This is a fortnightly newsletter from Galah's editor Annabelle Hickson, made for our Galah subscribers. You are our most valuable supporters. You keep the lights on and the engine room running. Thank you.
Towns out here are places you reach after driving through long stretches of nothingness. It's very clear when you arrive: Houses. Silos. Maybe a school.
Within a couple of minutes you're out the other end, back onto the open road driving with nothing but fields either side until you reach the next town. Towns here have beginnings and middles and ends. You can fit a whole town in your head.
We took the children to Sydney for a holiday. My son was six at the time. As we walked by the boats at Rushcutters Bay, up through Kings Cross and into the Botanic Gardens, weaving our way through tall buildings, parks, busy roads and bridges, every couple of blocks Tom would ask incredulously, “Is this still Sydney?” Then a little later, “Are we in Sydney?” And then from the back of a taxi after much thought, “Will Sydney ever end?” This was a town that he could not fit in his head.
