Short Story Competition 2020

A Finding of Solace by Damien Lawardorn

Blazing sun overhead.

Burning sand crunching underfoot.

A strong but capricious breeze.

The faint salt scent of the water.

I catalogue the feeling of each part of the memory, savouring the ghost of balmy warmth as I gaze out at the miserly grey. One image stands out particularly strong—a middle-aged man striding out of the ocean like some latter-day Adonis or gender-swapped Bond girl. He puffed out his chest, put his hands on his hips, and preened like a poor imitation of Superman, all together too proud of his smuggled budgie for my liking.

That moment stands out, but it still has the same fuzziness as all the memories I’ve tried to recall today. It’s almost as if the humidity, thick as soup, has permeated my skull and waterlogged my brain. Of course I remember azure blue skies and the simple pleasure of walking on grass, but after five days of being cooped up by the deluge, those sensations are tinged with unreality.

“Has it really been only five days?” I ask aloud.

“Yeah,” replies my housemate, John. Footsteps pad across the floor towards me. There’s a heavy sigh. “Holy hell.”

His shock confuses me, then I realise his watching has been more sporadic than mine. After sitting here all morning, I’m inured to the chaos outside. Water lapping the top of our six-foot fence. The drowned cars. The endless torrent. The pall of iron grey that sits like a veil over the city.

“We should have left,” he says.

The SES came first, warning us that things were going to get worse. Then came the army, telling us it was our last chance to evacuate. That was yesterday.

“You should have left,” I correct him. My family all live too far away to help.

He sighs. “I told you, you could have crashed with me at my mum’s place. She said she’d set you up on the

couch. We could be watching Netflix right now instead of getting all depressed watching the whole bloody neighbourhood being washed away.”

“And I told you that I didn’t want the charity. Besides, I’d rather be here in case something goes wrong.”

“Wrong?” he lets out a bark of laughter, then gestures out the window. “Mate, the water in the front yard is six feet deep. How much more wrong can things get?”

A whole host of possibilities flit through my mind:

The water could keep rising to where we are on the second storey.

The foundations could wash away.

The weight of water could cause structural damage to the lower floor.

I keep my mouth shut and shrug.

“Besides, what would you do if things do get worse? We saw how well the sandbags worked the other day.” As in not at all well.

“Honestly, I don’t know. Probably drown. But at least if I’m here I have the chance to do something.”

He paces away, seven steps crisp against the wooden floor, then comes back again. “You’re insane… If we die, it’s your fault.”

I want to deliver a pithy retort, a ‘if we die, neither of us will care’. Instead, I smirk. “Noted.”

“You think I’m joking? I’ve seen on Facebook people have spotted salties in the floodwaters. Two Aboriginal blokes died trying to rob a-”

“I don’t want to hear it,” I cut him off. “I don’t want to hear whatever misinformed crap is making the rounds on Facebook. I really don’t.”

“You’re so bloody touchy… You know, you’re right. I should have left—left you here to stew in your own misery.”

He storms away, footfalls heavy against the backdrop of rainfall, and then comes the resonant thud of a slammed door a few moments later.

Is that what I’m doing? Stewing in my misery? I don’t feel miserable. I feel contemplative, but maybe it’s the same thing when you’re surrounded by devastation?

I’m distracted from that train of thought by a loose wheelie bin sailing down the middle of the street. It’s

not the first and it probably won’t be the last. Ours are safe, at least. I had to fetch and tie them to the stairs yesterday after they started to drift away.

I feel sorry for whoever is going to have to find and collect those lost when this all is over. I feel even sorrier for myself and the hundreds or thousands of other residents who are going to have to sort through the ruin of their lives. Across the road is a set of flats in which almost nothing will be salvageable. The floodwater is halfway up the windows. And then there’s the inevitable mud that will coat everything.

At least the clean-up will be made easier by the community spirit that always wells up in the wake of disaster.

The informal camaraderie after Cyclone Yasi and other disasters. The mud armies we hear about from down Brisbane way. I take solace in knowing that other people will be there to help once the worst is over. We just need to persevere through the now, when time feels like an accordion—stretching and collapsing without order.

Speaking of time, I take one last look at the grey outdoors before turning away.

“I’m sorry,” I call out after a knock on John’s door. “I know I’ve been a bit of a pain these past few days.”

“A bit of a pain?” John states as the door cracks open. “Nah. A bit of a pain is my boss asking me to work an extra couple hours because someone didn’t show up. You right now, you’re like… Do you remember that time you, me, and Terry went out to Alligator Creek, with the horses?”

