We’re pleased to announce the winner of the December/January WWWC: James Smith. Responding to the prompt ‘over the bridge’, ‘Undalya’ is a short but evocative piece, taking us back to hot childhood summers.

Read his winning piece in full below.

Undalya

A forgotten crook in the road, just out of Rhynie. Got a house or two toppling toward a creeky bend in the Wakefield River. Undalya. And a bridge. A beautiful bridge. A great iron arc, girders and studs. I don’t think they make bridges like it anymore. They don’t drive over bridges like this anymore. Not this one. The Horrocks Highway tears straight past now, but once, once there was place. A place that dripped and echoed in summer heat. 

We kids walked over the bridge, over a busted old wire fence and scramble-slid down dirt to the great belly of shade underneath. A new world. One of reeds rustling. Time sliding and cooling. 

The waterhole our goal. Our secret oasis. Our hanging gardens. 

The water was cold always. Renewed evermore by a spring below, it was deep too. Too deep to test the depth. Too black. Once enough courage was plucked, we chucked ourselves in. Stinking days’ heat washed away. Plunging and squabbling like wood ducks. Punting the pallet raft. Flipping off the flying fox, flying. Squawking. 

If you swam to the other side you could rest and shiver on the great concrete support, the foot of the giant. Squatting like the rock doves above. Egging each other back into the drink again. An ancient relic, a square pylon, stood submerged. Any panic induced by reaching monsters could be subdued by a quick flick to the pylon to stand ankle deep, surrounded by the pool. A Greek statue, a fountain. 

Flicking leeches and picking prickles out, we played and dreamed under that bridge. While above, over the bridge, time flew by like a willy-willy. Weeds snuck out of the cracks in the bridges’ bitumen, scorched. Cars buzzed by on the Horrocks unknowing while we dipped and swam and were renewed evermore.