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d a r r e n g r ot h
I swing and hit Mum on the side of the face. My eyes dim.
Static fills my ears. Slowly, the reptilian brain begins to
crawl away. I feel the floor under my hip and shoulder.
And I feel Mum’s body behind me. And her arms across
my chest. I stare at the fingertips of my right hand before
reaching back to touch her cheek. It has a long scratch
on it. If I knew anything about quakes and plates and
fissures, I might imagine it as a fault line. I don’t.
I’m only four years old.
v
We pass through the turnstiles
at ten o’clock. I look
around and right away I feel less anxious. Just as Leonie
said, the
pne
is very similar to the Ekka in Brisbane.
The rides, the food, the crowd. The dirty people who are
in charge of the attractions—the people Just Jeans calls
Carnie Schwarzeneggers. One thing about the
pne
is
different though: the oldWooden Roller Coaster. It is the
reason I have excitement as well as anxiety. As we pass
by a group of pale teenagers talking about the Zipper,
I decide to share some of my recent research findings
with Leonie.
“The Coaster was built in
1958
and is made of Douglas
fir. It has a top speed of nearly eighty kilometers per hour.
