UPROOTED: longing for a long lost home.

The view from my home when I was a teenager after the pool was put in.

I was born in a place as close to being paradise as you can imagine and it has been a serious liability to me.  I don't for one moment regret it but it has had a curious and irreversible effect on my aspirations.  You see, I didn't develop any until after I left it.  Nowhere else has come close to what I felt for my home and nothing will ever live up to it.

People may come from less appealing surroundings or even hardship but at least this makes them strive for something.  It's like a rocket booster to thrust them onward to better things.  I didn't want to strive, I just wanted to stay put.

I count myself as very fortunate that I came from, not only beautiful surroundings, but also a happy home.  From the time I could perceive and think I fell in love with the nature and beauty around me and reveled in it.

My grandfather, my mother's father, bought a large parcel of land situated overlooking Pittwater, a large inlet of the Pacific Ocean thirty kilometres north of Sydney, Australia.  

The land sloped down to the water through bush and tall eucalypts and had a north easterly aspect.  Our house was built on land my father bought from my grandfather.  It was higher up on the slope than the house my grandfather built and had, in my opinion, the better view.  Over the bay we could see Scotland Island to the left, which protruded like a headland, and further out over the bay to the right, the headland that contained both suburbs of Newport and Clareville.  The bush and trees were so dense on these that the houses on this headland only peeped through the foliage but at night the lights from them sparkled like stars.

A narrow, sealed road runs along the bay beneath our land and leads further into Church Point and onward to Kuringai National Park and also West Head.  It is single lane in both directions and only a couple of metres from the water.  There is a small rock wall of sandstone a couple of metres from the road that is barely a metre high and at which the water laps at high tide.  At low tide the water can recede up to fifty metres exposing sand and some mangrove aerial roots.  At Christmas however, there are king tides and it was always a thrill when the water would come up to the bitumen and sometimes encroach on it.

 At night I would lie in bed and listen to the musical sound made by the masts and rigging of the yachts moored on the bay and some nights the moon would cast a glorious path over the water.  Happily my bedroom window had a bay view and also a door that led out to our patio.  There was one annoying street light down below on the road that, although at least two hundred metres distant, would shine into my room.  I did have a blind and would pull it down.  I loved the darkness even as a child and to this day I loathe street lights that intrude into any bedroom I occupy.  In fact I am annoyed by the fact that street lights near houses aren't turned off at night.  Now I know this isn't practical for safety reasons but that doesn't stop me feeling that civilization is intruding upon nature and the natural peace and darkness of the night.

These days, if I look at a photo of the view that once was mine it does look lovely but no photo can do justice to the scene.  The bay's mood would change throughout the day because of the angle of the sun on the water that either sparkled or became varying shades of blue depending on the time of day.  The sound of insects filled the air and the various greens of the bush and trees, the lantana, the smell of frangipani and the bush itself created an incredible palette for the senses.

As I faced the bay standing in front of our house, to my left was another block of land that ran the whole distance down to the road below.  On it there was an empty house that had been built many years earlier and was called by the neighborhood children 'the haunted house'.  It was owned, so we were told, by a Papua New Guinea plantation owner.  It was built of dark, purple brown bricks on a foundation of beautiful sandstone blocks.  It wasn't easy to get to as it was surrounded by lantana that surrounded the house and also most of the way down the hill to the road.  We had many fun excursions through that jungle to the house undeterred by snakes and spiders.    In fact, we never saw anything dangerous although we knew they were there.   We were fearless and, as an adult today, I would never have the courage to do the same.  Other local children had left chalk drawings on the bricks but nobody went inside as it was fairly secure.

When I reached my twenties the haunted house property was sold to a retired airline pilot who subdivided the land, thankfully into large blocks so that the natural beauty of the area remained intact.  He demolished the haunted house and used the sandstone blocks as a foundation for his house, which he built on the block he had designated for himself closest to the water.  I was grateful, however, that the land had remained a jungle throughout my childhood.  It had been completely taken over by nature and was a playground for our imaginations and adventures.

Our property had a long driveway that went down to the road below.  At first it was a dirt track but was later concreted at great expense to my parents.  We even had a little boat that we could take down to the water and go out on forays into the bay.  It was a dinghy with an outboard motor as my father was never into sailing as so many in the district were.  I'm with him there; I loved our boat.  Sail boats just seemed like work to me.  You can fish from a dinghy and explore.

We also had a driveway leading up to the road above the house.  Until I was about eight years of age, the road ended at the top of our driveway until one day the council decided to extend it about one hundred metres.  This required cutting upwards into the hill and then it finished in a cul-de-sac.  This also had to be cut into the hill and a great cutting into the orange clay made up its upward side.  Houses were built precariously above this and a driveway also extended from the end of the cul-de-sac on either side of which other houses were built.  The one on the lower side was built further up above where the haunted house had been.  Many years later that house went for a trip down the hill thanks to rain and the unstable clay.  Another house was built in the same spot on the land but with a very wide, concrete open drain built into the clay above it.  I saw it on a visit to my old home although I don't remember if it was after my parents sold up or earlier.

