Nan waved me off at Victoria Square beside the statue of Sturt peering through his telescope. The bus looked the same as the one that took us to Houghton; it was I who made it different: I felt peculiar and alone, although I was surrounded by all the others. Then we waved, and Nan’s face and blue hair grew paler; faded completely. I felt the same as I did when I was seven and my mother went on the Gulf Trip. I pressed my nails into my hand so I wouldn’t cry.

I could not concentrate on the trees and the gardens and the winding road; I was conscious of the others about me. They were all older. There were the Hood twins and their big sister Phyllis who went to the High School. There was Yvonne Heath whose father died in the War; she was beautiful with dimples and sausage curls her mother put up in rag curlers; she could tap-dance, do the Highland fling in a Scottie’s kilt. There were girls whose names I did not know.

Everyone stopped talking and gasped as we went round the Devil’s Elbow; pointed at the stuffed bird on top of the Eagle on the Hill Hotel. When we got to Mount Lofty it began to rain; we walked to the hostel with our cases, and there was cocoa to drink that was too sweet. The seam between the legs of my pants bothered me and made it hard to walk; I wished I knew where the lavatory was. When I found it I saw a rude drawing and finger-marks and wished I had not come. We made our beds and I felt left out as the other girls saved places for their friends, and whispered in a corner.

I went for a walk by myself. I found an empty box, and decided to fill it with beautiful things. I carpeted it with moss, and it looked like my mother’s jewel-case with the watered-silk lining. My jewels were toadstools, an empty snail-shell, ivy leaves that looked like stars, pebbles that were cool against my cheek, some wattle, gum leaves with holes, a feather. My jewel-case became a garden; I found a piece of glass, embedded it in the moss — it was a castle; I put the feather behind — it was a fountain.

When I showed my garden to the others, Yvonne Heath said it was pretty and Phyllis Hood said it was nice. But someone giggled.

There was a storm in the night, and the lights of Adelaide wriggled below us; the sky was cut by lightning. In the morning when I went to get my box I found it had been kicked — the mossy garden was crumpled, the fountain bent, the castle broken. My garden was no more. The others said it was sad.