Number One Blog - Exile on Gore Street

Ok, so here goes... This is my blog. Something I have long resisted, but now have decided to embark up. To those wondering (and as I am the only person who, at this stage, is aware of this blog, this is clearly only for my own benefit) the title comes from a line from Ern Malley's poem "The Black Swan of Trespass". The Line in question goes:

"It is something to be at last speaking
Though in this No-Man's-language appropriate
Only to No-Man's-Land"

Why this quote? Well, it seems to me that the web is a big place. Recent statistics show that every day 2 squillion new blogs appear and because most blogs are immortal, eventually NASA scientists estimate that we are going to have to colonise at least another four major planetary systems just to have enough hard-drives to sustain these blogs. (Estimates calculated using CSIRAC: see above image - for those of you who don't know - CSIRAC is completely rad.) Anyway, as this blog is, for now at least, a space for my private rantings, it is a space where I can speak with the freedom of a 'no-man's-language', knowing that it will be heading into 'no-man's-land'.

That said, on another level, it begs the question; how much of everything that I say and do belongs to no-man's-land. Saying this, I don't just mean this virtual no-man's-land of the internet. Nor am I suggesting an existential dilemma to my purpose on the planet. Rather, I suppose I am pondering on a very specific question which relates mostly to myself and those friends of mine who have chosen to relocate from the seaside idyll of Perth, Western Australia to the burgeoning metropolis of Melbourne, Victoria.

And what shall I say about us? Firstly, there is a lot of us. Secondly, we all seem to congergate - largely in the Northern suburbs. We all seem like pretty motivated, intelligent sorts, so what has motivated our move? Were we running away from something? Were we just too gutless to move overseas, but too ambitious to stay in Perth? Or did we just want a seachange? I don't know - and I ask myself these questions often, along with other questions, like why are almost all of my friends here from Perth? Will we still be her in five/ten/fifty years time? Who knows...

What I do know is that, however long I stay here, I don't seem to ever shake saying 'I'm from Perth'. I don't say 'I grew up in Perth', I say 'I'm from Perth'. Like many of my friends, I talk about going 'back' or even 'home' for Christmas - but every time I go back to Perth it seems more alien to me. In some instances this is because things have changed, but mostly it is just because it really isn't my home anymore. From the day I got to Melbourne, I felt comfortable here, and I feel the city has changed me. But why then does this city never quite feel like home? Why do I still feel like an exile on Gore Street.

Part of the answer, I guess, is that we are still a community of expatriots. I was contemplating using a different word to expatriate - as WA is not a seperate country, although moreoften than not it feels like another world - but the more I thought about it, the more the word fit. We are an expatriate group - huddled together in the inner city suburbs, finding it hard to assimilate into the broader society. And why shouldn't we be... Personally, I think the Perth gang is great. I've met so many amazing people from Perth - I am just very disappointed that I had to travel to Melbourne to meet them.

I don't have answers to any of those questions... I just have more questions, and a whole bunch of meaningless speculations. For centuries, philosophers and scientists had speculated on the existence of a great southern land - terra australis. Ironically, one person who never believed in its existence was Lt. James Cook. Even upon sighting the east coast of Australia and landing at Botany Bay he remained unconvinced...

And maybe Cook was right. Maybe Australia doesn't exist. Maybe it is just a concept in our collective colonial imaginations. Not a place, so much as a conceptual formulation - something to balance out the idea of Europe - an Antipodes where eveything is upside down and nothing is as it seems. And then, maybe, just maybe it is not us expatriates from New Holland that are exiles in this country - maybe everyone else that lives here is also living in exile. This is not purely because we don't belong here, but because the notion of Australia actively rejects our ability to belong here. For this is the antipodes - the counterbalance and opposite of Europe - where Europe is small and full, here is big and empty, where Europe is civilised and cultivated, here is wild and ragged, Europe is up, here is down, Europe is home, here is abroad.

But I've never been to Europe. Like the rest of us, I'm just floating out to sea. Anyway, at least I'm living in Melbourne. I might be in exile here, but I've already learnt to hate Sydney ... which reminds me of a line from the old convict song 'Jim Jones':

And our ship was high upon the sea
Then pirates came along,
But the soldiers on our convict ship
Were full five hundred strong.
For they opened fire and somehow drove
That pirate ship away.
But I'd rather have joined that pirate ship
Than gone to Botany Bay.
With the storms ragin' round us,
And the winds a-blowin' gale,
I'd rather have drowned in misery
Than gone to New South Wales.