It is one of those stories that circulates in the suburbs, almost urban myth, unexamined and curious. I first heard it when renovations began at the place I’d grown up in, a Californian bungalow in the south-east of Melbourne.

When carpet in the front of the house was taken up, my parents found Baltic pine floorboards. Their builder said it was common flooring in that type of house in that type of suburb. His story was that the Baltic pine had come to Melbourne as ship ballast. How romantic it seemed. This beautiful timber arrived at my childhood home from so far away, as if by happenstance. They were 80 years old and dotted with black knots. The grain of the timber was fine with long, black streaks and when the builder sanded the boards back, the raw wood was white and peachy.