The morning wore a veil of mist, and the first shards of sunlight were only just beginning to prise open the darkness. The road stretched ahead through the Wimmera, quiet and spectral, as I drove towards Donald for a job interview many years ago. The landscape possessed a strange beauty at dawn—half dream, half memory—its paddocks and gum trees emerging slowly from the fog like forgotten figures.
What I did not know then was that the town seemed wrapped in another kind of mist: an insular culture where belonging was measured not by character but by ancestry. To be considered a local, one almost needed five generations buried in the district cemetery. Newcomers could live there for decades and still be introduced as "not originally from here."
There was a peculiar pride in that exclusivity, as though longevity alone conferred wisdom or virtue. Yet beneath it lingered a culture of small-town bullying and parochial politics that often seemed more interested in guarding the gate than opening it.
And so I found myself asking a simple question: why would I want to be your local anyway? What great prize awaits on the other side of that fence? The mist eventually lifted from the paddocks, but not from the town. I drove away with the sunrise at my back and the comforting thought that some clubs are far more impressive from the outside than within.
Sony A7RV
FE 70-200mm f2.8 GM
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