I jokingly call Wangaratta the true center of the universe. I grew up in this Australian town, and I haven’t lived there since I was nineteen, but my brother still does, and I’m always meeting people who’ve either lived there or still live there or know someone who does.
The town is like a possessive mother, with fingers that extend far and wide as they curl around the world. And now you know her too. Even now, her fingers are caressing your brow, welcoming you into her embrace, from which you will never leave. You belong to her now, wait and see.
Belonging is in our nature and encoded into our genes. Philosophers and psychologists believe that we only see ourselves through our relationships with others. As such, we are always looking for somewhere to feel safe and someone to love. Perhaps it is only through our connections to the world around us that we exist at all.
Wangaratta exists because of its connecting rivers. The Ovens and King Rivers unite here, like two long and shapely legs of an ancient earth mother. The rivers begin in the high snow plains to the east and swell north by west to feed the valley, a fertile womb that produces fine wines and artisan delights. Wangaratta is her smooth navel, sheltered to the west by the Warby Ranges, which rise from the earth like generous breasts. Groves of orange orchards flourish at the base of these hills, lit all day by a high sun and basked at night by a billion luminous stars. Her arms carry the river northwards until calmer waters greet her sister, the mighty Murray River. Here, she lays her head to rest in the cool swamps hidden among slender reeds abundant with trout and cod.
Back in 1842, the explorers Hume and Hovell crossed this wide and swirling Ovens-King junction while mapping a trade route between Melbourne and Sydney. Settlers followed, farming began, along with a small pub known as The Hope Inn, and Wangaratta was born.
Wangaratta provides hope to my father when he is five. Before then, he didn’t have a home, just a progression of makeshift beds in temporary sheds. The first shed is inside a liberated German war camp in Austria, where he was born. WWII has ended, but his Ukrainian parents, Andrei and Halina, fear their lives if they return to Ukraine. They pretend to be Polish and immigrate to Australia as displaced persons. They are just three of the 600 post-war refugees who settle in Northeast Victoria during the 50s.
Hope is what keeps my grandparents alive after they are taken from their separate homes by German soldiers, aged only seventeen. They find each other along the way but forever bear the sorrow of never knowing what happened to their families. In Australia, they become Andy and Helen. They buy a house, grow vegetables, and raise their son to be a good Aussie boy. Andy lives hard and fast, relishing his second chance at life. Cancer stops him hard and fast when he is sixty. Helen’s face hardens like metal when she talks about the war, but her eyes soften with a faraway light when she tells stories of her youth. She loves Australia with deep gratitude for her freedom and lives fiercely independent until her mid-80s, when she finally surrenders to the need to survive at all costs. I feel their souls lingering in the sunburnt landscape, see their eyes in the stars like guardians over the valley.
Hope for a better life takes my mother to Wangaratta. Born and raised in Melbourne, she meets my dad while he is an apprentice in the city, and they are married two years later. After five years of expensive city life, they decide to raise their family in the country, and we move there when I am four. She tries, but she never adjusts to the country woman’s life. She tries it on like a dress she admires, but it bunches and pinches. She is a canary among magpies, in brightly patterned mini shirts, tight boob tubes and gold sandals. Once my brother and I finish school, she convinces dad to sell up and try city life again. A few years later, they divorce, but she doesn’t escape the long fingers of Wangaratta. Back she is drawn to visit her grandchildren now, once more held to the center of the universe.
As a young girl, I loved trips to Melbourne, fascinated by the expansiveness of urban sprawl. I’m still intrigued by the busy importance of city people as they swarm at traffic crossings and move purposefully into huge glass doorways. I’m strangely seduced by the pulse of traffic and commuter-filled trains in my veins. I feel stimulated and vibrant within city life.
Still, whenever I’m country bound, I exhale at first sight of a yellow-grassed field under an azure sky and realise I’ve been holding my breath against the smog. When the pastel-hued dusk lingers over the ranges, all city stress peels away. Like a child again, I search the darkening sky for the first evening star.
I am cradled to sleep by the lullaby of a country night. Frogs croak as the bass note for the rustling of trees. A solitary dog bark is answered by another, miles away.
I hope there will be a thunderstorm hanging long and low in the valley. If there is, I will go outside to let the electric air prick at my skin. Barefoot on the grass, hair whipped by the wind, arms outstretched, held between earth and sky, I am forever tethered to the universe.
To Her I Belong.