Going back home

I loved where I grew up, a small country town in Australia, surrounded by large farms, vineyards and wide open spaces. It was a simple place, no digital distractions, very quiet, and going out meant going outside to work or play rather than a fancy restaurant, nightclub or other such location. The town had a single main street lined with businesses owned by the people who worked in them, no one locked cars or houses and everyone knew everyone else. It was predictable, welcoming and wholesome. I miss that now, years later after leaving.

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I miss the simplicity of life in that small town, dust hanging in the air as the combine harvesters cut rows into wheat fields, the lack of franchise-businesses and fast-food joints and the way people pitched in to help when help was needed. It was a good place, relaxed and community-spirited.

I go there from time to time still but it's not the same and I don't feel the same when there as I used to.

Sometimes I wonder if it's me that's changed but no, I'm the same country lad I always was. It's the town that's changed. More people, fast-food outlets and franchised chain-stores that caused the eventual closure of business that have been owned and operated by the same families for decades. It's faster, nosier, more congested and not as simple as it used to be.

Last week I was there to see a friend, someone I went to primary and high school with, who was back from Sydney to see her ailing mother. Before I went up to her mum's place to visit I pulled over in the main street to get a coffee, from one of those damned franchised coffee shops, and took a walk up and down the street as I drank it. I felt like a stranger, knew no one I saw, was greeted by no one and hardly recognised a single shop-front from the good old days. It made me sad.

My life has taken me far and wide and the things I've done...well, the boy I was back in that small town could never have conceived of such things.

I have travelled all over the world, built businesses, loved and lost, loved again, and have created what essentially is the sum and total of my life in the shape I wished it to take. But no matter where I've been and what I've done that place I grew up in, my home town and the home in which I lived my early years, will always be a special place to me, even though I feel like a stranger there.

I get nostalgic driving past familiar places, feel the tug of memories pulling at my mind but...going back home for good is something I can never do, it just doesn't feel right now and that home isn't the same one it once was.

"Home" was the people, the lifestyle and the simplicity of the life I had growing up, and that town could never be that now...'progress' has taken care of that.

I wanted to share some tracks that make me think of home. Below are three tracks that remind me of various aspects of my youth, the simplicity I enjoyed growing up and the thoughts I have now knowing the home I knew is gone forever.

Meanwhile back at mamma's - Harvest time - Refrigerator door

✳️ Here's a link to YouTube where you'll find all three in a single YouTube playlist.

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Have you moved away from home and if so has it been a positive or negative thing for you? Do you miss your hometown and if you do, what aspects do you miss and why? Is going back to your home town possible and how does it make you feel when you do? If you're keen to comment on these things please go ahead, or comment generally on anything you wish including the music I have linked. I'll get back to you, I always respond.