That was almost a year ago, a bright, halcyon day not long after the end of the wet season. The trail was bathed in a bounty of green, fed by the still-flowing creek. It was quiet. I remember that. Our voices as we clowned about bounced off the hills, and every leaf cracked underfoot was like a violation of the silence.

We’d been walking for hours, through water up to our waists, past termite mounds as tall as us, through scrub that pulled at our clothes, along a tract of cleared land where power lines cut through the wilderness.

I don’t know how far we were from the waterfall—it didn’t feel far—but we stumbled across the herd of wild horses as we were fording the creek. There were maybe a dozen in all different hues and shades. They were blocking the path forward, with several blowing and stamping in a way that made clear they weren’t impressed with us being in their territory. They got more aggressive the closer we came, and we decided to turn back rather than testing our luck.

“Yeah, I remember,” I say, not following. “That was a really disappointing day.”

“You over the past few days have been like Terry then. Totally bloody insufferable because you think you know best about everything.”

I’d forgotten that part. John and I had spent hours after we got back making fun of Terry for getting so worked up over every little sound and stumble. I laugh, realising the truth of his comment. “Touché. I’m just worried that you’re panicking a bit.”

“Yeah, I know. And I’m trying not to, but when I look out the window and see what’s going on…”

“It’s a lot. I get it.”

John nods. “How are you so calm?”

“I’ve been through worse.” Cyclone Yasi. Cyclone Larry. I’ve told him about all that before. Compared to the violence of those storms, this flood seems almost tame. “Just don’t dwell on it. What will happen will happen.”

He shakes his head. “That’s your advice? Here I am worried the house is going to float away and you’re telling me to just not think about it?”

I lean against the doorframe. “Close your eyes. Have you ever been up Castle Hill at night?”

“No.”

“Imagine looking up at a blanket of stars. Up there, it’s away from the city lights, so you can see a lot more. As you look down, Maggie Island is a misshapen lump in an ocean that’s twinkling as brilliantly as the sky. And the city is too. Everywhere you look is a spot of light, a brightness in the dark. It’s not like cityscapes you always see in movies though, with towering skyscrapers and all that. It’s not so harsh or domineering. You’re above it all, like a bird. There’s a bit of wind, but it’s not too strong. It’s peaceful, and there’s something in the lights that remind you of hope. There are so many that you could never put all of them out.”

John scoffs. “I don’t know. This flood might.”

“No,” I assure him. “There may be patches of dark, but the rest of the city only shines all the brighter.”

His eyes open. “Have I ever told you you’re corny as all hell?”

“Not lately, I don’t think.”

He rubs at his chin. “It’s sounds nice, though. I should go up once this is over and see how much of a liar you are.

My turn. Have you been to Undara?”

I shake my head. “Never even heard of the place.”

“It’s over the range,” he explains. “A fair way out west. Everything feels harsher and hardier out there. There’s a lot more open space and the trees are sort of spindlier and tougher. Anyway, Undara is a kind of park-slash-nature reserve, I guess. They have accommodation and guided tours and things. But it’s all about the caves, right? They’re old lava tubes from thousands and thousands of years ago, and you can walk into them and through them. Some places, it’s pitch black and dead silent. It’s kind of scary, but also soothing in a way. You said something about hope a minute ago. When I was at Undara, I felt a sense of consistency, like it’s been there forever and always will be.

“I don’t know why that feels important to me right now.”

I leave him to his thoughts, figuring it’s better to let him work it out on his own. I return to my seat at the window, to my silent observation of the driving rain and flooded street.

This will pass, I know, as all things do. The water will recede. The city and its surrounds will bounce back to their former glory, and we will once again be free to experience all it has to offer. Eventually, this disaster will fade into myth and memory, as do they all, and we will be stronger and wiser for having suffered.

Chalk by Helene Kotzas-Lazaredes

mean something; as though we, those of whom joined the profession, had been touched by some divine grace – kissed by one of the sisters of fate as they measured, cut and wove the tapestry of life.

Made or born – it doesn’t really matter anymore – all I know is that teaching has lead me to this point of my life. The precise point where I will end my career in the very the room where I was once a student – D009.

My mother used to say that my siblings and I were born with chalk in our veins, so strong was her desire to be a teacher. After all, there are seven of us. Seven teachers in our family. Seven people to share school holidays with.

Seven people with which to bemoan the lack of clarity of new curriculum. The only seven people to whom I would ever recount this story. Until now.

