Packing the ute in a diminishing patch of shade, a wind blows hot and gusty and slams the door shut. The moisture from last night’s rain must be dried out again by now.

I take treats from the freezer to the chooks to help cool them down. The old boss is moulting, and is strangely slow to respond when I arrive with the food. I thank her for not dying in the night and giving me one more unpleasant task on this loaded day.

By the time the ute is packed, everything fitting in miraculously, but fitting better after a visit to the tip, it’s 3pm and the cafes in Gloucester are closing. Lunch finished at 2pm. Sorry. I take one last look at the main street, a row of shops baking in the blanketing heat. Two people walk on the shady side, looking for things to look at.

I drive out to the edge of town, where I think of the duck family that dwindled, week by week, as the parents led their ducklings back and forth across the road between the golf course and the shelter shed. I drive on, the heat baking my arm through the window of the ute. It’s so hot that I decided against checking the temperature. Knowing would only make it hotter. I drive past the petrol station at Stroud where we always bought our petrol. I stop for tea at the café on the expressway. I drive on, past people who I used to see every week. I am disappearing from their lives, and they are disappearing from mine.

Leaving the house I had checked the rooms, found I’d left the honey strainer in the laundry. I checked the rooms again, looked around the lounge room, thought of taking photos. But what would they show? A small rectangle of furniture, windows, curtains. They wouldn’t show the wonderment I felt every time I saw a frog on the window, one leg askew. Or a swallow on the shed roof, still for a lucky moment, its head so black and glossy, its breast and neck so russet. Photos wouldn’t show us sprawling on the lounge in winter in front of the fire. Or closing the curtains and sitting in the pleasant dim light under the fan in summer. They wouldn’t show how we would catch a glimpse of clouds or moon or stars through a window and go outside to admire billowing or light-catching or glowing or a mass of tiny lights against a black black background, and stand there, caught in thoughts of wonder, of distance and time and the universe.

I stopped checking the rooms, turned, and went out the door.

We’ve been outside paying homage to the night sky, the full moon, the cooling air after yet another hot day. I know this place so well now. I recognise the wet thud of a frog jumping down from wherever it’s been. The flashing light of a plane in the sky, so high up that no sound reaches us as it makes its steady way from north to south.

I didn’t expect to fall in love with this place. I didn’t even know you could fall in love with a piece of land. But I did fall in love with the land and the sky, with the heavy summer beetles that buzz loudly at night. The fussing of parrots as they settle down at dusk.

Now when I walk around the garden, I’m saying goodbye. We haven’t gone yet but I’m readying myself for that day when I won’t be worrying about a drooping avocado tree or welcoming the sudden leaves of a zucchini seed that has decided to sprout.

I’m readying myself to not hear the dawn sounds of the land and the birds waking, the backdrop of cicadas and crickets, the foreground of magpies and blue wrens. The kookaburras crisp and cackly. The dew still on the grevilleas.

Not watching the frills of mist curling around the tops of the trees as I drink my morning cup of tea.

A lone night bird flying silently in the nearly-dark sky, flapping up and diving swooping down, make wide arcing loops through the valley.

Enjoy the moment. It’s the only one you have.