Photo: Andreas F. Borchert
He approached us after casting his vote. A stranger who needed to share his story, to explain himself and his actions. A stranger who trusted that two women supporting an Aboriginal Voice would listen as he gave voice to his own story.
He began to tell us of his Irish mother, a woman he loved dearly. She always claimed he was ‘fey’, alluding to his intuition and ability to sense things from beyond. He showed a keen interest in his Irish roots and had wanted to take his mother back, but this was not to be. After she died, he decided to make the trip on his own.
He sought out the places that were dear to his mother and met long lost family. The more time he spent on his mother’s Country, the more he felt the place holding him, welcoming a lost son. This feeling finally overcame him when he entered a small church in the village where his mother was born. As he stood at the baptismal font where she and generations of her family had been baptised, he succumbed to a flood of tears, held back for the longest time.
A gentle hand touched his shoulder. It was the parish priest.
‘Welcome home, son,’ he said, and our traveller felt he had truly arrived.
It was a moment akin to transcendence, a knowing that this was where his roots were, no matter where he would live out the rest of his life.
I too have experienced this sense of homecoming. A homecoming to a place that I can no longer call home, but a place where I feel the pull of my roots stronger than any other place I know. It is a feeling of merging and becoming one with the land, the trees and the birds that roost within them. I expand to take in all that is and experience both rapture and rupture between me and what lies beyond. Words cannot capture what happens in these moments, they will always stay ineffable.
Like my stranger, after experiencing what the Irish call ‘Thin Places’, where the veil between heaven and earth momentarily falls away to reveal the transcendent, I have but an inkling of Aboriginal people’s connection to Country. But like the man I met ever so briefly, I know where I stand and why I have chosen to take that stand.
From Quill to Quote 
Beautiful. I haven’t heard the word ‘fey’ in a long time. My mother used to use it. Irish connections.
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It’s the smell of a place, the air and breezes of place, the river running through place and the colours which bring voices of past and present together…. I understand
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This makes me feel so emotional. I mdo miss my home country to much, have just been writing about the loss of it… how I feel when I am there, the smell of seaweed on the beach… elderflowers… ah well. I am so sad and so sorry about the outcome of the referendum, feel I saw a truly ugly side of Orange, of Australia… not the majority of the population but a too-large minority.
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This makes me feel so emotional. I mdo miss my home country to much, have just been writing about the loss of it… how I feel when I am there, the smell of seaweed on the beach… elderflowers… ah well. I am so sad and so sorry about the outcome of the referendum, feel I saw a truly ugly side of Orange, of Australia… not the majority of the population but a too-large minority.
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lovely Viki…there’s a truth to past generations and places
holding onto us…
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Love this – such a wonderful weave of ideas – thank you xxx
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