The sign among the trees says City,

points into drifts of sclerophyll and scrub

to a fanfare of parrots, crickets, cockatoos.

There's a scenic drive up a hill, a kiosk,

a carpark, a view. There's a museum, no make

that many museums, of the sort you can enumerate

in a bored voice to bored visitors. And restaurants:

so many squares per head, fly-by-night chairs

and chefs, the patrons appearing grey however

they dress. And houses, packed in ever denser

as they radiate, the last few roofs pitched

cramped on yellow terraces, yellow lawns.

There's blow-ins, public servants, retired same

and other disconsolate lifers. None admits it

but their ceaseless complaints, voiced to currawong,

galah-song, give the place its little sense of home.