13 june 2008

twelve doors on this roof. they make the ceiling, resting on the rafters. it’s all held up by old redgum sleeps. earth render on one side of the wall and bark on the other. there’s enough windows to allow one to see hundreds of trees moving. wattles and some kind of spindly eucalypte. in the morning they let me see a dozen different species of birds. the magpies, choufs, crows, kookaburras, butcher birds, half a dozen different kind of wren or robin. their red and yellow and blue breasts flitting through the canopy.

we’ve been living here for almost three weeks now. in this 6 by 4 metre shack.

walking over the slate floor and sheepies to get from the bed to the table to the teapot.

it’s been more than three months that I’ve been growing this baby inside me. running our hands over the lifting rock of the womb and my weighted breasts.

and it’s been something like 4 months since we’ve been here, in this country of such little rain and open spaces. some things are the same.

the skin on the old farmer’s face, the way he’ll look at you without his eyes, the gestures of his hands when he gives you directions. these things you find in france and here in australia. these things don’t change. but almost everything else seems different. the soil, the clouds, the types of women who work in bars, the roadrules, the price of flour, the way the trees give shade. the casualness of strangers, the still strong colonialism of language, the unmistakable misfitting of the whiteman on this land, the drought.

despite all this changes, this relocation to the other side of the world, this migration - our needs are still the same. we want the dirt under our fingernails. we want to make and build and cradle things with our hands. we want enough bush to be able to walk through and clear out our heads.

so we’ll stay here in this shack. each morning I’ll hear you speak french to my tummy which will grow and grow until I can only waddle. we’ll work the earth and sow the seeds and build a bathhouse. i’ll learn to drive and to name the birds and to breastfeed a baby. we’ll make do with what we have and dream of other things until we make them. and one day we’ll pack the coffee grinder, the wind turbine and social panel, the gas cooker, the instruments and the baby in the car and we’ll drive further then we’ve ever driven before. we’ll make a new life in the tropics where everything is different again. Where not even farmers can reassure you that some things, no matter where in the world you are, stay the same.