Like fragments of an old song, unexpected images caught in passing have the power to drag us to places that have rested in the far reaches of our memories.

A couple of weeks ago, I drove past a country footy ground on a Saturday afternoon. And there sat my childhood.

Spectators’ cars were drawn up to the boundary of the oval, side by side.

The Omeo District Football League 2006 grand final replay between Benambra and Swifts Creek.Credit: Pat Scala

I did not have to stop and listen to hear the happy hoots of horns if a goal was kicked. It was the forever sound of country Saturday afternoons.

How many of those cars would be equipped with a picnic hamper and two Thermoses, one filled with hot soup, the other with tea? These were my mothers’ essentials for an afternoon in the car at the footy.

My brother and I ran off between wintry showers and lined up with the other kids for sav rolls, the saveloys boiling and splitting their skins in a big old copper, the women of the ladies’ committee squirting tomato sauce with the dexterity of Basque peasants expelling wine from a wineskin.

We did not call our sav rolls hot dogs – American cultural imperialism was still scorned then.

Fish Creek supporters at Foster in South Gippsland for the reserves and seniors grand finals in 1999.Credit: Eamon Gallagher

Half-time, when the players ambled off to the sheds to get rubbed down with........

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