Well, yet another year has passed, and The Cud is still here thanks to you, our loyal readers!

It's now four years since we launched our little website at the Hollywood hotel in Surry Hills, Sydney back in November of 2004 and our readership has continued to grow well beyond the borders of Australia into America, Europe and beyond. Indeed, the bulk of our readers are now based outside of Australia. And, just as we've always cited in the past, our contributors from far and wide continue to amaze us with their enthusiasm, commitment and generosity towards creating challenging, original work, and your feedback and words of support have not just been encouraging, but have aided in shaping and improving our site.

To help celebrate our fourth birthday we once again asked you to take a peek through our archives and vote on your favorite articles of the last twelve months so as to help create something of a 'best of' issue. The amount of votes we received was truly overwhelming and well into the thousands — we received so many emails, in fact, that at one point The Cud's server briefly reached tipping point!

The result of your votes is a diverse collection of pieces that cover the spectrum from politics to arts and culture, short fiction and beyond.

We're proud to announce that the winner of our annual voter prize is Bruce Dawson of Sydney, Australia. For his entry, Bruce will receive a $50 Amazon.com gift voucher from The Cud.

Your choices that have shaped this issue are confirmation of the kind of diversity of subject matter we'd hoped to consistently provide when we began, and so we invite you to continue for many more months to come to stick to our mantra and 'Entertain a new perspective: Chew the Cud'