Cultural crossroads

The quintessential Flower Power Volkswagen Van, sitting along a road in New South Wales. In the sixties you'd just know who drove this: bandana'ed, pot smoking hippies with guitars and flowers in their hair.

Forty years on, Flower Power is over. Free lifestyles have become multiple lifestyles. People are so much more difficult to pinpoint. Who owns this van? A poor guy who lives in it? A well-off collector, with a sprawling place in Watson Bay and a sentimental yearning to his student days? Australian gypsies, if these exist?

And what's the wilting flower garden doing up there? Is it a remnant of the Flower Power days, or is the owner just trying to make his vehicle carbon neutral?

Lifestyles are fragmenting. Every crossroad has become a cultural crossroad.