Thank you to everyone who entered our competition this year. Whether you are a first-time entrant or one of our regular contributors, we appreciate your support.

The short stories ranged from social realism and crime to satire, speculative fiction, gothic melodrama and magic realism. We couldn't help noticing how many stories concerned child abuse, or were written from a child's perspective. Overall there were fewer 'international' stories than last year but several pieces with African backgrounds may have reflected new elements in Australia's population.

The winning story is Amanda le Bas de Plumetot's superbly understated Waiting for Rain. Members of a family struggle separately and inarticulately with tragedy. Meanwhile, the drought engages all their senses and serves as a powerful metaphor for grief.

The Road to Geelong by David Campbell and Troubles with Fallout by Dawson Hann are our commended stories. The Road to Geelong is a skilfully paced account of a mental breakdown and the complex reactions of those around: guilty, resentful, yet still caring in the only way they can. Troubles with Fallout sets the events of 11 September 2001 against another crisis nearly forty years earlier. The story demonstrates the unpredictable responses of individuals to the turning points of history.

We enjoyed the variety of poetic forms among this year's entries, from sestina, Petrarchan sonnet, pantoum and villanelle to concrete poem, prose poem and imagist free verse. Either from coincidence or some strange manifestation of the Zeitgeist, each year's poetry competition seems to develop its own dominant theme. This time it was the coast: ports, holiday resorts, estuaries, beaches, cliffs and lighthouses. Certainly the coast is important to Australians but does it also represent that border territory between one reality and another where poets find themselves?

The winner is David McLaren's History. Two people see each other as flawed by their history. Ambiguities hint at hidden connections, while abrupt changes of direction convey the effect of fragmentation in both the past and the personality. The poem achieves the diamond-like quality found when nothing can be left out and every word has been perfectly chosen for its task.

Our commended poems are The Stains of the Third Age by Dawson Hann and Danané, Côte d'Ivoire, West Africa by Heather Sadiechild Harris. Dawson uses envelope rhymes to lighten a poem on a distressing aspect of old age. Ultimately accepting, he seems to suggest that bodily deterioration invites self-knowledge. Heather employs strong rhythms and inventive internal rhymes in a jazzy and affectionate tribute to a town in Africa.

We're sure you will enjoy these poems and stories, along with our other selected entries, when Tarralla 5 comes out in November.

Tarralla Competition judges
Gil Bosaid, Margaret Butcher, Janet Down, Elizabeth Egan & Karen Phillips.