Tim asks to see what’s on the other side of the mountain.
Tracy has never seen there either. Katherine has—when she
home-schooled, back from America and out of kilter
with schooling here, I drove her out that way
regularly: to explore the shifts in flora and fauna
that short distances can bring. Around there,
it’s another world. She sketched spiky hakeas,
followed ant trails, looked out for echidnas. I taught
her to tread carefully. The places the Shire
exploits to make roads—gravel pits—
are bio-intense, semi-intact universes
that need to be preserved. One time when we
drove clockwise out around the mountain, down
Mokine Road and then across towards Waterfall Road,
we were halted by a tree down over gravel:
a storm had blown through the night before,
and the family living in an old homestead nearby,
high red roofs and Gothic gables, grotesque
palms rising thin and risible towards a still
implacable sky, had yet to come out with chainsaws,
to cut a way through. Behind them, before us, the mountain
repined and hankered after something silent,
and Katherine asked if stars ever shone at night
on this side of things. I had no answer, and turned
the car around with a three-point turn:
I have never been out there on a clear night
in all these years, and I can’t answer
with conviction that what we see looking
from this side of the mountain is the same
as what is seen from over there.