For some time, I’d been thinking of writing about Westgate Park, an inconspicuous piece of ground beneath the shadows of the Westgate Bridge at the mouth of the Birrarung (Yarra) River in Melbourne.

I have not read William Golding’s novel Lord of the Flies, a text many meet in high school literature class. Despite this, I thought I knew the plot through cultural reference. There was that Simpsons episode, where the Springfield yellow school bus goes off route and sees the kids stranded on a deserted island.

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Dang, sorry. This is only available to a Meanjin subscriber. But we can fix that. It’s just $100 for print or $50 for digital. DIGITAL PRINT