When this extension to the road was planned the council did something I could never forgive and made me, if I wasn't already , an ardent greenie.  I used to try and estimate which was the tallest gum tree in our area.  One was on my uncle's property next door and one was at the top of our driveway where the cutting was to be made.  We were informed the tree was to be taken down and I was, all eight years old of me, furious but there was nothing I could do to stop it.  When it was brought down I salvaged a large thick piece of its outer trunk.  It was at least 45 centimetres long and 20 wide.  I kept it in my cupboard for years until my mother, an obsessive tidier upper and thrower outer, threw it out.  She'd do this kind of thing when I was away at boarding school.  She threw out my teddy bear and another dear stuffed toy when I was away and in my teens.  I never forgave her for it.

The good thing about the cul-de-sac was that it was on a hill and was just great when we reached our teens and had bicycles and would launch ourselves down the road.  One day my girlfriend and my male cousin started off from there.  Now the road, Bakers Road, was two way, although narrow, and had driveways going off to houses along the road.  Some of the driveways went uphill to the houses on the high side, some downhill to the lower houses.  Well my cousin lost his brakes and yelled out to warn us and we followed him with our hearts in our mouths.  Bakers Road is one steep hill and went all the way down to the water but there was also a road at the bottom, the one that curved around and met our lower driveway.

My cousin made the brave decision to head up an uphill driveway to stop his descent but, unfortunately, a few metres up it, a gate was closed blocking it and behind that a parked car.  My friend and I watched horrified as my cousin hit the gate, went up into the air, did a somersault and landed on his back on the car.  Happily and amazingly he didn't break any bones although, to this day, he has a very bad neck.  I don't know if that had anything to do with this incident but I had also witnessed him fly off a cemented area into lantana beneath it on his tricycle years earlier and disappear.  He was nothing if not resilient.

My parents sent me to two different boarding schools during my youth.  One was a primary school in the leafy suburb of Wahroongah.   I cried for two weeks but eventually got used to it.  I would go on Monday morning and come home Friday afternoon.  I was there for two years and then I was sent to a school overlooking Sydney Harbour, or part of it, for high school.  I had a bad dream about it before I started and it was right.  I hated the school with a passion for six years.  It was also weekly boarding but nothing would convince my parents to let me go to a local school as a day pupil.

It was situated overlooking Rushcutter's Bay in the wealthy eastern suburbs and looked directly over the bay to Bellevue Hill with its many apartments and houses that were older in style than those of the north shore.  I found the view distinctly inferior to that of my home.  I liked to look at trees and bush.  It also smelled because of the smog that settled so heavily over the city in the sixties.  What I really resented most was not being home.  I loved everything about my home.  Oddly my mother did not.  I don't know to this day what her hang up was but she was a depressive and generally unhappy without knowing the cause.  She had a good life but I think lacked purpose in spite of her many friends.  I have very few friends to this day but as long as I have nature around me I'm fine.  Sadly that didn't work for her.

After leaving school I was encouraged to go to University but, having been so miserable at school, I had developed no direction.  I studied Science for a few years and dropped out then sat around at home thinking what to do next but no one would let me take time to think.  My parents encouraged me to do a computer programming course.  Apparently my presence wasn't appreciated in the house and it never occurred to them the damage that had been done by keeping a psychologically distressed teenager in the wrong environment against her will.  I had had Obsessive Compulsive Disorder badly since I was six and eventually panic attacks.  I'd coped at the first school but not the latter.

I did the course and worked as a programmer for nine months, decided it wasn't living, dropped it and agreed to marry my boyfriend of four years.  Harsh as this sounds, he was my friend and the only chance I had for peace and to heal.  We had a son and divorced after fifteen years but I am eternally grateful for those years he gave me to become whole before the marriage fell apart.

When I married, naturally I left home and that was the hardest thing of all.  It isn't that I was a natural homebody, it's just that the place was magic.  I truly had been in love with my environment since I could remember.  My husband's work took us interstate and eventually overseas and we lived in some decent houses and owned a couple but I could never feel anything for them.  To me they were suburban boxes with no view and fences.  There wasn't a fence in sight where I grew up.  The houses I lived in were also close to one another on grid like streets and had no soul but they were comfortable.  My old home wasn't at all grand, just comfortable and reasonably large but it was the surroundings that were exceptional.  Yes, I was spoiled and terribly grateful for having grown up there but the sad thing is that nothing else could live up to it.

Over the years I would go back and visit my parents of course who were now relieved to have me off their hands, their one and only child.  They also loved their grandson who was able to see my old home until he was about four.  We were living in Perth when my parents gave me the news they were selling the house.  I was dumbstruck.  I think Dad needed extra money to retire and they liked the idea of starting afresh and to my horror they chose Perth, a place I had come to loathe.  They didn't like it either and two years later moved south to Dunsborough, which they loved.

I don't remember when I last saw my old home.  When my parents owned it I came and went thinking it would always be there to go back to.  There was a time I saw it for the last time not knowing it would be the last.  It's probably just as well or my heart would have broken then and there.  I had always thought I would at least inherit it.  If I had wild horses couldn't have dragged me from it.  It is well out of my price range now and I wonder what I would do if I suddenly won enough money to buy it back.

Something tells me it wouldn't be a good idea.  A home is not just a place, it's a time.  It's the people that surrounded you and the times you had there and it was the most wonderfully close neighborhood in the golden age of the fifties, sixties and even the early seventies.  I am just incredibly grateful for what I had, even though it wasn't exactly mine but in a way it is because it is part of me.

END