What the Fibro Cottage Knew

I walk past a modest fibro cottage on the Mornington Peninsula most weeks over summer. Its weathered cladding, rattling jalousie windows, and cracked concrete steps tell a story of coastal life lived simply. Before long, it will be gone, replaced by a house larger, more refined, and carefully considered. And yet I wonder what this humble cottage once enabled — what it quietly understood about living by the sea that its replacement may not.