The town of Numbat Flats sat alongside the great Murrumbidgee River. It was a small town of not more than fifty or sixty families. Most of the families had been in the town or surrounding area for longer than most people could remember. It was an old town and a good town. Everyone knew everyone else.
It was a pretty little town made up of small little houses. The houses were made from the local materials and so were all very different. Some were burrows and yet others were nests, some were bowers and still others were like huts and tents and one even looked like a giant column of mud.
The roads never ran straight and in fact were not really roads, they were only tracks. Yet this was enough for people to get around. The buses and cars, taxis and trucks all kept to the tracks while the towns’ folk walked about with packs on their backs. This was how people liked it in Numbat Flats. This was the way it had been since before people could remember and this is the way it would be long into the future.
Numbat Flats, out the back of the world by the Murrumbidgee River where the animals rule. Look all you like, look far and wide, look long and hard at the maps on the wall; Numbat Flats won’t be there at all. That is the way people like it and that is that.
It’s a small town, a nice town we all know that. The only way to find it is to follow your nose to the place to the west of where that sun fellow rose. He’ll show you the way as he climbs through the sky but keep your eyes on the track or you’ll have to turn back, you will not find it and that is that.
It’s everything to those who live in its shire, there’s no television and no phones, not even a wire to carry electricity so there’s less chance of fire. Numbat Flats sits there on the banks of the Murrumbidgee River. Go there to relax in the warmth of its towns’ folk fine humour. Not even in winter you will raise a shiver. That is the town of Numbat Flats. That is all there is to it and that is that.
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