joe bloggs

Then suddenly it was over.

The car and the caravan trundled back across Victoria, along the craggy, dramatic shipwreck coast, through windy Warrnambool, past Terang and all the green potato fields, through Camperdown and past the mysterious floating islands. Then Colac. Then Geelong. Towns passed faster and faster. Slow down. I wanted this journey to last forever. But we didn't slow down. It's always faster on the return journey.

Then Melbourne emerged on the horizon like a lost city in the summer haze.

It came closer. We rode silently along the highway into town. Then it was all heat and cars and noise and smog and familiarity.

*

I woke up next morning in my own bed. Everything was in its place as if I'd been there all the time. The picture on the wall. The coathanger on the wardrobe door handle. The sun streaming through the gap in the old curtains.

It was like the distant desert and the raging ocean and the vast, endless expanses didn't exist any more.

Maybe they didn't.

I lay there for a while. I could hear birds trilling their usual morning song and making pecking noises on the branch of the myrtle tree outside my window. A motorcycle went past.

Maybe I dreamed the whole trip.







is it time for a nap yet? i think so