Going Home : July 2019
The bus was stuffy. The seats old and worn. The road was long. Every stop meant the driver would put the brakes on, open the door, get out and leave a parcel from under the bus.
The girl was on her way home. It was a seven hour trip from school to home. Her high school gave her a travelling day, so it was Friday, the last day before midterm, a long weekend. Her classmates
would still be in class, as she wound her way on Newman's Coachlines over the Lewis Pass to
Murchison. There, after an hour for lunch, she would change buses, catching the Nelson coach down to Westport, through the winding road of the gorge above Inangahua. She would be tired, sleepy and the colours grey and green would close in, the blue sky would be gone, the foggy weather and green forests would lose the blues, reds, golds of the East coast she had come to love and gradually she would see in the distance, knowing exactly which angle to look, the first
lights of Westport, saying they would be there in five minutes. The lights would disappear, until they arrived in the dark across the bridge, shortly to be dropped off home, to walk into welcoming smiles and a coal fire. To deposit her suitcase in her bedroom and feel the chatter of home. As she slept she heard the roar of the North Beach sea rock her to sleep.
In the morning thrushes bellowed, blackbirds, sparrows and chaffinches dared anyone to stay asleep or rest in bed.
"Let's go down to the beach, " her mother said. " Take the dog."
The beach, piled with driftwood come down from the river in storms. Sand spread out as far as her eyes could see towards Mount Rochfort, green and gold gorse and lupin framed the Buckland's blue peaks. The pointy mountain, Mount Kelvin, in the distance as the
range peeled off towards Greymouth, sixty miles down the coast.
The dog ran and ran. The odd seagull and no other people on the beach. The Tip Head beckoned,
a bank of rocks extending out into the sea with a lighthouse at the end, a road along the top. From the road she saw the expanse of the Buller river, the hidden shingle beach, the lost lagoon her mother had named, the bar and lagoon where ships arrived, dredging, and in the distance, past Carters Beach, before Cape Foulwind, which Abel Tasman had named, was the cement works, plumes of white steam, and out to sea, no boats in sight, across there somewhere was
Australia.
July 2019
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