Aussie Gold
Adventures in short stories
I was going to write the next instalment of my return to uni journey but something happened this week that was too exciting not to share.
Furious fiction
The Australian Writers Centre offers a lot of short writing courses. I’ve done many of these, because doing a course is a good way of looking Iike I’m writing without actually doing any writing . . .
Right?
Moving right along . . .
AWC also runs a Furious Fiction competition every month, where the challenge is to write a 500-word story on the given theme within the constraints provided. You might have to use specific words, for example, or set it in a particular location.
The rules for December 2025 were:
Take a major news event from 2025 and write a fictional story that either takes place during it or features it heavily in the plot.
The story could feature real people, but the story’s MAIN character had to be fictional.
The story had to include the phrase (separate or as part of a longer sentence): “IT WASN’T THE FIRST TIME THIS HAD HAPPENED”
AWC announces the theme at 5.00 pm on Friday and you have until midnight on Sunday to submit a story of strictly no more than 500 words.
I decided to give it a go, which isn’t the first time I’ve done this. I’ve started several times; however, the only other time I actually finished one was in December 2022, which you can read here. I was thinking about this and realised that my entire creative writing output has been two short stories in three years!
This time I had no excuses to not do it. I had no uni assignments and no other commitments to take me away from writing. I’d been sick during the week so I didn’t feel like doing anything much anyway. I had time to write and I was going to do this.
I wanted to choose an event that I could have a bit of fun with, and taking a look at the list of major news events that happened in 2025, there wasn’t much to smile about. So I did a bit of digging and found “An Australian cafe owner living in Canada was told to remove Vegemite off his shelves and menu.”
Even the Prime Minister weighed in on this.
Thank you, Canadian Food Inspection Agency.
I had my story.
Writing the story
The first draft was almost 750 words, which is not terribly over the word limit (for me) but it took me a lot of time to cut it back to 500 words, and I had to sacrifice things I really wanted to keep in.
Over the weekend it was fun chatting to fellow writers who were also doing stories for the competition. This was also, I might say, a good distraction from the word-cutting task.
However, despite the distractions, I eventually got the story under 500 words, and then spent way too much time tinkering with it. It’s entirely conceivable that I could have messed around with it right up to the deadline and done nothing else the rest of the day. I don’t want that. This type of writing needs to be fun and it needs to be contained—and 12 hours of tinkering is excessive for a piece of this size. So I made myself submit it so I could relax and spend time on Sunday doing other things.
The aftermath
What happened next was on 24 December AWC announced the winner of the competition and published the winning story along with some of the other top picks.
Below the showcased stories comes the longlist, which is the stories they considered for the showcase and say deserve an ‘honourable mention’, and I almost fell off my chair when I saw my story listed.
Wow! I couldn’t believe it!
So . . . this is it. Written and edited in two days, with a 500-word limit.
Aussie Gold
“Christian, what the hell are you doing?”
“Getting rid of these, boss,” said Christian, stacking red and yellow jars into boxes. “Can’t sell it anymore. D’you want me to toss them?”
Lee sighed. “Stop. Leave the Vegemite and get back to service. There’s a huge group from Ballarat just arrived.”
“Bella-what?”
“Australia. Don’t worry about it. Just go.”
Adjusting his apron, Christian approached the people, who were scrutinising the Australian marsupials stencilled on the wall.
“Hello, Aussies! Welcome to Bounder Coffee. This way, please.”
A woman turned to Christian, peering over her glasses. “You’re not Australian.” It wasn’t the first time this had happened. Australians expected the public face of the café to be Australian.
Christian stood tall, slapping his hand to his heart. “No, ma’am! I’m a proud Torontonian. The boss is the Aussie. He’s out back. Getting rid of the Vegemite.”
He pulled out a chair, inviting her to sit.
“Getting rid … why would he be doing that?”
“Ohhh, you haven’t heard?” He glanced at her nametag as he placed a menu in front of her. “It’s a sorry affair, Lesa. We haven’t had time to update the menus, but the Vegemite toast is off.”
“Off?” exclaimed another woman. “Vegemite doesn’t go off. Don’t you know what’s in it?”
“Well, ma’am, that’s exactly the issue. What’s in it, you know.”
“No, young man, I don’t know,” said a man. “Perhaps this is one of your young people’s April Fool’s jokes? Although it’s two weeks after April first, so kindly explain yourself.”
Christian stepped back and cleared his throat. “Good folk of Bella … stralia. I regret to advise we are unable to serve Vegemite toast today. I know this is a shock, it being your national food and all. However, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency has banned Vegemite from our menu.” He shrugged. “They say it’s due to excessive Vitamin B, which they simply cannot have the Canadian population consuming.”
“Ridiculous!”
“Who do they think they are?”
“Canadians! What would they know?”
Lesa signalled Christian. “Quite the PR disaster, isn’t it, dear? I do love my Vegemite. Nothing quite like it for breakfast. And to come all this way. Such a shame.”
Christian fumbled in his apron pocket. “Well, Lesa. The ruling only says the café can’t sell it. But if you were to order toast, and your knife were to somehow find its way into this jar in my pocket, you might be happy to leave me a substantial tip, without anyone selling anything.”
Lesa raised her eyebrows. “Indeed. I do wonder though, what your boss might say if this ... enterprise were to attract the attention of any food inspectors. Wouldn’t be a good look, would it?”
Christian swallowed, his face white. “You’re not …”
Chuckling, Lesa urged him closer. “Of course not! But if you’re going to do this, you have to do it right. Now, you’re going to need …”
Firstly, congratulations on making the cut, and secondly, what a fun story!