Fig is Dael Allison’s narrative portrait of the regional place of Muloobinba/Newcastle and its Coquun/Hunter River catchment in fourteen linked stories. Its span encompasses dockworkers who supported Chinese seamen walking off their ship in 1937, a young drag queen caught in the melee of the Star Hotel riot in 1979, the fall-out for a female apprentice joining BHP’s male-centric workplace, activists blockading coal ships from entering the world’s biggest coal port, protestors fiercely trying to protect an emblematic avenue of native fig trees in the CBD, as well as when the failures to protect results in domestic violence, homelessness and the institutionalised exploitation of children by the church. Unity in this collection comes from the character of the city itself and shifting representations of its waterways and hinterland, as well as through recurring characters and relationships in the narratives.
