A flood makes you see your suburb in a new way. I always thought of Fairfield as a flat place, and particularly of my street as a flat street. The hill started on the other side of the railway line, where the streets climb quickly up to the top of the ridge. Down on the floodplain the land appears to run evenly from the bottom of the ridge to the river. Now I know differently. Our street dips, then rises again. Because we are half way up the rise, we got half flooded. Our neighbours at the top were high and dry. Those down in the dip were submerged. Those two metres make all the difference. When the floods first receded the mud painted a physical contour line on the street - below was brown, above was black. Then as people started to clean up the mud line got blurred because cars and boots carried mud all over, and hoses swept much of it into the stormwater drains. A new line emerged, of broken furniture. Riding through the suburb yesterday evening on my way back to my
'Contemplating the teeming life of the shore, we have an uneasy sense of the communication of some universal truth that lies just beyond our grasp.' - Rachel Carson