Home

We all have beginnings somewhere, a place where the soul first took root and drew its history, fixed a compass point, a pin in a map to mark its home. For me it was here where the horizon began in a haze of mangrove trees and broad tidal flats and boats bellied in mud when the sea sucked back the river leaving its gums grinning under a warm sun. It was here where my ancestors landed more than a century and a half ago. Now manicured to prime real estate, the tides keep to an orderly flow within grassy banks overseen by multi million dollar views. The mangrove forests have gone, the swamps sanitised to lawn. I look across the glistening reaches of a man made lake to where the slow drift of sailboats scrape the bottom of an evening sky. All seems out of place, not home and yet I mull as to whether there is any other beyond this one, beyond the little sailing boats and the barking dog nearby.