“Does this track go anywhere?” I called out to Bill, who was on his green mountain bike ahead of of me.

A trickle of sweat ran down my cheek and collected on my jawbone until the droplet was too heavy to hang on. The temperature was thirty degrees and it wasn’t even eight in the morning. We had been cycling for half an hour. We had left the metalled roads, pavements and cycle-paths in favour of the bush routes. A little earlier we saw a flock of white cranes take off as we crossed the creek – I wasn’t quick enough to catch them with my mobile camera but I managed to take shots of two black cranes unable to fly off because they were drying their outstretched wings high up on the bough of a gum tree.

My brother did not answer – he’s a bit deaf – and I just followed his lead anyway. It didn’t really matter where the track went. Not knowing made it all the more exciting. All the same, it was a horrible path – very soft sand littered with sharp grey stones; the sand opened up as we rode through it and the wheels of our bikes threatened not to stay upright, whilst the rocks either  jarred us or slipped away with the sand.

The path petered out onto a floodplain with deep spongy grass that was dry now but you could imagine it sodden; as the grass became longer and thicker we gave up and walked our bikes through. At its thickest, the grass enveloped our wheels beyond the axles. The grass gave way to bush and behind the bush was another creek and a bridge.

“This is the creek in one of your paintings, Sally,” said Bill.

“Really?”

“Yes, but from other side,” he continued.

Bill was right. We were nearly back at his place and it was the same creek that I had found so picturesque after the rains several years ago. I remembered when I was painting it, how I wondered where the bush came out – now I know.