Comments on: Sacred Site by Kim Fleet

By: Kim Fleet

Kim Fleet — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 18:13:43 +0000

Dear Andrew,
Many thanks for your kind comments on my blog. I’ll be interested to read your book. Themes of belonging and identity are always current, and I suppose they’re part of the territory of being a story teller. Everyone likes to hear a story, to make sense of the world and their place in it, to find out where they’ve come from and to speculate about what’s to come.
Best wishes,
Kim

By: Kim Fleet

Kim Fleet — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 18:09:46 +0000

Dear Philip,
Thank you so much for your kind comments and for your beautiful story about your uncle. He sounds like a real character who led a fascinating life. I like his explanation that he wanted to finish where he began, that after all his adventures he came home, and home was where he started. I’m also intrigued by the idea of language contributing to his sense of home and belonging. It’s a beautiful notion to think of ending your life surrounded by the sounds, the language and intonation that you first knew. Many Aboriginal people die away from their traditional lands because hospital treatment is typically in the cities and not in remote areas. For them, it’s important to die where they were born, and they believe that their spirit is transported back to their traditional country in a rainbow or a whirl wind.
Thank you again for your kind comments, and I’m glad you enjoyed my blog.
Best wishes,
Kim

By: admin

admin — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 15:36:04 +0000

MESSAGE FOR PHILIP

Although Kim will be blogging again tonight, she is in fact away. I will make sure she replies to you the minute she returns. Thank you for sharing such a lovely memory.

For Picnic Publishing

By: philip

philip — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 14:59:08 +0000

Kim, I like your lightness of touch over the keyboard, the weave of your narrative. Keep the thoughts moving.
I was thinking about where is home. More than twenty years ago my mother’s uncle telephoned from Adelaide, looking for his long-lost niece. He only knew my mother’s maiden name, and by this time she had five grown up children. They had last met during the war, when he came to stay with her in Kalamunda, in the hills in Perth. He was in the merchant navy then, and they had put up in Perth for repairs to the ship. Brave profession, I remember thinking when I was told the story. But the sea ran in his veins, as my mother’s family were Hebridean, from the Isles of Lewis and Uist. She was the fruit of a Protestant and Catholic union, where she was settled on as a Catholic. But that is another story.

My great uncle John had jumped ship in Sydney after the war in 1946, and had lived in Broken Hill for a long time. A big strapping man, he loved a drink, was bold, knew how to look after himself, and more importantly to my mother, he knew how to look out for others. A brawl might start with him taking the side of the underdog, and he would be promptly bundled out the staff entrance out the back when the police arrived. He was now 72, and ringing my mother with an urge to see her again. He was still an illegal immigrant, and for decades, he crossed the street when he saw a policeman. He had married, raised two fostered boys, had a drivers licence, and I guess he received the pension. His wife had long since died.

He arrived in Perth and stayed for a visit over a week or more. He told my mother his burning ambition was to go home to Lewis. He had not spoken his mother-tongue Gaelic for so long, he longed to see where he came from, and see his family. I think he had one sister left, and he might have also had an ailing brother. He had been the youngest in his family.

My mother accompanied him to the Immigration Department for an interview he needed to get a residency, and a passport. I can only imagine all the fear he must have felt that after 40 years, he could be deported. But this was not Howard’s Australia, who had since made children at primary school fly the national flag. I was told that the interviewing officer said reassuringly “it’s ok, there was an amnesty in 1954″, and we have always laughed about that ever since. It seemed he was not for deportation, and they gave him a passport to go home.

He went and returned, and I think he then went again and returned. Then later he went to stay. He wanted to die where he began, to be buried in his own turf. I was moved by that. So then, where is home? Is it the place of our forebears? Is it where our formative years are spent? Is it where our children are? Was it where he was accepted, where he could speak Gaelic and where he felt belonged? It was where he laid his spirit down.

A homecoming. We all wish for a good homecoming.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 20:04:05 +0000

I’ve been much enjoying your blog, Kim. I’ve noticed startlingly similar themes in your novel to my own (just relieved that yours is set on a different continent!): people’s search for where they belong, reconciling the past with the present, differing concepts of time in different cultures. Looking forward to reading how these work through in your story.