I usually go to bed at 9.00pm. After a full day, I’m ready for it. There’s no fanfare—just a slow wind-down and sleep not far behind.
And then I wake at 4.30am. No alarm, no urgency. Just the quiet sense that the day has begun.
It feels like I’m the only one awake—until I start to notice I’m not.
There’s a pair of dogs who bark at almost exactly the same time each morning, just before I stir. I don’t know where they live. They’re not ours—our dog is still curled up downstairs—and they don’t belong to any of our immediate neighbours. The blocks nearby are mostly students, still asleep. But those dogs are reliable, mysterious little heralds of the morning.
Sometimes the waste removal truck comes through, running behind schedule. You can hear it sigh and clang its way down the road like it’s apologising for the noise. A little later, the buses start their slow hum, warming up for the morning rush that’s still an hour away.
And above it all, planes start to appear. The nighttime curfew ends at 6.00am, but some mornings you can hear them already circling in the sky, preparing to land. It’s as if the sky is stretching awake too.
Even the birds join in. Rainbow lorikeets, mostly—bright flashes in the low light—feeding on the grevilleas outside. They nest in the hollows of old trees in the nearby forest. I don’t always see them, but I hear them: their sharp chatter, the soft rustle of wings, the sudden bursts of colour and sound in a still-grey world.
These are the sounds of a world getting ready—before it knows it’s ready. Quiet, scattered movements. No drama. Just life beginning again.
I didn’t plan this rhythm. But now, I wouldn’t trade it. The early hours are full of small signs that the world still turns, that life keeps unfolding. It’s not just quiet. It’s shared quiet. And that makes all the difference.
The Afterword 
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