On a hilltop
South of Emerald in central Queensland is a locality called Gindie. It's at the top of a long ridge. There isn't much there, a few farmhouses scattered along the road, a community hall, a one-teacher school and a railway siding. I suppose I was 15, my father stood in the hall chatting to another man I didn't know about something I knew nothing of. They were there for the duration so I sloped off outside. Their voices tailed off and I was in the near silence of a winter's morning in rural Australia.

The hall is just on the northern side of the crest of the hill, and if you stand near the road and look south, you see a patch of gently rising ground in front of you and then sky. Nothing else. It looks like the edge of the world.

I stared for a few moments. Though I knew my mother's old home was a mile from the bottom of the hill I got shivery. I turned away and reality returned with a rush. There was our car parked near the railway a few trees and Dad coming out of the hall.
(Redemption blamed it on the Bossa Nova since, Fri 8 Apr 2011, 22:32, Reply)