A Lateralist Sense of Place

When I was a boy, I used to love to go fishing. Most of the time, I went fishing with my late Grandfather, when, after spending the night at my Grandparent's home, we'd rise at about half past four, and make our way to one of Geraldton's beaches to try and catch whatever we could. Usually this meant whiting, but sometimes it meant herring or tailor. Truth be told, we didn't really care. It was just about fishing and spending time together. These memories remain some of my most precious.

The other day, though, I re-read the wonderfully evocative novel, The Merry-Go-Round in the Sea, by the late author, Randolph Stow. I'd not read it since high school, and I found it thoroughly captivating. I remember liking it at the time, too, but I like to think I got a bit more out of it this time. I won't go into great detail about the book, other than to recommend it unreservedly, and to say that its meditations on friendship, childhood, the nature of place and purpose, the impact of war, and the struggle to find meaning are as good as you'll find.

But if you can, please read it when you're overseas.

There is something extraordinarily powerful about reading a novel about home, when home is where you are not. I grew up in Geraldton, which is where the novel is primarily set, although my experiences of it come somewhat later than the novel's 1940's setting. But a good deal of the town - its bones, the blood of it - has not changed greatly. The Geraldton I hear Stow describing - with his poignant mixture of nostalgia and a burning need to transcend its small-town limitations - are as relevant today as ever they were.

Sometimes, all it takes is one word; one word to transport you from wherever you happen to be, back into a childhood memory long neglected. The word for me, was trumpeter.

A trumpeter is a kind of fish; a small fish about the length of a man's hand, with a simple stripe of yellow and brown along its length. At least, that's what I recall.

But what I recalled with astonishing power was that the trumpeter - as in the novel - was usually to be caught from the Geraldton Wharf. The Wharf will always be a place in importance in my mind, primarily due to its familial associations. But the notion of fishing there, and thinking of a fish that I've probably not caught - or even seen - for at least twenty-five years up-ended my psyche, as though someone had swum under me, and unexpectedly hoisted me upwards by the ankles.

I used to clamour under the wharf berth along jetties now inaccessible, and traverse the steel walkways with glee, and marvel at water that was a green and glowing as Vulcan blood. Usually, we (my sister, other friends, cousins) caught blowies. But sometimes, if lucky, we might catch a trumpeter. It wasn't much of a fish to eat, but at least it was a fish. And it reminded me just how evocative a story of home can be.

It need not be so personal. When my wife and I travelled through South-East Asia, I didn't listen to anything on my iPod for the first five weeks other than the albums of Midnight Oil. I recall crossing into China from Vietnam listening to Red Sails in the Sunset, and don't think I've ever felt more consciously and proudly Australian.

There is a sentiment in the lyrics of one of the songs on that Album (ironically enough called "Shipyards of New Zealand") that reads as follows:

"I can't get lost,

I can't get confused.

Something's misplaced;

Maybe for good."

With its soaring strings and dry-bone-crunching guitars that slowly grind over drums that thump and smack, it's a wonderful piece of music. It speaks of the constant evolution of things, and laments the disillusioning - if vital and necessary - experience of a reality that eventually comes to the surface of us all. And when it does, it can move us greatly.

There is, in one's sense of time, place and space, longing to stand still, a longing to move forwards, and a longing to go back. In truth, I think, the past transforms into memory, and infuses us, changing us slowly and surely, with an insistence than cannot be denied.

So, don't deny it. Travel, but listen to (or read) the voices of home. Noted historian, Simon Schama once expressed his belief that "history is our cultural bloodstream." How right he is. John Fowles - a true lateralist, denied the lineality of history, in favour of the belief that experiences - as memory, as story - reside in the present tense. Again, I think he's spot on. And to once more borrow from the Oils, the blood of country, of history of which both men speak must surely be "written in the heart".

By the way, not everything need be about home. Read the novels of Haruki Murakami next time you're on a break. And listen to On An Island by David Gilmour. I don't think anyone will ever make an album more suited to wistful reflection.

It's funny how much travel is really about standing still. And through the strange and exciting noises of places new and foreign, we can often hear most clearly, the voices of home.