I got off the train in record time. I adjusted my hat and slipped on my sunglasses. The adventure was going to begin. My appointment in Seven Hills wasn’t for a few hours. I had time to explore a place that had gotten their name because a farmer had been built near the seventh hill along the road to Parramatta. The settlers of course had invaded part of the Darug Nation’s indigenous people. I was looking forward to exploring its rich history.
It was a humid day. Smoke still lingered in the air despite the breeze. Fires had started along the eastern coast of Australia. It was only spring and the temperatures and winds weren’t making it easy to the farmers. 
Seven Hills was an area once used for veterans of the First World War. The idea was that soldiers who were disabled as well as ex-servicemen could work under this scheme as Poultry workers and make an adequate living for themselves.  

So I had this expectation of farming land, housing, a community built off of survival even after a government decided the farming scheme was no longer required and man veterans had been forced to quit or could not survive of the land as anticipated. 

I stepped off the train and found myself surrounded by a line of shops. Majority of them weren’t open despite the fact that it was early afternoon on a Thursday. I was the only one walking the streets. A main highway ran through Seven Hills and over the tracks. The air was loud with the speeding cars. I stood on the sidewalk and tried to look for my options. A cafe. A diner. An area to sit and mingle with the locals. I wanted to see how such a place had evolved from its history. 
I struggled to walk down the street and hear myself think. I decided it was bear to try and find where my appointment was located. It was amongst a whole block of warehouses. I could see a whole section of vegetation being torn down to make room for more warehouses.
That’s when I learnt that there was only one place I could go to see the last remnants of the Cumberland Plains woodlands. This history I had learnt about was just words now. Everything has been sold off for residential housing. And I could see the houses, tucked away on their block of land hidden behind walls. I had to wonder if the sound of the cars got to them. Or the sight of the industrial area set a mood or tone. Where did they go to eat? To hang out? To enjoy the community around them?
I stood alone at the side of the highway waiting for the pedestrian crossing lights to turn so that I could cross. And when they did, I felt guilty as the cars quickly piled up. Graffiti covered the walkways. It covered the walls. The first people I can across was a couple experience a domestic squabble and then a few homeless people. I looked up the nearest Cafe and only found myself walking further and further into the industrial area. Gates surrounded me and tall warehouses with vehicles that made me feel so small. I soon began to feel as if I were in maze. The cafe was the cheese. I was the rat. 
But the cheese was further back amongst the warehouses than I was willing to go. I instead made note of where I needed to return to and quickly tried to find my way back to the area where I had seen a shopping centre. 

Again I weaved through the jungle of buildings, pavement and fences. I imagined what used to be there. Was I walking through an old poultry farm? Which veterans walked these paths that I walked in hopes for a redemption story after sacrificing so much for their country. I wondered how many men and woman stood where I stood facing the disappointment of promises of an average living. Of hope. Only to have to start again. To go elsewhere. Or the successful ones who worked hard on the land only to have the future cover it in pavement.
Or the indigenous people who lived for thousands of not more on the lands. I imagined their stories lingering in the area. I imagined their whispers of disappointment in the buildings and the loud echoes of cars that continued to threaten their voices.
I grew to dislike the Seven Hills that I was seeing. I found the irony etched in the sidewalk, ‘How Great is Our God’ amongst the dozens of empty coffee cups, rubbish and destruction we were causing the natural world.
The homes were the trees and I was seeing them everywhere. Even beyond Seven Hills.