I came into the world on a tide—once, twice, the family cast off from familiar shores and sailed halfway across the world, not so much fleeing as following a call no one could name. Dad was always chasing something elusive and the grass always seemed greener elsewhere.
Childhood was a series of ships and tea chests, sometimes packed in haste and unpacked with quiet hope, where the sun felt strange and each place had a characteristic scent.
Where the sky was different. A contrast of pale skies hemmed in with close horizons and wide, open and vibrant skies. The horizon shimmering in the summer sun. Terminals for ships and trains. Both with the smell of big diesel engines getting ready to transport us to the next adventure.
We left village life and suburbia like shedding an old skin. One last tuckshop order wrapped in greaseproof paper before the energy of the bush claimed us.
There, time moved with the rustle of the old peppercorn tree planted at the front gate, and school clothes gathered red dust.
No uniforms here. What a contrast to the genteel atmosphere of the old school house and English gardens surrounding it, that had been left behind.
The few trees became tutors. Their lessons were soft but lasting: patience, stillness, and the sacred art of finding your way in tangled things. The undersides of tree leaves turning skyward in anticipation of rain.
Living in the bush carved another layer into me—a love for wide skies, pockets filled with rocks and feathers, a bicycle basket of Sturt Desert Pea flowers and a tendency to personify trees like old friends. It’s probably why I talk to plants and feel oddly soothed by the smell of eucalyptus and campfire smoke.
Changing schools felt like hopping stones across a river. Some were slick and uncertain; others caught me mid-leap with surprising kindness. I learned early how to read a room—then a country, then a climate.
I carried no accent, but spoke the unspoken dialect of adapting: listen first, laugh second, lay your roots lightly.
It’s no wonder, then, that now I read maps like tea leaves and find kinship in people with weathered stories. I can sense when a place won’t hold me—or when it already has. My bookshelf groans with collections of history books, novels and the metaphysical. My house is half sanctuary, half holder of memories where my own children grew up.
I still find comfort in the smell of books and eucalyptus. I was prone to rearranging the furniture when a storm brews, but when the last dog aged and became blind that practice had to stop.
I keep feathers like promises. I collect things I probably shouldn’t—seeds, old things, oracle cards….
I gravitate toward eclectic conversations and people with unusual earrings. I can’t commit to one tea, Yes, I have a whole cupboard devoted to different teas. And I still have a habit of subconsciously checking for exit signs in cafés, a relic of all those unfamiliar places.
Some call it restlessness. I prefer to think of it as tidal memory—my life still syncing to that first great departure from the warmth of the tropics to a cool English climate and then onto the wide open spaces of Australia..
A life shaped by tides, terminals and the turn of a leaf. Charting constellations both above and within. Sure, the constant moving meant I never had one “hometown,” but I did inherit a deep sense that home isn’t a place—it’s a patchwork quilt of moments, people, and curious habits stitched together with every hello and goodbye.