Cirrus@Austlit

 'Crotty!' I had yelled. 'It's back!' Rushing home, I started heaving raw supplies into the back of the car while Suzy hugged her belly in the driveway. For here was Crotty risen - it was risen indeed! - and even though we had never lived in that town, never seen its ruin slumped in the valley's rest, scratching its head and trying to push through the scrub of dementia to its mining past, we knew that we had hung our shirts on its lines, slept in its beds, that we had sat down and skulled beers in its pub past the hours of closing, that we had played for its footy team and pruned its apple trees, that we had shivered by its fires and argued in its kitchens, that we had punched through its midnights and sulked in its sheds.' 

 (Introduction)