Home is Lost ... Lost is Home

Cafe Locked Out.

Home is Lost ... Lost is Home

It’s Sunday evening, and the cold has seeped through this cheap hotel’s window, allowing my skin to reach the same temperature as my soul.

Three years or so ago, I left here in a little truck with a Polish guy named Kret, and I’ve been traveling ever since. Even though I’m back now, temporarily, like a merchant seaman leaving with the morning tide, I can’t shake this feeling of displacement.

A few months ago, Kelli and I were touring the inner outback of Western Australia. We were asking the Indigenous people we met in the towns, what they thought of the Voice. But instead, we found other stories that left us speechless. Like these three siblings in Mt Magnet, who, as children, had been stolen from their parents and sent to a mission where they hadn’t been treated with love. Now they were back here, in a town that the road trains roared through on their way to service the mines, but in their forced time away, their entire tribe’s language had been lost.

And even though one of these men was now in his seventies, when he talked about the time when they were taking him away from his mother, before my camera, his weathered eyes began to rain.

Home lost, Lost is home.

Man, I used to love this town—its grimy buildings and traffic piled up behind its impractical rickety trams. Silent, huge graffitied faces ponderously telling all who looked up that this is an artist’s town. Or was, until the fear came. That quiet thief who hid all our mouths behind paper masks, then, as we watched, stole our town’s identity, leaving us with nothing but the lie of a familiar view.

A young person told me that her friends said they would never agree to be locked down again. Next time, they’d fight the government.

Would they?

Would they flood the streets like we did in the darker days, when between our signs we beat our drums and called for freedom as our flags unfurled in the winds of change? There were times then, when I know we felt like we believed we were the only soldiers who could save the world.

But now the marches are empty, and the people are quiet as they continue to chase whatever it was that was so precious to them, they were prepared to burn this town’s soul to the ground.

Or perhaps it’s just me, trying to find through the mist that’s fogging up this window, a warm light that’s on, and a door that would open to a room full of people smiling as they welcomed us home.

Maybe it was me who painted these streets with the colours I thought were already there.

Maybe it’s always been like this, and it’s not a case of anything being lost, but rather a refusal to comply that cleaned my palette. And now I’m here, waiting to leave, and rejoin the others searching for a home.

At the airport, as everyone was on their phones, Dave came up. His eyes were bright like crystals with candles behind them. He’d been to the marches, been pepper-sprayed, and even driven in a convoy to Canberra, where he was present for the birth of whatever it was that called us all there.

Then we met his partner, and the three of us, close and alive, whispered of the battles we’d fought and freedom’s we’d defended, and the future.

We were so excited, like babes in the woods who had found each other, and now our combined light was all we needed to survive.

But then my flight was called.

We hugged, exchanged numbers, before I journeyed back into the rushing trees, using my phone like an umbilical cord attached to a truth that, despite all our work, couldn’t yet escape the online womb and reclaim its throne.

No, at this moment, I knew that despite believing I was on the right path, my home was lost, and for now, and probably for a while, Lost would continue to be my home.

Michael

17/06/25

Would you be interested in a novel of these collated essays, or perhaps you have a book of your own you want published, if so please contact John Stapleton who will soon publish them.

These are his details:

John Stapleton
Commissioning Editor
A Sense of Place Publishing

Emails:

john.stapleton@gmail.com
asenseofplacepublishing@gmail.com
Skype: mr.john.stapleton

Websites:

http://asenseofplacemagazine.com/

https://johnstapletonjournalism.com/

www.asenseofplacepublishing.com