The Pull of the Bush

Rising up out of Sawyer's Valley the highway careens at almost the level of the treetops. The forest sprawls out, a shawl over the dry land. It is an honour to see it from this level. The air tunneling through the two front windows makes the car shake. I am driving at 100 km/h and I am listening to "The Dreaming" by Kate Bush, and I am singing loudly and the sky is large and baby blue above me.

See the light bounce off the rocks to the sand.

I break, and the trailer (heavy with the luggage of twenty-six newly arrived CISV teens who themselves are carving crushes and hopes and impressions on each other in the bus just behind me) jolts the car forward as if being toyed with by a hidden magnet. An old wooden train carriage in a small paddock. The rust tin roofs. On the road's edge I pass a car crash memorial; plastic flowers scattered in murky jars on the gravel and a Metallica flag hugging the death tree, refusing to let it forget its charges.

At the turnoff I get out to open the sheep gate; unclipping the chain, throwing the two gates swinging, barefeet on the red stones, Kate Bush spilling out across the yellow grass. I have been listening to this album on repeat the whole way from the city and its beautiful, its perfect. In the bus windows Scandinavian and North American faces are pushed to the glass, anxiously staring at their new temporary life. There is a rattle in the bonnet of the car. The patriotic SHOOSH of wind in the eucalypts. Its nice to drive in one certain direction. It feels like home.

See the light ram through the gaps in the land.
Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.