The winter is drawing in but I dont feel like flying south

Since July I haven't written very much - I do my usual daily jottings but my "work in progress" and this, my very self indulgent blog have been ignored. I have been travelling a lot over the last six months but now it is winter and it feels right to become introspective until the primroses start to break through. How better way is there than to meander amongst your dreams and thoughts than in writing?

I was born in Sydney, as my profile says, and every year as the nights grow longer there is a strange compulsion, wherever I am, to head south. This year I don't think I will.

Many of the people I love have moved away from Australia and I suspect that this drive to go back is a longing to reconnect to who I was... to a time when the world was not who I am or who I might be. I know now that we find the essence of who we are in our past. We learn much from our ancestors, not just in the colour of our hair or the shape of our nose but in the look in our grandfather's eyes, the love our father had of people, our mother's huge heart or the deep connection that our granny might have had to Welsh hills. I believe the answer to who we might be lies in that bequest that our parents gave us as they too carried forward the family knowledge and genetic makeup. The thought is bouncing around that maybe we begin where our parents left off and our task is to pick up the family baton and go forward.

Although I am only first generation Australian ,I am Australian. It is true that it has not been passed to me by my ancestors but I still feel that enticing fear in the bush of Australia and I AM seduced by the smell of scorching ironing as the eucalyptus leaves crinkle on the edge of the dirt tracks in summer. I enjoy, in that beautiful/scary kind of way, the huge open spaces and I can see the promise that beckons us in the distant landscapes. I am inspired by those huge skies that make me believe that there is no limit, no boundaries to be whoever I might be or to go whereever I might choose to go. It is like the energy of the Fool in the Tarot deck that drives you to step out and be greater than you are , to step up and be "the leading lady in your own movie" as heard in some corny film the other night. I remember when I was a young woman in London, a friend laughed when I said I loved the red dirt of Australia and he teased me saying there is no red dirt in Double Bay*. I was embarrassed that I sounded dorky but I know now that there WAS red dirt in my blood.

Despite this annual yearning to head south most of the times I feel at ease wherever I am. I recall how in the beginning my travels were to "open the gate to the bottom paddock" and let the fence around my home gets bigger but now I suspect my travels are more about trying to find where my home is. I do know now that my home is where I am with the people I love and as my daughters create their own life and my friends move to Europe I feel less and less that this year the trip south is a valid journey. Perhaps the axis is shifting.

There are some place that resonate with you more than others. I love the drive up over the Pyrennees and I feel myself soar in the Scottish Highlands. I feel my energy soar in the Californian mountains and I feel intrepid driving through the high deserts. This winter though I am going to snuggle down in the south of England and write.



*Double Bay is a harbourside suburb of Sydney