The journey ahead
Sighing loudly, she stared out the office window, wishing it was Friday - her last day of work before her big holiday to Oz. She had been planning it for months and the anticipation was starting to get too much to bear. She turned her gaze to the postcard on her partition wall and imagined herself in that landscape, being part of it, being absorbed by its colour, sounds and smells.
	This place was a far cry from her office; a maze of computer terminals and grey dividers, a rabbit warren of industry and production, where she produced software programs for an ever-increasing audience. She yawned as she switched off her computer and prepared for the journey home. Only two more days to go......

	After her campfire had subsided, Dotty contemplated the possibility of being rescued, one hand clutching her lighter tightly, whilst resting the other hand on the pocket where she had her penknife. She always carried her Swiss army knife, not only because of its value as a tool, but also it reminded her of him, as he gave it to her the first time they went camping together. Dotty's outward bravado and adventurous nature had attracted him greatly until he discovered that it was a mask for her intense feelings of insecurity. This sign of weakness made him resent her, as he fed on her fears to maintain a sense of control.

		Who is Dotty ?
Dotty was a tourist in the true sense of the word. She could not bear the thought of organising her own movements in a foreign place, preferring the packaged certainty of the tour. This way she only need see the sights worthy of the tourist gaze, deferring from the noise and chaos of actually engaging with the site and its people.		She loved the feeling of photographing the already witnessed; consuming the travel agency approved cuisine, and walking through the landscape with its pointing, directive signposts. Not only was she waiting to depart, but also waiting to arrive.

The Bus At last she was here - at her holiday destination - Oz. Looking down from the bus window she tried to identify the landscape as being similar to the brochure which had adorned her office partition for so long. She could not recognise anything familiar yet, but that was ok, as she had heard it was a vast and diverse countryside.
		Withholding the urge to take a photo of the undulating hills, she though it would be better to save her film until the tour guide indicated the significance of a particular site. She remembered her thoughts at the airport, realising that in some ways she indeed had not yet arrived.
she had been here before maybe in her dreams...... OR was this the picture she saw at the travel agent?

Out back
The smell of the bush overwhelmed her senses as the group stopped for morning tea. The long hours of sitting inside the coach with its odours of smelly socks, seeping over the pine air freshener, an odour which reminded Dotty of her Aunty M's toilet. Dotty and her sister and tried many times to escape outside, only to be caught by the squeaky, sliding sound of the door. Aunty M may have thought her house was germ and escape proof, but the girls were smarter.	Aunty M had special spray which nuked odours and germs which was sprayed on an hourly basis around the lounge room. When the kids coughed and asked to go outside to play, Aunty M would reply 'You'll catch something out there', herding them into the rumpus room spraying as she went. This was even worse to endure as the windows in this downstairs room looked out to the garden with its unruly bush behind the order of the fence.
They would offer to walk to the corner shop to buy some 'bread and milk' and duck off to the gully about 300 metres through the bush from the house. Other kids from the neighbourhood also played there, devising all manner of excuses to get outside to catch guppies, look at bugs, attempt to make camp fires and make temporary dwellings from the large palm leaves and branches readily available on ground level.