Australian reflections

I’m just about to leave Australian soil after a seven night trip here, my first time back after relocating overseas with family in January 2015.

There is something funny about being home, but being away from home, of knowing a country is so much a part of your life, but only one part, of being separated from your motherland by thousands of miles, but knowing your mother still lives in your heart.

However, this trip, when you set aside the wonderful friends, the great hospitality, and the beautiful landscape, this trip has taught me, or perhaps reminded me, of a deeper longing.

This longing is for a place in the middle of the Pacific, miles from nowhere, on a foundation of lava and sand. This land is a land of pineapples and coconuts, macadamias and plumeria. At its heart beats a spirit of aloha, a breath-filled life which is unique and unmistakable.

Hawai’i, you have entered my aching heart, hugging and kissing memories and foundations built in Australia.
After fifteen months of gently loving me, you have given me more than I could ever have asked for, renewing and transforming my past, and encouraging my new future.

So, Australia, I still call you home, and you are, as always, in my heart. But you’ll have to get used to sharing that space with the most complicated, broken, beautiful place that I’ve ever known. That land of aloha across the seas.