Binalong Bay 2005:
A Tasmanian Demography
surprise! around this coast-twist
here's Melbourne & Sydney, run away -
priced out of their own urban sprawl, poor things,
they're whooping & throwing sand in handfuls:
"cheap waterfront!" Picking our way around
the coast we observe, like age or divorce,
one of those things we stupidly
never saw coming: its empty S-bends
are scored with grey-clay driveways, spidered
into ugly skeletons, soon to be fat-fleshed
with uglier two-storey villas. This feels
like a common-law breach - don't they know
the beach should be ours? Somehow? Howled down
by Market Forces, my shack-fantasy vanishes
like last light into a flesh-fold of auctioned coast.
Yet it's our fault: we left our run too late,
you can see us grinning on the eighties postcard
titled Apple Isle - Nothing Changes,
knocking back $8000 beachfront fibro
because, cursed with genetic travel-avoidance,
we won't commute. That's me
leaning against the packing shed, exclaiming
"all the way to Scamander?"