It’s true about my mum, though. She had always wanted to be a teacher, but as a girl from a migrant family in the 1950s, it was declared that, “The boy, he gets the educayshin!” And that was it. My mother became secretary, wife and then mother. And my uncle? He had a whiff of a university experience and then became a Real Estate

Agent, without any knowledge that he had thrown away the one thing for which my mother yearned. One man’s trash could have been his sister’s treasure. One of life’s great ironies, I suppose.

Perhaps I was born with that chalk in my veins, as it was certainly not a role model that I sought or found in any one of my teachers. So born it must be. But why recall or even ponder this when night is about to fall on my career, when the semicolon is about to be replaced by a full stop?

As I teeter upon the precipice of my retirement, strange shadows from the recesses of my mind replay like a mobius strip – twisting and inverting. The memories come in waves of incomprehension, increasingly more fractured, increasingly more vivid.

He was my maths teacher, the man who disturbs my sleep. I don’t remember the sum total of his face, his features are merely fragments now – a puzzle missing the vital space between his eyes, mouth and nose. Standing a good head and shoulders above me, I don’t ever recall making eye contact with him; he had been such an imposing figure that I don’t think that my sixteen year old self would have dared even try to study his features.

But he stands there, night after night, next to my bed, a towering monolith of Brylcream and razor sharp

polyester, his hands clasped as if in a spidery prayer.

We used to laugh at him, you know. Giggled and wondered what his house looked like. There were rumours that he still lived with his mother, that the umbilical cord (which must have been well over a century) had never been severed, and that’s why he was so strange. To our youthfully exuberant eyes and ears, he was a million years old, out of touch and simply old – the greatest sin that you can commit when you’re a teacher.

Little did we know that one day we too would wither. Little did I know that students would believe that I too was old, too old to relate to, too old to know anything, too old to dare throw shade on their sunshine with my presence. We swore that we would never be that old. Not as old as him.

But our suspicion of him was not without reason. We weren’t unnecessarily cruel. There was one thing that was very strange about him - something, dear reader, which I am almost embarrassed to recall, as it sounds like I have invented this quirk for narrative purpose – but it’s true, as honest as the fact that I am typing this.

He had a chain that tethered his chair to his desk.

past? Perhaps, it sounded reasonable enough. But just how many times would students have stolen his chair in order to warrant such an extreme response? 10? 50? 100? Weighing over 60 kilograms (according to the Rugby boys who habitually snuck in to deadlift it) the chain was an industrial-strength reminder of our teacher’s paranoia as he dragged his chair out from the desk, shuffled into place, and glared over his half-moons, demanding that we work.

He had a heavy presence in the room and, although we sniggered at his quirks, we respected the solemnity

with which he explained trigonometry and algebra. We responded to his attempts at humour when we forgot our scientific notion, when he told us that our ‘sense of scale was so uncalibrated that we would end up no further than the next suburb when we were aiming for the moon’. A whistle of his nose was the only indication of his momentary frivolity, and yet we humoured him.

In the hot summer months, our lessons were grim and long, the humidity caused rashes on the backs of our legs and we envied those who had PE in the school pool, or had escaped into the cane fields to smoke Winnie Blues and drink icy cold Fantas.

Eventually, the day of his retirement came and went: a brief mention on assembly, a school pen, and a novelty sized card signed by the children of the parents who remembered him when he was a starry-eyed beginning teacher who stood in front of them, vibrant and new. We doubted the authenticity of these accounts, but who were we to call our parents liars?

No one really remembers him leaving amidst the excitement of Christmas holidays. He hadn’t handed in his key. “Oh well, a quirky souvenir of his 55 year career,” joked the office lady with the vibrant coral lipstick as she reapplied her ‘face’ before racing to the Imperial Tavern to drink away the memory of another school year. The schooners washed away the chaos of reports and parental complaints for six weeks of summer over-indulgence.

They had invited him, asked him to join them, but he hadn’t turned up. He never had before. They had come to understand his reticence. His desire for solitude. He had never joined them for lunch in the staffroom, so why would he start now?

No one thought about him all summer.

It was such a hot, scorching Christmas break. There was a stillness in the town – it was a four day Christmas holiday that year, so many shops simply stayed shut for the whole week between Christmas and New Year. The regular humidity had been replaced by dry northerlies and the sand flies seemed too exhausted to even care about biting. The days were long, and the nights ached. A whisper of breeze at dusk filled us with such hope, but night after night we tossed and turned; we took ourselves outside of tents and lay in the cool dirt next to the creek bed, much to the horror of our parents. Those of us who were lucky enough to live close to the Memorial Baths didn’t walk into the place after the first week – the water didn’t cool below 32 degrees. It was our endless summer.

