Like me, Johann was born in South Africa. His family moved to Hong Kong, lived there a few years, and then he arrived in Perth and in my year at high school, when he was about 15. Since school, he’s gone back to South East Asia a few times on holiday. That part of the world is much more familiar than Europe, which he’s never been to, but from where his Burger-ancestors (Swiss) emigrated long ago.
‘I guess that comes back to the question of what an Australian is,’ Johann says when I ask if he thinks of himself as an Australian. He squirms.
If it comes back to the question of what an Australian is, the obvious next question is what it means for a first-generation migrant Australian to travel overseas.
‘You are Australian but you’re not from here,’ he says. ‘You travel, but you never feel you quite fit.’
He says:
‘Australia is not a specific place.’
And that’s what I think as well. Travel is freedom of movement, but what does that mean when a country is so plural that its meaning is substantially different for each person, and perhaps especially for each migrant? Does a country then become personalised, more of a mythic and interior place, something like in the fiction of Gerald Murnane? What Australia is our peloton is leaving behind? That’s something for the blog.
No comments:
Post a Comment