Image: musings on country life by a city slicker

Somebody wise (can't remember who) once said that you don't travel to find out about where you go, but about where you are from. I think that's true.

I've framed this whole trip as an "adventure" into the wild west. But this wild west is what many people call home. I know now for a fact that I am a city slicker. There were audible gasps last night in the audience at the library when I mentioned how small the block I live on is, but I'd rather live on that small block and be 10 mins from the city and uni (and also not have to mow it).

The stuff that we take for granted on the coast and in the big cities is incredible. Like a choice of mobile phone services or high speed broadband providers. Things we get easy, people out here have to struggle for. Access, access, access. Access to everything is fraught. A woman at the library last night told me how her husband had accidentally cut off his thumb, and the nearest hospital that could deal with it was 7 hours away by car. So they got in the car and they drove. He lost his thumb. Apparently he waved the bandaged stump at the Q150 train as they passed us.

Luka, who is only 6/nearly 7, is simply astonished when things don't work the same way out here. He takes it all for granted. (In the pic above, he is safely ensconced in a cupboard--perhaps it feels a little more like home!!). When he wants to skype dad, he should be able to skype dad goshdarnit.

This vastly different access isn't fair. Nor is it fair that rural towns are always overlooked in almost every way. People were so grateful we came and talked to them. In the city, authors are talking at events all the time. You can't shut them up.

Yet these people are often our primary producers. No rural families: no food for us city slickers. They get such a raw deal.

Every person who lives in a major city should come out here and see how far away it really is. And then say a little thank you to the families who are courageous enough to carve a life out of the red dirt.