On the Kaleidoscope of Youth
by Lincoln Ge
15-18 years | 3rd Place
“We are such stuff as dreams are made on”
William Shakespeare
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty, —that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know”
John Keats
I have never crossed the Amazon; I have never sailed the seas. I have never trekked across the Gobi nor climbed the highest peaks.
But I have walked the Harmony Square more times than I can count on those grey and rust coloured steps, amongst the shade of evergreen trees, beneath the Australian flag that sits upon the clocktower. Oh, its gravitas, an old sentinel of brick and brass, the keeper of the Drum Theatre that chimes like a heartbeat, a constant that pulses through wood and stone.
And so, I carve these words in steel because I have seen that tricolour flag fly far, felt its shadow fall thick throughout the forecourt's pavement. In rain and wind and heat and hail, the traffic light flag, as I affectionately knew it would flail and flutter, like a butterfly caught in a hurricane. Yet after all is said and done, after its battle was fought and won, its fabric would remain unscathed.
And in watching that flag endure all of this, I am reminded that the council is but a microcosm for the country it represents. A country of many colours, just as Dorothea Mackellar claimed a hundred years ago: “I love a sunburnt country, a land of sweeping plains, of ragged mountain ranges, of droughts and flooding rains”.
And if this city is a country in miniature, then I have learnt the red, green and yellow not just from flags, or the colours of the bin, but in nature too.
And nowhere have I learnt the names of those colours more vividly, more vibrantly than the small park beside my house, the one that turns to fire in autumn. Every year, by late April, the trees announce their surrender. First green, then yellow, then red, letting go of their leaves as though each colour was its own delicate jewel. Slowly, over the course of the month, the leaves would form their own wonderful mosaic on the ground. The light that once tiptoed and twinkled through the gaps like nature's gemstones would become honey-coloured beams bathing the grass in all its quiet warmth and iridescent glory. It would ignite a fiery hue in the evening sky, as I would look up in awe to watch the clouds loft around like slow-moving embers, amongst the golden haze that draped itself over the ground.
After all, fire is the test of gold, and many children, like me, played in that park in their youth. Not yet subjected to trials and tribulations, still trembling little children of touch and tease. But, although we were young, our hands too small, our minds too innocent, we possessed a curiosity that only youth could bring.
A quiet, defiant persistence that the world was in our control, carrying the greens, reds and yellows of grass, flowers and leaves in our pockets.
You can still see it, in the way that small children laugh until their voice gives out, yell until their lungs burn, and run until their shadows stretch long across the grass. After all, the joy of a child is the closest thing we have to unbroken light - fierce, bright and impossibly pure.
Childhood is like autumn. Beautiful, a universal experience, but fleeting. The tiny toddler who once chased butterflies until the sun set, who would watch the light shine through their wings like a magical illumination, who once screamed and cried and tried to run away from their own shadow would realise that they were never a threat, only a promise, an oath that one day they would stand tall enough to cast it.
Whilst those memories might fade, the colours do not. The same tripartite, green, yellow and red still endure on. They no longer just inhabit the boundaries of the park, but they clothe the city at times of the year. In early February, the city blushes crimson, lanterns blooming, banners unfolding for Lunar New Year. Later in the year, the city glows yellow for Diwali, where strings of warm light, reminiscent of those threads that we all played in as children drape the storefronts. And when December arrives, the city dresses itself in green, the colour of life and renewal, a scintillating display of wreaths and pine trees.
These colours, once confined to the park of my childhood, now ripple across the city with grandeur. And yet, the palette endures. This city has always been a land of heroes, the quieter kind.
Whilst I have never crossed the Amazon, others have. Whilst I have never sailed the seas, others will. Whilst I will never cross the Gobi, others can. Whilst I can’t ever climb the highest peaks, others have, and they have carried the same colours they saw as children with them.
My journey in this city was peaceful, but for others it was anything but. They crossed jungles, oceans, deserts and mountains, not for glory, not for adventure, but for the hope that their children might one day run in the same meadow as I did. In the faith that they too would experience the purest theatre of wonder, for it is only the mind of a child that believes the world bends for them, chasing each fallen leaf like priceless treasure, savouring in the sunlight like it was nectar and ambrosia.
These are the aspirations of the heroes rarely spoken about. Who silently stitch their colours, hammered out of hardship into a flag so that their children can inherit a life painted with potential. This Harmony Square, this council, this city of many colours, is not merely a home, it is a testament to every journey made in the name of hope. Colour is the memory the world leaves on us, and it is the inheritance we leave behind.