Growing up in the shadow of a volcanic crater one can’t help but encounter the after effects of this mutli million year spat. Try digging your garden and you encounter these moon rocks. Happily I’ll be digging with the hand trowel to get at the root of some troublesome plant and I get a ‘ting’, a jar to my hand as I reached a submerged object, a submarine sent out by Mount Leura all those years ago. They vary in size but most are the size of your palm. They’re quite light almost lighter than a sparrow, delicate and fine with that bubbly consistency, like an aero bar. They’re not much good for chucking or skimming and actually have a slightly sharpish edge in general.

Up at the quarry near the mount we used to ride our bikes around in the offal from the excavations and mostly it was fine ground powdery stuff from over excessive rape of the cliff face, but still some more solid bits – watch out for those tyres. Up there we’d make jumps out of whatever was lying around, there were also some natural hills and dales we could get around on  in what was the precursor of a BMX bike. I had the coolest thing;  a three speed  gear change as part of my hand grip- I didn’t tell everyone else what a pain it was to use because I wanted to be thought of as ‘cool’ but in the end I think I just disconnected it.  It was on my modified Repco Dragster, then with knobby tires like black teeth that bit the dirt and the road. There was the inevitable pedal squeak and the cotter pin sometimes coming loose and the pedal knocking against the frame after I upended the bike one time….