Depicted through a mix of stop-motion animation and super-8 film, The Formation of a Cloud revisits a distant, seemingly innocent childhood memory of a ford crossing located in the western suburbs of Melbourne. A meditative journey of revisitation and discovery, this short film essay maps the past through four handmade dioramas that chronicle different explorations of the suburban waterway: from the director’s own reimagined memory and a dreamscape of native fauna, to the Indigenous significance of the site and the closing vignette, in which the narrator – visiting the ford for the first time in 10 years – speaks of how tracing back can lead to memory’s own turning point.