Memoir of a time in a town: Blue, yellow, red

March 2018

My heart is breaking.

I am going to miss this place so very much.

These big blue skies. A massive happy expanse stretched out high above, day by day. Bright, brilliant and blue. So very blue.

This red earth. Dusty and dry. Hardened to rock under the harsh and unrelenting sun. Warm, solid, reassuring.

This country of cheery yellow wheat fields. Wild grasses and happy canola flowers that dance in the cool, quiet morning breeze.

These are the colours of here – warm, embracing, constant and clear.

Here the sunsets are glorious. Day after day our golden globe sets in quiet, predictable, magnificent splendour; throwing rose, amber and violet tinted light across the dry landscape.

Frogs and cricket chirp and serenade the evening as though it has rained (it hasn’t).

The dusk air is cool, always cool, soft and still. Then, come morning, a gentle breeze blows (from where?) until the sun reclaims its land and temperatures begin again to soar.

Here there is rhythm, always rhythm, and predictability. Seasons change emphatically and yet at a snails pace, melding imperceptibly into one another until -suddenly it seems – the baked earth becomes crisp with frost and the breeze once cool now bites as if blowing straight off alpine mountains. Everything turns brown as winter sets in – long, arduous, and cold.

Ones gaze is better now turned indoors toward hearth alight, wool gliding through fingers, and copious cups of steaming sweet tea.

Here one endures a winter hibernation while longing and waiting for spring.

I am going to miss it all terribly.