It wasn’t until the following year that they found his body. Upright. Sitting in his chair, tethered to his desk, an immovable statue in DO09. If they hadn’t known better, it would have seemed that he has come in early to start the school year, ready to face another group of spotty teenagers. His dress pants were as precise as ever, and his Brylcreemed hair remained methodically groomed. It was only that his eyes had milked over. The cleaners said that he was perfectly preserved – no decomposition had occurred. He was dry and crisp and bore no evidence of putrification – he was in perfect condition.

Dry.

As though he were made of chalk.

So here I am, on my last day. I have received my pen, the novelty card has been signed with warm wishes

from faces that are interchangeable, bubbly teenage-girl script signed with love hearts and balloons, and I was applauded at an assembly. Lovely. Yet for the first time in my life I feel fear. Not a creeping paranoia, not a chill up the spine, but a heart thumping dread for the future.

My mind has darkened. My legs are paralysed. I have no sense of who I am. I was a teacher, but this pen, card and flowers say I no longer belong to the noble profession. I have the key in my hand. All I have to do is return it and walk out the front gate for the last time, head to the Imperial and join in with the goodwill of the revellers. But I can’t. My chair is tethered to the spot as surely as Mr McRobbie’s was chained to his desk. Wistfully, I look out of the window and dream to once more be smoking in the cane fields, the flowers above me ready for harvest. A lump forms in my throat. A dryness, unlike any other, coats my tongue – chalk.

From chalk I was created, and to chalk I will return.

Death Amongst the Wallangarra by Lily Reeves

across the sun-baked land, waking the little amount of life that was left. It had been the same for a year now. I have waited for it to come, for grey skies with thick clouds to cover the desert. To feel the droplets soak into my roots and make them moist once more, but it hasn’t. Instead, each day is just as horrid as the last. The bilbies burrowed at my roots and begged for shelter from the scolding sun under my Wallangarra wattles. Their sanctuary that was the shadow of my wide body grew smaller as I began to wither while the days passed. My leaves dried out and turned to a burnt umber before they fell to the ground and became the red dirt.

Usually, the farmer would have been out and about on the farm early when the sun broke, feeding what was left of his livestock, whistling through the day. But today was different. It wasn’t until midday that I saw him. I watched him traipse his exhausted body across the poisoned turf, his pace slowed and dreary. His shoulders were hunched, and his head hung low as he scattered a pitiful portion of grain across the cows’ paddock. Their water was scarce in their trough. Each day, the sun stole the water from them, drying out the troughs, rivers and waterholes. The cows desperately bustled past one another trying to get enough food to go another day. Their skin hugged their ribs like lycra and each individual vertebrae poked at it, ready to bust through it any day. High above, a wedgetail soared. Prying the land for a fresh carcass to pick at, the superior species in this deadly dry spell. I watched as the wedgetail dipped below the clouds and swooped shallowly over the land. A lifeless bilby laid alone, desiccated from the drought. And I saw the wedgetail take his fill perched on the seething skull.

The day passed and the farmer hadn’t done any of his usual routines. It was late in the afternoon when the farmer staggered towards me across the field as the sinking sun threaded through my branches. He passed the cows, who leaned themselves against the wire fence for support. Flies swarmed at their eyes, desperate for moisture. The orange-gold horizon stretched far and wide. And as the rich hues of red blended into a purple-tinged grey and the sun disappeared, the farmer slumped into the base of my trunk. He gazed out into the never-ending arid land while he scribbled something onto a piece of paper before he nailed it to my chest. His face

dripped and it was no longer just sweat. Sadness leaked out of me, it slowly oozed down my bark. The wedgetail’s broad black shadow crawled across the barren land and darkness closed in. She perched herself on my arm like death awaiting her next victim. And as she sat with all her glory, she presented herself to the farmer offering a sweet temptation. The rope was secured over my arm and connected me to the farmer, and we became one.

For the first time I understood him. I understood his struggle. Every day the same thing, wake up and somehow scavenge for survival. But there was guilt. Deep guilt for the ones he would leave behind. The people that will have to survive this on their own. The very thing he couldn’t survive himself. His kids, oblivious to the depression consuming their Father. His wife, who prayed every night at the end of her bed for rain. He felt selfish. To leave them in deeper turmoil. But he couldn’t stay. His life, just like the land had deteriorated. The drought had inspired his darkest thoughts.

