Cirrus@Austlit

'Signing off on his meditation on time and change, Alan Frost describes his Melbourne garden, where plants from Far North Queensland are the remainder and reminder of his childhood home. Frost's 'dreaming' takes him back to his origins but this experience confirms loss as much as it supplies completion. His narrative restages a series of returns and exposes a longing or regret for the love which 'leads us to endure'. This book is a braided narrative: a personal memoir interwoven with, and occasionally unravelling from, a more variegated history of the 'East Coast Country' named by the poet Val Vallis. The writing attempts to redeem the sense of separation and loss, the homesickness, which pervades Frost's personal story; more problematically its dreaming stakes a wider claim to this country.' (Introduction)