Topos. Graphein.

I am an alien.

I belong to the landscape as much as a pulsating blue dot belongs to the environment it hovers over in Google Earth.

“See that creek over there?”

I squint and strain to see water; I see only trees.

“Nah, nah, look ahead, down there. See the creek?”

To avoid holding up the small group I say, “Yes”, despite not seeing the creek—Carlon Creek—for the trees. It’s 2001 and my first walk with the Sydney Bush Walkers Club. It’s clear that, unlike my sense of a Google Earth pixel, they belong to this Earth.

Rolling down the winding dirt road of the Megalong Valley, I’d made an assumption that the English they were speaking was a language I understood. How was I to know that, as I locked my car at the trailhead and stepped over the stile with them, I’d passed through wild immigration without holding a passport?

This was new country for me and passing under the dappled canopy, I didn’t realise how green I was.

I loved the