I must like the view.
I mean it does have the best view at Birkdale, what with the city on one side and the bay on the other.
I must have liked the view enough to appreciate it seven times over two mornings recently.
I was dead wooding our place, having hired a girl with a chainsaw and a great attitude to using it (email me if you need her number, she’s great).
She chopped up things and I took those things (seven trips) to the dump, watching the load on route and hoping no calamities occurred on the way.
My ability to tie down a load is not rigorous, but it held and later the dump was richer for our dead wood and we were on the way to seeing more green and less brown.
When I was little, going to the dump was a big family occasion. It followed a day either clearing out stuff or doing extensive gardening and then we would all get into the station wagon and off we’d go.
Once there, the children were released from the car and left to roam over the piles of rubbish, occasionally turning up a bit of gold.
Mostly our father told us we weren’t allowed to take it home, but occasionally we left with more than we brought and those were good days indeed.
There could be a bit of timber for dad to make some shelves or a wooden crate and old wheels that he could use for a go-cart. The dump was filled with possibilities.
I’ve never been in charge of a load at the dump before. I’ve never been the ute driver, with a flapping cover sheet and restricted rear vision.
But I felt I had entered a new and friendly world.
I liked it that the girl at the entry waved me through, no license required from the second visit, just her remembering ‘Alex Hills’.
I liked the girl up the top near the green waste who lent me her gloves as I did the first unload. I liked pointing to where I was going to the man in the little shed and his smile and nod. I even liked the koala sign which smiled and turned green as I drove past on the way.
For a little while, these had become my new friends. I wanted to call them by name. I wanted to thank them for their conviviality and smiles.
I was a girl with a ute, a load and a whole new world. And on the way home, the leaves left in the back of the ute danced in the wind.
