Published in Overland Issue 215 Winter 2014 · Uncategorized Departures, arrivals Stu Hatton Airport of the future. Devoid of take-offs, landings. Derelict hub. The passenger era having followed the strip-lights to the exit. Heat of steel, glass. Kids barefoot on tarmac. The encampments were quick to spread here. Spaces once open. Signs no longer apply. Former meanings, functions. Arrows lead to nothings, nowheres. Proliferation of tents, tarps, improvs on a theme of shelter. ‘Temporary’ uttered less and less (palliative word). Fires throw the only night-lighting. The thinning. Safeties, sanitations (relativities). Sustenance amounts to sprouts in water. Seeds once saved. Harvesting water from the slants of roofs. A hangar become hothouse, an airliner become home. Hierarchies trampled (what of hierarchies of need, triage?). Travel is but a story. The endless elsewhere. What was once a city’s intersection of complexity (flightpath web). That ancient theme of waiting. Stu Hatton Stu Hatton is a poet, editor and researcher. He works in mental health at the University of Melbourne. His books are available from www.lulu.com/spotlight/stuhatton; he sometimes posts at outerblog.tumblr.com. More by Stu Hatton › Overland is a not-for-profit magazine with a proud history of supporting writers, and publishing ideas and voices often excluded from other places. If you like this piece, or support Overland’s work in general, please subscribe or donate. Related articles & Essays 1 6 November 2026 · Friday Fiction Headland Harry Goddard He must have still been sore. I could tell from the winces he made as he scooted down the trail. Some unspoken agreement of not hitting other people’s children — and the circumstances of me not being that type of kid — spared me from the same punishment. I was taken to my parents who agreed I would have to work off the damages, and I must have mowed the lawn once, or cleaned the family car. 4 November 2026 · Film MIFF, Minotaur and the politics of maternal reception Alicia Byrnes Maternal labour is, in the terms I’ve set out here, not labour at all. Noisy, unfocused, mobile, perhaps even sleepy — it is an affront to arthouse film viewing and therefore unserious.