For Melissa Ashleigh White

I enjoy the fact there are no street lights in my street; the sky is an inky black instead of the usual mottled suburban purple with the orange ring around the moon, formed as a result of too many glittering city lights. There are less foothpaths, more cows, a general comfortable aura of leafy green trees and unsuspecting dirt roads. Everything is familiar because I've spent too long here for it not to be; everything holds recollection or has some kind of significance.

The faux German pub on the corner of the street that leads to my house; headquarters of my first job at 14 (dish pig turned waitress). Even driving past with the air-conditioner roaring and the windows of the car sealed, I can smell the pots of sauerkraut waiting to be washed and hear the drone of the accordian that tormented lunch shift after lunch shift, all summer long. The German Arms has since changed hands; the giant moulded chair no longer sits out the front near the outdoor tables. When we were littler (my brother was still in a stroller) there was a man name Paul (?) who used to perform some kind of leiderhosen-slapping dance upon request; he would stand out the front beckoning to passers-by. Said pub is where my famed arm-burn occured, my dad and his friends still frequent the front bar; there's still someone there who remembers me and how I used to wear pink dishwashing gloves during my shifts in the kitchen.

Hunt Road. My family managed to spread itself over the 10-house street fairly comfortably - the dead-end road that is still off John's Lane holds host to numerous childhood injuries. These included but aren't limited to; toes and new socks being wrapped around gates courtesy of a bike with no brakes, rollerblades and colliding with a garage door, being convinced by older and unknown neighbourhood boys that it would be a good idea to put my leg in a muddy dam on a building site, gravel rash and its agonising removal, and the various aches-and-pains that resulted thanks to the homemade 'Slip & Slide' (giant sheet of orange plastic tent-pegged to our front lawn, slathered in dishwashing liquid, leading a slippery slope to the bottom of the garden where a delicious collision with dirt and a rusty hose-reel took place) and the pine tree that dangerously intersected the power lines at the front of the yard. The most famed incident was the 1998 'Magna plummets down two driveways at rocket speed into neighbouring house with 2-year old inside.' Of course my brother emerged unscathed and of course it's still a source of amusement between the residents of Hunt Road.

John's Lane was painted with a yellow strip on one side to prevent the tourists (or anyone I suppose) that flocked there on sunny Sundays from parking on both sides of the street. The street is barely 300 metres long but I remember how that yellow line used to shimmer in the heat, wobble and slither like a snake and seem positively endless on the days I had to drag myself home. It was always a blessed relief to hear the roar of a car behind you and know that there was about a 80% chance that the person driving would know you, feel sorry for your slumped and sweaty frame buckling under the weight of a schoolbag and slow down to give you a lift the remaining 50 metres home.

There was a paddock in the street that backed onto ours; my younger brother managed to develop a fascination with cows at a young age and Mum used to take him to view them in all their glory on her days off. I remember glowing green with jealously as I bore witness to him describing how one of them had given birth to a baby calf and they'd seen the entire thing. Housing developments popped up in that street, leaving behind fabulous remnants of building materials that provided momentary enjoyment; I remember playing with glee in a pile of still-warm mulch that was about to be spread on a painstakingly landscaped garden before the owner opened her newly installed window and screamed at us to get off. Our street was a dead-end and was great for bikes - there were a few non-child-friendly neighbours who used to screech around the corner at some ridiculous speed, cutting the corner and basically providing a countdown to how long it would be before there was a kid on a bike smeared all over the front of a shiny silver 4WD. When it had rained, puddles would accumulate at certain spots on the road and gave me endless amounts of delight in riding through them and spattering everywhere. Amd before the days of water restrictions, the summer evenings meant running through the sprinklers on the lush green front lawn of Number 4.

'I think being back here is good for you; it's grounding,' muses Mum as we roar up a dirt road, dust in our wake, because there's a stall selling mangoes - $10 for 10 - that are better than the ones at the fruit & veg.