Peel Street

January Melbourne hot mid-summer. The holidays fizzle in a kind of endless dryness. A heat haze off the bitumen and the ache of the afternoon sun. A bunch of kids starts grade six at Peel Street School. It’s the high tide of the post-war migrant boom; every term there’s someone new – from England Ireland Italy Greece Germany Hungary Holland Russia… It’s a magical year the last year of innocence a year poised between new growth and the hardening of a tangible future – the last year before adolescence decides who will thrive who will struggle and who will falter…