The pull of home.

As I headed down the South Gippsland Highway yesterday I felt the old, familiar tug of my heart that tells me I'm going home. Past the rolling green hills, through the little townships that are so pretty with their huge flower plots in the middle of the road and their sweet little shops and houses, around the windy roads through lush, green bush. The roads are so familiar, even though I haven't driven myself very often. I remember riding them with my family, my Dad at the wheel. Still, yesterday I felt sure of the way; my heart being the navigator. This was the country I was born in, the places my brothers and I explored, the place that my heart longs for and has done for so long. Thirty four years of longing...

And it's the place to which my parents are returning. I think they've always longed for it too. I received news on Thursday that they had bought a fully furnished little cottage in McLoughlin's Beach - 20 minutes out of Yarram, where they both grew up, went to school, worked, got married and had the first five of their seven children. They're going back home and I haven't seen them so excited for a very long time. Yarram will be their closest town. They will do their grocery shopping there, go to church there. I'm so happy for them.

I visited them yesterday down in Port Welshpool where they are preparing my Nanna's house (Dad's mother, who died 14 years ago) for sale. It is the right decision. The house would need too much work for my parents to live in. Over the 14 years that my Nans defacto was living there he allowed it to disintegrate to an apalling state. The bathroom wasn't cleaned one so the walls were black with mould, the soap scum in the shower was so thick that Dad had to scrape it off with a paint scraper. And the junk! Nan was a terrible hoarder. Some of the things would have been quite valuable at some stage, but things haven't been kept well and they've been allowed to rust and rot and break till there's no point keeping them. Sad really.

Nans house is a mystery to me. It stirs memories that I can neither understand nor make sense of. They come from somewhere dark where I think the little me of back then filed them away so I wouldn't have to think of them. Memories of people I choose not to think of too much, names I'd rather not remember, a dark night with a howling wind. I can't make sense of the memories, so I choose not to. Always have. I think it's better this way.

I took Mum and Dad for a drive into Port Albert. I wanted to see the boats and the jetty, another place that holds golden memories. It was beautiful. We ran into my Dad's brother Bill, who we found dozing in his car, watching the water & the boats. My Uncle Bill is a fisherman, always lived boats and fishing and the ocean. He told us that he's been having trouble sleeping, so he heads down to the jetty to watch the sea & the boats and it soothes him to sleep. The pull of the ocean is strong.

We drove into Yarram and passed a house that my Nanna's best friend owned. My mother, my brothers and sisters and I stayed there for a week once while the woman was on holidays. Yesterday I told Mum, "There were ghosts in that house." She kind of scoffed at it, but I know it to be true. Children know these things. My Nanna's friend had lost two sons quite tragically. All of us kids could feel them in the house. It was a sad house.

I'm sure that one day the pull of the ocean and the rolling green hills will take me back there again. The yearning has always been there, since I was eleven years old and we moved here. I'm looking forward to it. No plans as yet but somehow I know that I'll be there one day. My parents look content and happy. Dad looks flat out excited. The stories just poured from him yesterday and the hope was once again shining in his eyes.

Another golden day.