Loooove this song by Christine Anu
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What makes a place home, is it people, place, or history? Do we all have one special place where we belong more than any other?
One of the places I would call home is anywhere we walk in the door and are greeted by unconditional love.
Miss M thinks home is where the food is. Mr D thinks there is a tennis ball behind my back. Do they love food and tennis balls unconditionally, or is there a share of unconditional love for the people who provide these things?
The Other and I have just spent time with our respective mothers, but they are both in care, so the place where they live doesn’t feel like home. But if there is a bit of unconditional love in the air, that’s a bit like home.
There are plenty of places that feel like home to me, not just because of the history I have with the place and the people who have been there with me, but also because I feel I know some of a place’s secrets. I can turn down a lane in Melbourne and almost see what was happening there 150 years ago. On the other hand, the city has changed so much it seems to have more and more secrets I don’t know, which makes me feel less and less like I belong.
This might be part of the reason the Hume is boring. Not just because for miles there is nothing but dead or dying grass most of the year, but because the Highway bypasses all of the places that have personal histories, or special people, or secrets.
Unless you take an exit, there really isn’t much to see.
We did stop at Longwood on the way through, to visit my cousin and his lovely new wife. Dropping in unannounced we learned that it was her 45th birthday that very day, and although we had no present to offer except our company, not only did we get a free cup of coffee each, there was birthday cake to go with it! [Timing is everything.]
You may have noticed from the photo of Miss M and Mr D I’m not much of a photographer, possibly because no one took many photos when I was growing up.
Digital cameras have changed my world. Now I can take 16 photos of a flower blooming in the front garden and not once actually get the flower in the frame, but it doesn’t cost anything for film or for developing photos that are fuzzy.
It could be my eyesight is generally tragic. Or it could be just that my highly trained brain is better at something else I’ve yet to identify.
This time when we headed off up the Hume, because The Other’s mother was turning 90, I made sure I took a camera and some batteries.
I took 2 photos in Corowa’s main street, before the party. First settled in 1840 something, the town’s main drag has a lot of large, two-story red-brick buildings, so at some stage it was booming. If you’ll pardon the blurriness of the second photo, this is what happened to the old cinema:
It's a total dump. Doors are boarded up, some of the floorboards under the carpet are a bit soft, the seats are gone, the balcony has been removed, and there are water stains on the walls.
There is no reference on the council website to any other theatre or performance space in the town. [But just look at that proscenium arch stage!]
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There is no reference on the council website to any other theatre or performance space in the town. [But just look at that proscenium arch stage!]
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So there we were, The Other, The Other’s sister, The Other’s brother, The Other’s mother, The Other’s mother’s brother, etc etc. I took about four photos before the batteries in my camera died.
Thankfully there were other people there who not only knew how to take pictures with their phones, but probably know how to download them as well.
Anyway, the whole camera thing was a disappointment because we came home via Yarrawonga, Shepparton and Murchison which also meant travelling through Nagambie, and I had lots I wanted to take photos of and discuss. I kept meaning to buy some batteries but the truth is I just lack focus [in more ways than one].
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A new Herald-Sun report says there are gangs of thugs terrorising African people in the western suburbs. Loved this comment someone posted:
SEND THEM BACK TO WHERE THEY CAME FROM! Oh wait they are white..they can stay..
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I have the same bad luck with cameras lol
ReplyDeleteI was surprised by the drive down to Melbourne on the Hume, pretty much nothing between Wodonga and Seymour.
I have a real affinity for Richmond,Windsor area, I didn't grow up there, but my heritage is from there.I just feel at home and can feel the history of a place,as you do. I live in a historic town now, and often imagine horse and drays etc
I guess we should be lucky we don't actually REMEMBER the horse and drays days.
ReplyDeleteOops, now I remember: Bread, milk, ice [for the ice chest], the bottlo... in Moonee Ponds no less. And a song from school which starts "The baker's horse goes clip clop clip clop..."
Perhaps Hartley should have said, "THANK GOODNESS the past is a foreign country, they do things differently there".