Like many writers I do my best thinking while out for a walk or a run so here are some images from one of my regular routes: trees that fell during the 2016 floods in northeast Victoria.
It's probably no surprise that images of environmental breakdown kept feeding into the final instalment of the Lifespan trilogy, which I was developing at the time.
Books, however, take long months to write so I was still writing about dust storms and floods while the mud on my running path had long eased into the earth; tiny blue wrens would flit around to pick insects out of the massive root balls of fallen trees. It was the natural regeneration along the route that helped me see I wasn't just writing about environmental collapse but also about the resilience of the natural world.
The final image shows a section of the path that was completely submerged during the floods, which now has a healthy clump of grass growing through concrete. It often makes me smile as I pass - nature pushing through the cracks of human 'civilisation'.
It speaks to me of resilience and, ultimately, of hope.
March 2017