The land has a hushed, whispering heart. High, mild plains suddenly ascend
from the sticky, cluttered and clogged, coastal strip. Winding, like an ironic
smile, through one of these alpine plains, is a road. Well-paved, but small,
narrow and introspective a road that makes the first-time traveller wonder
what is next.
   On three consecutive right-hand sweeps of this bituminous ribbon, grow
three stately copses of conifers, growing at obtuse, generous right-angles from the
road. The first of these lines of trees introduces a small, shallow valley among the
pastoral slopes. These pines rise from a small lea, dark, clustered conifers,
pungent scents of a shadowy, northern world. The trees grow, perversely, in
ascending height from the bend, as if they're designed.
   As you enter this sequestered valley, your car gently idles round parabolic
curves before meeting the next hedge of these spindly pinus radiata planted
probably 30 years ago, in the same ascending pattern as the first.
   These trees whisper - in winter and on cold, bright, spring days - with a
scented carpet of perfumed needles and cones below.
   The third row of trees reaches for the light frpm the valley floor. Your car now
brakes to slow as you enter the third curve in the road, worn front disks
shudder slightly to reveal the road's deceptive camber. Cars driven by open-
hearted country boys occasionally slip their bonds and end up broken and dusty
amongst this copse. For the most part unhurt, or rolled in the recessed paddocks
which surround these trees.
   These third trees, out of all of them, direct the driver's searching eye to a
small farming cottage, mixed weatherboard and bluestone, on a slight rise up
the valley. A paddock in front of the house in which cows and horses graze
purple, weed-filled paddocks testify to overgrazing.
   This is unimportant, as this is not some poor farmer's home paddock, it
belongs to someone else.
As you pass the last line of trees, the valley's shallow depth hides a small,
scrubby creek crossed by an old, white-posted wooden bridge - part of an
earlier age when roads caressed the countryside instead of carving their way
through it.
   The creek and bridge have their own, sadder significance. This waterway,
lined with snow gums and nettles, and long, ungrazed grass, is mostly a trickle,
flooding once or twice a winter with a rush of water, dripping leaves on the
gums, and frogs with their incessant, burring call. Gales blow with scudding
clouds seeming to blast from an unending, southern sky.
   The road curves just before the bridge and this is a slight downslope, also
with a treacherous, tragic past. Navigating this narrow decline, your car begins
to strain slightly up the slope, to keep up speed, leaving something reluctantly
in this protected niche.
   Your mind, teasing with associations, begins to unravel as you ascend this
now barren, degraded spur of land, Stray emotions spray off like water off a
broken fly wheel, irregular, disjointed, and barely conscious.
   This valley is a talisman of such outrageous power, it recalls music from a
distant time, mouthing words from a forgotten, forgiven summer.
   One then comes to the shabby edge of a modern, provincial, one-story town,
and leaves something. But always with a vague, lyrical, sense of loss.