kitchen table in front of me, and a sheet of butcher's paper with a black pen on it. The kettle was on. The kids were at their mother's.
28 Apr 2026 · 7 min