FOR a sad reason, I jumped in the car the other day and headed north into Queensland.
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It's a family funeral, and a much-loved uncle is being laid to rest.
It has been quite something, heading out of minus two degrees in Bathurst to a balmy 23 degrees in Brisbane.
As we drove through Coolangatta and the Gold Coast, I could see why thousands of "southerners" would want to live out their golden years here: big blue skies, the lapping waves of the Pacific Ocean and lush vegetation dotted with hibiscus and bougainvillea would make a stunning view from the high-rise apartments.
But as we fought our way through the traffic, my mother and cousin kept peering out of the window, searching for familiar landmarks.
They had both grown up in Brisbane, but were having a hard time recognising anything at all.
The infamous developments of the Joh Bjelke-Petersen era in the 1980s had transformed the place they knew.
I had always known the story of Aunty Janice being named "belle of the ball" at one of Brisbane's premier dance halls, but I hadn't connected this information to the sudden demolition, under cover of night, of the iconic Cloudland Ballroom in 1982.
The Must Do Brisbane website describes the moment like this: "In less than an hour the whole of Cloudland, a building which contained the memories of forty-two years and three generations of Brisbane residents, was smashed to smithereens by notorious midnight wreckers the Deen Brothers in what has been likened to an act of extreme violence."
Of course, this destruction of memories and connections has many layers across this wide brown land.
By the time my relatives had settled there, Brisbane, called Meanjin by the Turrbal and Jagera peoples, had been taken over and transformed.
Now, in Kings Plains a stone's throw from Bathurst, the transformation continues.
A giant new open-cut gold mine has now been given the go-ahead despite passionate opposition by local landholders and local Wiradyuri elders.
Despite the mine's approval, the Wiradyuri Traditional Owners Central West Aboriginal Corporation is continuing to oppose the mine, drawing attention to the profound cultural significance of the area.
Bathurst traditional owner Dinawan Dyirribang told the ABC the development would affect his people not just physically, but spiritually.
He said: "It would make us what we call 'spirit sick' and that is because its damage to the mother which is Mother Earth."
Progress for some represents a sickening loss for others.
As we continue to move more deeply into the consequences of pushing our environment beyond its capacity to recover, we would do well to pay more attention to the wisdom of the elders.
