Stories


Non-Fiction


  1. Dream in Seaweed, Wake in Plastic
  2. We are the Estuary
  3. Merry Koori Blak and Starry Whytte XMassive
  4. Woolgathering
  5. The Lost Holiday


Fiction


  1. Cold Heart Country
  2. Skeleton Close
  3. Mullumbimby and the Infinite Sadness


Information


Heath Killen is an Australian writer, researcher, and publisher who helps people craft and tell their stories through his studio Woolgather.  

He is the former Managing Editor of Australian creative industry magazine Desktop, and has been published by Going Down Swinging, Powerhouse, and The Design Files.

A passionate environmentalist and former Campaign Administrator at The Wilderness Society, Heath seeks to untangle the history of climate change and understand how it is reshaping our culture today.

Comissions are welcome via studio@heathkillen.com.


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Heath Killen
is a Writer, Researcher, 
and Publisher.

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Art by Kiasmin


Bogong Moth
  • Agrotis infusa
 The bogong is a native moth.
I have chosen it as a totem for my writing. 




 Australia’s bogong population was once incalculable. Today it’s numbers have declined by 99.5%.

A coveted source of nutty, buttery protein, the moth would bring Aboriginal groups together for harvests and ceremonies over tens of thousands of years. It is the primary diet of the endangered mountain pygmy-possum and a key source of food for many other animals. 

Bogongs are migratory, travelling on a miraculous navigational pattern, using ancestral knowledge so deeply embedded in the creature that each new generation is born with it. They begin as “black cutworms,” living in the soils of the Darling Riverine Plains in Queensland and northern New South Wales. Come spring, they emerge as moths and begin a 1,000 km journey to Alpine Victoria, guided by the earth’s magnetic fields, to aestivate in caves. As the seasons cool, they return north to breed, continuing the ancient cycle. 

Or at least, that is how things were. Once taking to the skies in swarms so large they registered as storm clouds on weather radars, the bogong has vanished. Caves once covered in the millions now sit empty. 

The disappearance of the bogong is not only a loss of biodiversity; it is a loss of culture. It is a disruption to the order of things. An interference in natural rhythms. Like a black hole, it creates more loss, pulling connected life into its empty centre. Right now we can only imagine how this loss, will reshape our world, but we will come to know the impact.

This totem is a reminder to pay attention to the non-human stories unfolding around us. 

To share these stories. 

That is what I intend to do.