Today, a piece of mine about the watery joys of a bush summer appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald, in the first edition of their Summer Herald special section.

Here is a short extract:

So much has changed in the country – farms are bigger, shopping streets smaller, the coffee’s got better, the milk bars have vanished. Because many people shop online, the post office is often the busiest place in town with long queues for Ebay and Amazon parcels, while local retailers languish and struggling local newspapers just as often get news tips by text and tweet and email as on the traditional grapevine.

Yet through it all one thing doesn’t change, and that’s how summers, especially for kids, revolve around water. Some of that is about the town swimming pool, but a good deal is around natural water-courses. And that’s quite a different experience to the beach-centred summer culture of Sydney.

You can read the full piece here.