The Avoca River has known both erasure and excess. There were years when its bed lay bare, a pale ribbon of stones and dust, the water reduced to memory and promise. At other times it has risen without restraint, spreading across paddocks and roads, reminding regional Victoria that absence is never permanent and that return can be forceful.
I had intended to stop in town, to step inside the renowned heritage general store where time is measured in ledgers and worn timber floors. Instead, the river detained me. Beneath the bridge, I paused, and there the Avoca offered something quieter. Trees leaned toward the water, their reflections drawn long and patient, doubling themselves in the slow current. Eucalypts, hardened by drought and fire, softened in the mirror below, leaves trembling between sky and stream.
This river is an old traveller. Rising in the Pyrenees, it winds north through box-ironbark country, sustaining red gums, reeds, and the careful lives of birds that wait for water as others wait for seasons. Long before bridges and stores, it shaped paths for people and animals alike, a corridor of nourishment in a land that demands resilience. Even now, its flow is uncertain, shaped by rain, heat, and the long human habit of taking more than is returned.
Standing there, camera lifted, I understood why the Avoca refuses to be merely useful. It dries, it floods, it pauses in reflective stillness. Under the bridge, with trees duplicated in its surface, the river held both its history and its warning: that survival here has always been an act of patience, and that beauty often appears when plans are gently undone.
Sony A7RV
FE 20-70mm f4 G
Linking Treasure Tuesday
