When ever I visit Sydney or Brisbane suddenly my mind can’t shut down. Every noise I hear seems to be compounded by an echo of cement and bitumin. A motor vehicle accelerating, loud music, the honk of a car horn and the screech of brakes. I usually wake in the middle of the night. It’s as if the street lights are beckoning and I kneel on a bed and invariably peer out across the fairyland of sparkling buildings wondering at the lives laid out in a grid reference that a taxi GPS often can’t locate. Beyond the city, regardless of which one there are mountains and water, berthed as I am for a few nights I marvel at the topography, all the time my mind swinging out towards the miles of flat country that extends beyond imagining. By dawn the garbage trucks have arrived and I awake to the crash of bins and the intermittant stopping and starting of a truck that always sounds to me as if it needs a good grease-no matter where I am. Yet for all the differences and the occassional sensation of displacement I enjoy visiting these cities with their art, cafes and theatre. We can be very short on cultural experiences in the bush.

Last week during the full moon I lay on my bed here at home and watched this pure disc of light as it rose slowly above the tree line over the river. Above me on the corrugated iron roof a creature scattered the night’s peace and my dog howled, once. Hers was a long, tremulous wail and when quiet descended again I could see her lying in moon shadow. At some stage I slept, blanketed by light.