AustLit

'The suburbs where Carrum Carrum Swamp used to be remind me of my grandparents' old neighbourhood in south brisbane, blonde brick and bland. The kind of suburb where families have lived in the same house since the 1960s and an overgrown lawn is offensive. But as I drive further south, there are horses in a paddock by the roadside and tall eucalyptus trees. I'm only forty minutes out of Melbourne and it feels like the countryside. Before 1879 the suburban houses and horse paddocks would have looked like the edithvale-seaford wetlands: dark muddy water, paperbark trees, herons.' (Publication abstract)