Paradise Lost

This morning my son and I went to the Oxford market. On the way home we stopped on the north side of the Waimakariri Gorge bridge, one of my favourite places. I haven’t been there for a few years because I no longer feel comfortable going there alone. Everything has changed. Where there used to be many native shrubs and bushes, and herbs, ferns and mosses the area is overgrown with mangy blackberries and scattered with heaps of household rubbish. Obviously it has become the fly tippers’ place to go. We saw a three-piece living room suite, and the carcass of a deer, with the best cuts sliced off. There used to be a lot of birds, the air filled with birdsong. Today we saw and heard one bird- amazingly a rare black fantail.

As we were leaving another car was coming in. We looked back at it. The boot was crammed with so much junk and fat plastic bags that the door was only partly closed, held with a strap.

The shot was taken over the wall of weedy vegetation to the south bank, which is well kept by our council.