IMOGEN ROCCHICCIOLI took second place in the 2024 Wangaratta Young Writers Award year 5/6 story category with this piece.

The competition was jointly run by the Rotary Club of Wangaratta, and the Rotary Club of Appin Park Wangaratta.

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ONCE, when I was five, I Gave my first piece of rubbish. It was a milk carton, and it had a dark blue lid, which meant it used to contain full cream milk. Mum was there beside me, Giving some empty glass bottles and a broken pale orange plastic container. Grandmum, as I used to call her, was watching from the hall. She didn’t believe in Giving.

"Pah," she huffed when I asked her why. "Where’s it going? Our old junk doesn’t just disappear, you know!"

Mum hushed her and told her it was a solution.

"Pah," Grandmum scoffed. "As if!" But she said no more.

Once, when I was six-and-three-quarters ("Almost seven!" I would always insist, "I’m almost seven!"). I asked Mum what we were Giving to.

"We’re Giving to the machines," Mum said. "The machines take the rubbish away. They... put it somewhere else."

"Somewhere else where?!" I cried, but Mum pretended not to hear me and wandered off to the kitchen. Grandmum did hear me however, and explained that the machines "...take the lot into space...", and that they "...release it out into orbit..." so all the things we Gave "floated around Earth.” This was very confusing, but I pretended to understand it. I knew everyone would be impressed and that it would make me incredibly grown-up indeed.

I didn’t fully understand until I was eight-and-a-half.

Once, on my seventh birthday, I leant out the window and saw a machine. It was huge, almost covering the sky. I was reminded of a spider, one that creeps around at night and appears every morning in a different spot. Mum says they don’t make webs. Grandmum says they don’t make webs because they’re huntsmans for goodness' sake, and that they can actually be bothered looking for food rather than hoping for a cumbersome fly to bumble into their web.

When I asked her what 'cumbersome' and 'bumble' meant, she simply said that cumbersome things bumble and if you see anything bumbling around it is therefore cumbersome, and left it at that. The machine is not bumbling, I thought, so it is not cumbersome.

"Big, ugly, cumbersome things, aren’t they?" Grandmum said, appearing behind me.

"But they don’t bumble!" I told her, and Grandmum looked at me strangely, so I said no more.

Once, when I was nine-and-a-fifth, Grandmum told me about garbage trucks.

"When I was a young girl, about your age perhaps, there was a garbage truck that came 'round every Tuesday morning," Grandmum began. “Noisy thing too, and it reeked of fuel. We could always hear it from a few streets away. My brothers would listen for the truck, and go charging out the front door as soon as they heard it turning into our street. They wanted to race the truck, you see. They always won, until I told them they were cheating because they didn’t stop when the truck did, as it was collecting the bin. After that, they always lost!"

Grandmum cackled gleefully. "I had a good laugh at them, I did!"

Once, when I was nine-and-three-fifths, the machines didn’t come because it was Christmas.

"Why not?" I asked Mum curiously.

"Because it’s Christmas," Mum repeated, and so I thought for a very long time about why Christmas would stop the machines when there was so much rubbish from present wrapping.

Once, when I was ten-and-two-thirds, there was an election. Mum came home and explained that we now had a new Prime Minister. Grandmum was delighted. She was convinced things were going to change. And they did.

Once, when I was eleven-and-five-sixths, a garbage truck came past our house. It was yellow. Grandmum Gave the people in the truck three carboard boxes and a broken glass jar. In return, they gave her a bin with a yellow lid, and a piece of shiny paper that was titled Recyclable Items, which I helpfully stuck to the fridge.

Once, when I was eleven, five sixths and one day, I Gave the yellow bin an empty milk bottle. It had a dark blue lid, meaning that it used to contain full cream milk. The shiny paper said it was recyclable. I always followed the shiny paper’s list carefully, because I didn’t quite understand all this recycling business.

Not yet.