I have
never been before to this particular red desert and yet the spinifex and red
sandy earth feels familiar. It feels home-like. I know (or knew) the other side
of this desert, over state borders to the north east, where Alice Springs is
1,500km away from here. Now I am in the prosperous mining area known simply as
the northern goldfields. Although it is far south for me being as I am coming
from Timor, so geography gets as puzzling as my homelessness already is.
My
usual where-is-home puzzle has begun. Even when completely expected, this
enduring puzzle is occasionally emotionally intense, social awkward when
answering supposedly simple questions about where I come from and yet it’s a
weirdly comfortable puzzle to me; maybe the perpetual traveling for work is
resulting in a gypsy addiction to the puzzle of where is home.
My choices
of what I consider ‘home’ to be, include at the moment; returning home to the Australian
red dirt desert; home in Dili where I loved working and playing although by the
end I was over the environmental and noise pollution as well as the crazy
traffic; NSW because its only 3 weeks until I fly east for special time with
family and friends; Ratanakiri, Cambodia because the similarities in remoteness
and redness and thus my homelessness includes missing Dave, my Rat’ri timber
house and the volcanic crater lake.
 |
| artist coloured mining 'tailings' |
Being
as I was convinced I’d be moving to far north Queensland or the Northern
Territory there is a sense that home is the Australian ‘top end’ and I am now
the intruder visiting the wrong patch of southern red dirt. Yet it’s now 12
years since I lived in central Australia so that link could have been overwhelmed
by my more recent love affair with feeling at home in south east Asia.
The
facts are that currently, I am a stranger in a familiar landscape with all the
homesickness of Timor, sentimentality for other locations and the odd sense of
returning to desert dwelling. A combination which is allowing me to be immensely
happy.
I am
privileged to have my gypsy puzzle of where is home.
