“The Last Campfire at Yarra Bend”

Mick Carroway had been walking the Yarra Bend Track since he was a boy, back when his Nan would pack damper and billy tea into an old canvas bag and tell him stories under the river red gums. Now, at sixty-four, with joints like rusted hinges, he moved slower—but the stories still followed him, carried on the wind and echoing off the water’s edge. Today, though, was different. He wasn't walking for leisure. He was walking to say goodbye.

The bush was quiet, save for the low warble of magpies and the rustling of sugar gliders settling into the gums. Mick had asked permission before entering—just like his Nan taught him. A quiet moment, hand to the earth, whispering thanks to the Wurundjeri people whose land this had always been. Not just a tradition, but a truth. “Country doesn’t belong to us,” Nan used to say, “we belong to Country.” He muttered those words now as he reached the clearing by the river bend.

The firepit was still there, though worn by years of flood and feet. Mick knelt down beside it, placing a stone from his Nan’s old property in the Mallee—red, round, and warm from the sun. He placed a second stone beside it, this one from his own backyard in Fitzroy. “Two generations,” he whispered, “talking to each other.” That’s how stories moved, he reckoned—not just in books or mouths, but through the places people loved.

As dusk settled, the gum trees cast long shadows and the kookaburras cackled their raucous laughter. Mick built a small fire, just enough to crackle and spit as he boiled the billy. The scent of eucalyptus and smoke brought memories flooding in—Nan laughing with her eyes, the sound of clapsticks at community gatherings, his father singing old Slim Dusty songs on a beat-up guitar. He closed his eyes and let the warmth wrap around him like a possum-skin cloak.

A rustle in the bush pulled him from his reverie. A young man, Aboriginal, maybe late twenties, stepped into the firelight. “Didn’t mean to startle you,” he said. “Saw the smoke.” Mick nodded, gesturing to the fire. “Plenty of room.” The young man sat, silent at first. Then, pointing to the stones, he said, “That’s Mallee rock. You from up that way?” Mick smiled. “My Nan was. Yours?” The man nodded. “Great-grandmother. My mob’s still out there.”

They talked long into the night—of Elders and changing cities, of Dreaming stories and losing ground. But the tone was never bitter, only thoughtful. When dawn began to stretch its pink fingers across the sky, they stood. Mick doused the fire with care, scattering the ashes as his Nan had taught. “Country remembers,” he said. The young man nodded. “And so do we.” They parted without fanfare, but something old and quiet had passed between them.