THE PEOPLE WHO PUT THEIR HAND UP
A walk through the town
By Sam Marwood
The close
The town looks the way they said it would.
Years on from the night they decided to try, the couple walked through the town in their work clothes, and the afternoon was bright.
This is an illustration of how it could unfold when it goes right. The district and the people in it aren't any one place or person.
They're two farm workers, and what they had named on that first night was now in the street in front of them.
The school was full, the yard loud enough to hear from the footpath, and they waited while children crossed with bags bumping their knees.
Bikes were stacked along the fence, a bell went, and a parent they knew from a farm raised a hand and kept walking a child in.
Footy and netball were fielding every grade, with a junior game at one end of the oval and a senior game running at the other.
A whistle carried across the boundary, the juniors were in jumpers a bit big for them, and the seniors were already muddy at the far goal.
Young people were in the street in their boots, dusty from the day, talking outside the shop in the sun with a ute parked close by.
One of them nodded at the couple, the way people nod at someone they know from work, and then turned to the talk he was in.
The district's own milk was in the shop fridge, in the row a person sees first, and the couple stopped, looked, and moved on.
The town was keeping its farms in local hands, and nobody made a speech on the footpath or on the oval or in the shop.
The couple turned for home to get ready for the evening milking.
Community Owned Farms is free at cultivatefarms.com/resources.