Abandoned Farm in Northern Victoria

For decades, motor cars have driven past in haste, eyes not straying far from the highway to where, set back and obscured by scrub, an abandoned farm is slowly succumbing to rot. I catch a glimpse of an old cart out front and stop. Nothing moves or makes a sound as I approach on foot. It's as if the spirits of the place have paused and have taken refuge in the quiet, my trespass an interruption to their daily haunt. There is a farmhouse and a number of sheds all in a dilapidated state. Rotted weatherboards still hang onto the farmhouse frame, though a few have fallen off where rusted nails have given up their grip. Corrugated iron sheets replace window glass sealing in secrets that have slept in darkened rooms for what now must be more than fifty years. I lift a corner and peer in. Empty except for rubble strewn floors and sagging webs as if still weighted with captured dreams. Whoever lived here must have taken some pride in what they carved out of the bush, their labor fuelled by hope. A family with kids perhaps. There is a rope tied to an old car tyre still strung beneath a red gum that would have served as a swing. The remains of a dolls pram and a broken cricket bat continue their decomposition in one of sheds. Their lives now have dissolved into anonymity. In the privacy of my own quiet, I call out as would a visitor might have done to announce their presence at the farmhouse door. No answer. I leave, slowly dissolving into my own anonymity.