It's gone.
I've checked.
I know.
But then,
it never was
much.
Made mostly of scraps;
A rough frame of old bush lumber;
Walls of flattened fuel cans
and lime coated hessian;
A roof of corrugated iron,
battered and rusting.
Scorched by searing summer heat;
Blasted by dust storms;
Chilled by winter frost.
Insubstantial
against the vastness of desert
that stretched in every direction
from the tiny bush town.
But it was home.
Within its walls
were love and care.
At its table
were sustenance and conversation.
For three years
we lived there
when I was a boy.
I'd rise early
and sit on the edge
of the gibber plain
with our dog
watching the sunrise.
One morning
I heard
the jangling of hobbled camels
returning to town
from a night
in the desert.
On another,
there were herds of cattle,
walked in from
an outlying station
for drafting and yarding,
then transport southward
in a train
hauled by a small steam engine.
At the stock-yard
we'd pretend to be cowboys,
prodding the cattle in the loading race
with sticks,
revelling in the dust and noise,
caring little for their terror
or their destination.
One day we hiked
out past the stock cemetery,
of carcasses leering sightless,
scavenged by crows.
We trudged
to the red sand hills,
then back to the rail-line
for a ride home
with the fettlers.
We went barefoot often -
foot-soles like leather
from the searing sand.
In the heat of the day
we'd pause in the scant shadow of a bush,
to choose the next meagre patch of shade,
then run like the wind
to roll on our backs,
waving scorched feet
in the air.
It's still all there in my memory.
Every few years
I take the old track north,
just to check,
to experience again,
to remember.
Other than the vastness of the desert,
it all seems smaller now -
one tiny settlement
within the compass
of an unbroken horizon.
The old house
is just a memory.
It's gone.
I've checked.
I know.
But then,
it never was
much.