Bendigo, November 2022 and Musk, January 2023

Long ago you planted a book in my hand or perhaps I was holding it already. Either way the moment was captured in your parched, fledgling garden.

I find the photo in a shoebox, one of the few in focus, and scan the picture for safekeeping as soon as I can.

Zooming in on the book, the title is too pixilated to discern, but a koala illustration is clearly identifiable.

Books dot my childhood landscape.

Decades later the tables swiftly turn. You ask me to drive you to Bendigo, one last time, for a soft-cup bra. The reflection in the fitting room mirror is stripped of the slightest fullness.

Before heading home, I suggest we order lunch at a nearby café. Food untouched, you walk to the adjacent bookshop before returning with a brown paper bag which you purposefully place between us. You deflect my query as to what is inside the bag.

Driving through Guildford you say something about heavy rain . . . the El Nino weather and distant trees. It’s hard to see past you, but Coldplay registers. You’re yellow.

A few days after you die, I slide open your top wardrobe drawer and find a four leaf-clover bookmark planted in a familiar brown paper bag. A signpost lighting the way.

 

 

Stereo Story 879

See also:

Castle on the Hill story by Kate
Yellow, poem by Michael Leach

Kate is a Central Victorian short fiction / memoir writer who grew up on the family farm in Musk before becoming a regional newspaper journalist. Her debut children’s book, Grumps and the green fishing rod, was published in May 2025. The picture book carries the stories of four generations through simple, traditional narration and stunning photographs taken in a beautiful bush setting. Kate’s short fiction, Grandma’s Gift, was published in the anthology, Mother – Memories, Moments & Stories, compiled and launched as part of the 2020 Bendigo Writers Festival programme. Her Flash Fiction, Acorn, was shortlisted for the inaugural Minds Shine Bright Writing Competition Confidence 2022 and appeared in the first MSB Confidence anthology. She is mother to a son and twin daughters.