A shared history

Abstract

The taxi took us along Uralla Road and towards the airport in the early morning sunshine. It was late September, 2007. We passed the house in which we had lived during our last year and a half in Armidale; in the previous few days, we'd camped at a motel in town, our home having been sold and then emptied in haste, with some of our belongings packed up to be put in storage and others gathered for shipping to London, while still others were sold or given away. I'd sold one of our cars to a comrade in the local branch of the Labor Party, and left it in the motel car park for him with advertising flutes carrying the enlarged head-shots of various former Labor candidates in the region in each of the seats as a monument to many monumental Labor defeats in state and federal contests in New England during the early noughties. I'd never thought of myself as especially attached to the town, but tears welled in my eyes as I looked out of the window and the taxi made its way up that gentle incline towards the New England Highway.