Vulnerability.

This is an intersection just down the road from my parent's house, in the town where I grew up. A week and a bit after I was up there, on my way to the Christmas Carnival in Horsham, a 42 year old man rode his bike into this intersection and was hit by a car driven by a 19 year old girl. The police report, given here, doesn't say who was at fault, and I'm not interested in assigning blame.

This is my home town, and I'm a bit protective of it. The old building in the background is the train station, where I spent a lot of my time waiting for the bus to come and take me to my then girlfriend's house in Ararat - and, incidentally, a few years later, where my dad spent a lot of his time waiting for that same bus to come and drop me home, after I'd spent another weekend of refuge in the city. Another girlfriend and I, wandering around late at night, stumbled upon an intense looking police operation that we later discovered was in the midst of foiling some crazy guy's plan to blow up the tin shed to the left - a stonemason's. Further to the left, just out of this picture, there's an old fashioned Milk Bar, known as Roslyn's, even though no Roslyn has worked there for some time. It even has a little steel step in front of the counter, so very young kids can step up and pick what lollies they want. And under that huge tree on the right there's a park bench. One night when I was running through town, messed up on something or another, I bumped into my friends Michael Baukes and Dougie Burkhalter. They were just sitting on the park bench, talking. Bauksie told me I didn't look so great. Dougie asked where I was going. I told him I didn't know. They both gave me these huge, full bodied hugs. I kept running, most of the way out to Hall's Gap, until someone I knew stopped their car and insisted on driving me the rest of the way.

And now there's another story. The one about the guy who died there.