Dear Small Brother,
This time next week you will have landed on Australian soil for the first time in quite a while. Last time you were here you were “Path Boy“. I anticipate that this time you might very well be known as “Cabin Boy” or “Hull Turner Number Two”. We shall see. Whatever you do, don’t lose your passport or your mind, because the files I have worked on recently regarding people in detention in this country leave me limp with fury and a desire to move to somewhere a bit more humane, like New Zealand. Where I hear the white wine is also good.

I thought I should include a photograph of the kind of style you might be expected to encounter when you come and visit M and myself in TrailerLand. Unfortunately for you, the caravan is nowhere near ready to receive you into it’s embrace, and you will instead be made welcome on the floor of the spare room. You will also have to be introduced to the necessity of the famous ‘Poo Song’ - a loud song played on guitar and sung loudly in the loungeroom to mask the sound of your ablutions. We do try to remain civilised at all times within our faux wood walls.

I will take you to meet my new horse, Blossom (OK, so I fed her for a week, but that gives me some kind of ownership, right?) , and you can also feel free to marvel at Mow the Cat and his Amazing Personality Transplant. You will then be dared to sail out into Bass Strait with us and around through the heads into Port Phillip Bay, where we have secured a mooring at a swanky new Marina, a short walk to a City Circle tram stop.

Am still trying to think of all the cool stuff I should harrass you to snap up on your Singapore stopover but have only come up with some aftershave for M. Which, now I think of it, would just make it seem as if he thinks he’s better than all those other trailer dwellers out there. So just forget about that (Happy by Clinique) and he can just go right back outside and pat Blossom for a while - Eau du Olde Ponye.

See you Sunday. When you come out the doors at Tullamarine, we’ll be the one’s restraining your mother from jumping the barrier and running toward you - the way she used to greet our grandparents when we were small (but strangely resourceful at camoflaging ourselves by blending seamlessly into other nearby families).

Love,
The Elder Sibling.