And down by the straw coloured hills and plains I came, past the bracing cold southern hills, down that reaching, arcing, concrete ribbon of road?

And the way they call it Remembrance Drive, and how they were right – and I was away, remembering, going back through the too quick fading years, back to when I left the floodplain for here, the bush capital of Australia.

And there beside me now, waterless Lake George: vast, forlorn and beautiful. And I remembered stopping by there on hard far-from-home days, staring out to the tremulous grass and unknowing cattle. A sad, lovely, lonely lake – indifferent to me and my laments, that lapped silently at her edge?

And I remembered back to then; remembered how when I left the floodplain, well, for a while, I kind of felt like that lake – kind of empty and strange. 

And the way I remember wondering about where I was, wondered about the virtuousness of town with so many roundabouts, a town which didn’t have a High Street? 

And how I missed my curving narrow river bend street, the greatest Street on Earth – the way I missed the red footpaths and facades and faces; how I pined for kikuyu grass, soft soil and the warm hearts of home?

And how Remembrance Drive made me feel old – old like the Brindabella Ranges, old like the plains of Yass – and how could it be 20 years since them days? Was that possible? 

And the way the road curved and rose and fell beneath me – like the years themselves  – and I was riding a great nostalgic tide, back down to here, back to the fork in the road I met back then?

And the way I suppose we all think about the roads we’ve been down, how on meditative drives and walks we sometimes catch a glimpse of the forks and critical junctures of our lives; how we see in the distant hills the bridges we crossed. The way we remember and understand why we could we could never go back, why it had to happen?

And the way it’s OK; getting older and all – the way I got to thinking about metaphorical roads while I was on this real one heading south to the bush capital. 

And I remember packing all my belongings in the back of an old fuel – gaugeless Volvo and drove out of town – the way I kind of jumped – and let the net catch me?

And how someone wise told me, they said, how if you never go ahead and jump, well, the net can’t catch you.

And how such a clever phrased thing like that makes me worry sometimes, makes me feel like I should let the net catch me, catch us – makes me feel like we should all just jump, reach for something?

And this same road that took me away all them years ago. 

It also brought me back – one night, I packed another car, full to the teetering brim of hitherto then, not understood lessons – and I drove non-stop back through the darkness, with a mad-aching longing for home, back, back to our river town. 

And the way the road changes us, and how nest are made for catching?

And so it goes.

Goodnight.