We followed a crooked track, and I breathed in eucalyptus and the spice of gum leaves burning far away. Faintly through the Mallee came the whine of a circular saw. Close to my ear I heard the chick-oo-wee of a bellbird, the answering chirp-chirp-cherry-cherry of a honeyeater.

I saw the flash of rosellas and a black and white magpie. Uncle Will told me of the soft grey mopoke — the Boobook owl, of speckled Jack who lays chocolate-coloured eggs, of thrushes and skylarks and swallows.

(The hills are gentle, with their pale trees, their stillnesses, their drifts of smoke. Soft-bristled bushes cling to my skirt, currents of strange insects wreathe my head. There are tufted ferns, black boys, and everywhere the wattle: intensely gold, on hair-like twigs; in plumes, amongst flannel leaves; fuming in a lemon fuzz; fallen to a shrivelled crust.)

I crushed dried leaves in my hand. My feet walked over the earth, and I looked down at them and saw another world — miniature, microscopic: a rock was a hill, a crumpled leaf a plateau, a thorn a pagoda, groundsel and twining glycerine were forests; I was a giant.

I watched ants pursue their scurry, frail stick-insects dance a gavotte, beetles stay earthbound for an instant. I saw grasshoppers, little flickering lizards, a delicate lacewing, a centipede ferociously nippered. There were secret hollows rank with the smell of mould, overgrown with brambles and toadstools. I walked over dead trails of blackberries sparked with fresh green, tiny seeds, hermit tatters of bark, twigs and mosses and fallen leaves.

(The hills are gentle, with their monotonous greys: green-grey and blue-grey, silver-grey and pink-grey. But the greys are sprigged with colour. There is the wattle, and there are chocolate lilies and honey-scented milkmaids; tinsel-lilies and spicy-leaved myrtle. There is the fringe-lily that blooms only for a day, the musky caladenia that hides under fallen trees, the spider orchid with its frilly lip. There are flowers that quilt the earth: bidgee-widgee and golden guinea-flower and lavender grevillea; clematis that climbs, apple-berry that creeps. There is the yam-daisy shaped like a dandelion; ivy-leaf violet that loves the dark, derwent speedwell and scented sundew.)

I knew other hills, too. I had seen the half-tamed slopes of Morialta Falls and Waterfall Gully, of Lobethal and Hawthorndene. I saw them when I wandered from the Sunday School picnic party; when I exchanged egg-and-spoon races and warm raspberry cordial for the cicadas, the wild flowers, and the trees. I left the picnic grounds with their see-saws and weary swings; I fled from the kiosk selling hot water, the oval, the rustic shed; I turned from the well-trodden pathway to the summit — replaced them with hawthorn and honeysuckle and brier-rose. I walked over grass dotted with rabbits’ turds; I found scabs of moss, a speckled egg-shell — a creek. And waded over pebbles and ferns, my feet lapped by coldness, my fingers gemmed. I was alone with a bird’s strange frog-like call. Then a twig snapped and tea-tree buds fell into the creek; my reverie and the frog-bird’s melody were broken by a band of Baptist youths.