I could feel the rope begin to tighten and I knew what was next. CRACK! The rope pulled taut and the last

tears escaped his glossy eyes. The drought had taken another victim. Death hung from my arm and the wedgetail grinned. A ghostly silence covered the outback. And then I heard the dingo’s cry.

The farmer’s death moved something in the atmosphere. The clouds began to appear, rumbling over the flaked land. And it was over. After a year of nothing but dry for miles, the ground finally met with water again. I felt the rain dribble down my trunk and seep deep into the soil below me.

The Riverside by Ethan Craperi

Jonas rolls the coin in his fingers, the metal cold against his skin. He holds it up, and it catches the sun – a rusty, golden-brown light that deepens to orange and crimson. The sky fades to indigo. He stares down into the murky, slow-moving river, and for just a second, he swears he can see a child staring back at him. The child looks familiar – he’s got dark hair, and brown eyes like his own.

The river is on the edge of his hometown, on the very edge of the tree-line. It’s quiet, nothing but the sound of the wind rustling through the gum leaves – behind him, the empty, slumping Queenslanders creak and moan in the wind. There’s no-one here anymore. It is a ghost-town, with nothing but bushland around it – nothing but trees and outback, and the old, sun-blasted highway that serves as the single connection between this place and the world beyond.

He looks back, and the cracked windows of the houses stare like dark eyes back at Jonas. It feels wrong,

here. He feels like an interloper. A foreigner. He doesn’t belong to this place anymore. He’s a traveller from another time, another world – a world of city lights and traffic, a world of suits and ties and business meetings, a world so far removed from this rickety collection of houses and cracked asphalt streets. A town being slowly reclaimed by the bush.

It had been an old mining camp, once. A crazy old man had gotten lucky, and found gold in the surrounding hills. Others had come out to investigate, and soon, a ramshackle cluster of tents had been set up close to a nearby river – a cluster of tents that soon became a street, which then became Main Street, and then, as more and more people came, it grew, into the slapdash heart of an infant town. An enterprising businessman built a pub, and a few stores opened up; and slowly, but surely, an oasis was built in the barren heart of North Queensland.

Oasis. That was the name of the town. A little patch of paradise amidst all the red dirt and bushland, in the desolation of the Queensland outback.

Even when the gold ran out, people stayed – they learned to love the hills, the sunsets, the scorching blue sky. The way the red glow stained the horizon as night fell. The old folks called it home, though their children would later call it prison.

Jonas scuffs his shoe in the dust. There’s no other footprints around. No-one else has been here, not for years. No-one else remembers this place.

Haven. Sanctuary. Hometown. Prison. Exile. Junk pile. Yeah, he’d called Oasis a junk pile on more than

one occasion as a kid. He and his friends had all agreed on one thing – that this place was a dump, a junkyard, nothing here worth staying for. Sun-soaked childhood memories were tarnished by memories of a bitter want for something more; he dreamed of living in the city, dreamed of being a someone. He’d loved and hated this town, and he’d spent his days here waiting, hoping, begging for a way out. He used to meet his girlfriend here, by the edge of the river – it had been their meeting place, their rendezvous point, and he remembered how they’d sit there together, arms around each other, tossing coins into the water and making wishes.

Jonas’ wishes were always that of escape. Of freedom. Wish after wish to leave this town... and when the chance had finally appeared, he’d taken it, hadn’t looked back.

Well, years had gone by since then. He’d left, and he’d travelled the world. He’d gone to university, gotten a degree in business – he’d ended up buying a company, he’d made a lot of money. What he’d never found was satisfaction. All the coins and wishes in the world hadn’t helped him to find that – he wondered if it hadn’t been under his nose all along, and he just hadn’t been able to see it.

Jonas tosses the coin high in the air. He sees a coppery sparkle as it arcs overhead – an almost inaudible splash, a faint ripple on the surface of the water. And then it’s gone. As the sun sets, and the red light washes over his face, he wonders how many coins it would take to wish himself back. Back to when life was simpler.

He looks into the river, and for just a second, he sees a child staring back at him again. Dark hair and brown eyes like his own. But he knows it’s just in his head. Just a memory.

Grandma's House by Brooklyn Pritchard

I close my eyes and deeply inhale the scent of freshly baked carrot cake. My soul lifts as I hear the enchanting sound of my grandma’s voice calling for me out of the kitchen window.

