Oceans and Mountains of the Flood-Plain

Land that was once open fields filled with nonchalantly grazing cows and the occasional horse is now covered by tarred roads and tile-and-brick villas. Slim Dusty once agisted his team there. Suburbia has usurped the flat flood-plain I once roamed as a budding Robin Hood. It is sad to see it vanish without a requiem. Perhaps it is only when we are young that we fully, completely enjoy a landscape, when our flowering imagination sees within it so many exciting, evocative frames. Back then the paddock opposite my parents’ house appeared flat from a distance, yet it was an illusion…