Jon Stribling

Writer, consultant, and observer of work, technology and place.

Based in Ferny Creek in the Dandenong Ranges outside Melbourne, I write about partnerships, payments, suburban Australia, creativity, modern work and the strange texture of contemporary life.

Featured Essays

  • The mysterious art of ball slapping and the decay of man

    It was a normal Sunday evening trawling the socials in front of the fire. Time not well spent, but Dostoevsky was denser and more meaningful than the fluff available on X (formerly Twitter). In the old days, we watched the Sunday movie on the TV, now we watch the world burn in what my wife…

  • The shit fuckery of late capitalism in Australia

    The Melbourne Cup is Australia’s version of the Kentucky Derby, The Epsom Derby, and Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe a couple of times. It’s a national celebration of buffoonery, alcohol abuse, and questionable fashion choices. Oh, and gambling. The first time I attended was when I was nineteen and worked the bar in corporate marquees.…

  • Adrift in a sea of intoxication

    My first alcoholic drink was sometime in Wagga Wagga, a large town in the Riverina district of NSW on the west coast of Australia. Rich farming country that bred healthy football players and at least one famous cricket player. Anyway, the first drink was from a long neck of Crown Lager or Fosters while our…

Note from the hills

  • Upwey on a winters evening

    Waiting outside the Upwey supermarket for my son to come back from the city, a 57-minute journey in the dark. It’s a big journey for a shy and gentle 16-year-old. Waiting in the cold. Suddenly, an electric SUV stops at the pedestrian crossing and the car following behind, an older red Corolla, slams on the…

  • The sad tale of the chicken coop that never was

    February 2020: I had just finished a board meeting at the property technology startup that I was working with, and it felt good. The numbers were heading in the right direction, we had traction. It was going to be a good year. In an excellent demonstration of the developed and developing world dichotomy, it was…

  • Ferny Creek: cults, weirdos, conservatives, and the enterprising Breen

    On the 30th of March in 1918, while the so-called Great War was raging in Europe, there was a land auction on the Holly Hill Estate in the Dandenongs. The land was owned by William Breen and the auction conducted by Coghill and Haughton, respectable auctioneers based in the city, 42 kilometres to the west.…

Partnerships & Payments

Thoughts on payments, partnerships, fintech and commercial strategy.

  • A brief history of working from the (home) office

    When I started my working career in an engineering business, I worked in the office, with no exceptions. The working day started at 8:30 am in the office and finished anytime after 5.30 pm, often later. Technology limitations meant that calls, invoices, meetings, and customer support all happened from a building filled with co-workers (hopefully)…

  • Why Business As Usual is Not Good Enough

    In business today the acronym BAU (Business As Usual) gets thrown around a fair bit. Usually used to distinguish between major capital funded work – strategic work –  and normal operational activity. It makes sense right. You have the strategic stuff and you have the lights on stuff. The problem is that BAU can become…

  • You are not creating content, you are creating

    In his 2010 Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Mario Vargas Llosa, spoke lovingly about what reading and literature had given him saying “Reading changed dreams into life and life into dreams”. He goes on to say that without literature, without writing the world would be a darker, more tedious place. “We would be worse than we…