I open the old wooden door and step inside. Walking into Grandma’s house is like stepping into another time, with her vintage furniture and classic decor. I sit down in my favourite armchair and feel a sense of comfort come over me. I feel the presence of Grandma in the room. My mouth waters as she places the carrot cake on the coffee table in front of us, a recipe I know I will never get my hands on.

Grandma gracefully sits down in her special seat, as she calls it. I feel a rush of excitement because this is

my favourite time - storytime - where I feel I am transported back in time to when Grandma was young and growing up. She cuts a piece of the precious cake, places it on a plate and hands it to me. I snuggle into my chair and wait. Grandma grins as she looks at me with her kind, blue eyes. Eyes that don’t reflect the age of her face.

Grandma has taken me to so many different places in Townsville, while I haven’t moved out of the seat. She has told me about living in Railway Estate while growing up, spending evenings at her Grandmother’s place around the corner, her whole family gathered around the piano, dancing and singing together. “People spent so much more time together back then,” she said, “before TV and computers came along.”

She takes me back to 1940, a very wet year. Two cyclones hit our region, causing a lot of damage and

flooding. The Town Baths at The Strand were destroyed, now the site of Tobruk Memorial Pool. ANZAC Park was washed away, leaving only the concrete steps. Grandma’s house in Railway Estate was filled with water, along with the local picture theatre, ‘The Estate.’ I guess flooding is something that is always going to be a part of living in the North.

Grandma relives her time during World War II when Townsville was a major army base for Australian and

American troops. Grandma was working at a cafe in town called the Rose Garden and her eyes have a twinkle as she recalls serving American troops who called her ‘Blue Eyes.’ She spoke about food and clothing being rationed, but everyone was happy to go without so they could help. It is nice to see the army is still a big part of living in Townsville now.

I open my eyes. A watery tear slides down my face. The scent of carrot cake suddenly fades away. Grandma isn’t here anymore, but she has given me a gift. Now, walking around Townsville and visiting the places from her memories, I feel like she is still with me.

A New Cycle by Tien Ern Chan

I limped on my left leg, holding the crutches tightly. As I stood in front of the wrecked remains of the veggie patch that I planted with mum and dad, I felt a crack in my heart. My sights were blurred and cheeks were wet.

A couple of months ago in the middle of summer, the rain poured down in buckets non-stop for weeks. On one particular Thursday evening, mum and dad frowned while watching the news. “We shouldn’t worry Kevin.

He just turned eight two days ago,” advised mum. I overheard their short conversation, but it didn’t ring a bell yet.

One evening when we were preparing for bed, dad burst into the room. “KEVIN! We’ve to leave! The flood is coming!” dad shouted and shook my shoulders. I half opened my eyelids, unable to comprehend that. “The flood is coming!” he repeated a little slower. The penny dropped. I slid out of bed. Together we dashed out of the door. But too late, the flood water had reached our doorstep! Our house was like an island surrounded by a muddy sea that roared like a hideous roaring monster. Darkness engulfed us as we fought our way through, but we were like soldiers losing in a battle. The pounding of my anxious heart got louder every second. The familiar neighbourhood turned into an uncharted sea. Fear twisted tight as a dead knot in my guts. Cold sweat barrelled down my forehead. “Run, Kevin, RUN!” urged dad. But with my legs trembling like jelly, the water knocked me right off my feet. My head hit something rather hard. I only heard mum crying my name before everything went black...

The next moment I remembered was me squinting at the incandescent lights above me. Then I heard a voice. “Oh, Kevin, I’m so glad you’re alive,” cried mum, stroking my hair in relief. “Your right leg is severely fractured. You cannot be discharged from this ward because we have to monitor it for approximately two weeks,” informed the nurse. The subsequent two weeks crawled like a snail while I painfully learned how to walk again.

Back in the present, a month after the flood, our old home was still a ruin sitting in the mud. It was a sweltering, humid day. The stench of the air was damp and musty. As I turned away, about to head to our temporary apartment block, I spotted a young sapling in our old veggie patch. Limping there as fast as my crutches could take me, I noticed a tomato seedling. Even in such a humid weather, this little chap put in all his effort to grow out of the muddy patch. My face lit up. The horrible odour which hung in the air seemed to have subsided. A fresh breeze blew into my heart. Instantly, I understood there’d be a new cycle for North Queensland. After all, life up here was all about confidence, resilience and never giving up.