Excerpt
When I was four my parents gave me a metal pedal car, a sort of sophisticated billycart in which I would play on the street, There were few real cars then; the streets were safe. The pedal car gave me my first impression of mobility and independence. We lived on Beard Street in Auchenflower, not far from the Brisbane River, in the sub-tropical Australian state of Queensland. Beard Street was on a slope and one one side of the street was a row of wooden houses in stilts. The elevated positions of these houses allowed them to breathe in the hot, sticky, Queensland air. Desperate houswives tries to create a draft through their houses, leving their doors and windows open. Few of the houses had flyscreens. The housewives were more successful in inviting in a variety of sub-tropical insects, especially large cockroaches that flew in unhindered much to the horror of my Scottish-born mother.

The elevation of these houses did not interest me very much until one day, while peddling my car up the hill, I noticed some brown water seanking into the lower levels of Beard Street. I stopped peddling and watched as the waer expanded, extending its fingers into gardens and under houses. From out these houses, with the water lapping around the stilts came boats. It was my first recollection of seeing such a craft. The children being transported in these vessels were clearly much better off than me. They did not have to work their legs off to move. They slid across the brown water with apparent effortless ease,graceful and elegant, with any of the grunts and groans that accompanied my own efforts to move forward. My interest in my make-believe car quickly waned. My parents did not understand my sudden lack of enthusiasm for my four-wheeled metal box. It was difficult for me to explain that I had discovered a new and better way of finding pleasure in motion.