![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I've been watching The Hollowmen on the ABC. I was disturbed to notice that the strongest effect it's had on me is to make me incredibly nostalgic for Canberra. I mean, this is a satire about the iniquities of Canberra, City of Public Servants, and yet, the opening credits make me go 'awww, Canberra'. Is that a bit, well, bizarre?
Of course, only a person who's grown up in Canberra can really feel the punch of the humour of this particular show. This is the milieu of our childhood, after all.
It got me thinking about the effects of 'home town' on people once they've moved away. I'm someone who lives, breathes, eats and dreams nostalgia, so perhaps my thoughts are more a reflection on me than of the general population.
I lived in Canberra for 15 years, from the age of three. I first left Canberra when I was 18, the year I started uni, and yet it took me five years (during one of which I lived back in Canberra) to truly leave. During those 20 years of association with the place, it imprinted itself firmly on the landscapes of my mind, on the landscapes of childhood. Canberra, for me, is what childhood looks like.
The rest of the country views Canberra with scorn and derision as a sterile, 'planned' city populated with politicians and public servants who leave the place every weekend to live somewhere more vibrant. But for me, that rhythm of leaving and returning, that pull to Parliament House and its satellite buildings and the cafes and bars of the surrounding suburbs is, well, natural. It's the way your friends' parents, your parents' friends live their lives. It's in the background as you go about your business of being a child.
For a child and teenager, Canberra is a different place. I can't speak for northsiders or residents of Tuggeranong or Belconnen, but as a child of the inner south, life had a definite pattern and progression. The 38 bus route, that spidery line from Civic to Woden, threading through Manuka, Forrest, Kingston, Red Hill and Narrabundah, was our boundary line, defining the limits of our world. The students' route from Telopea to the shops and bus stop at Manuka, walked by so many that there was a track worn in the grass of the oval, the food court at Woden Plaza, La Perouse Street, Manuka Pool, Essen and Gus's, these were the known world, the markers of meaning.
I think about Canberra, about the past in general, more and more, because I'm about to leave the country.
What Canberra is to me is deeper than blood, it's something essential to my soul and identity. It's funny, when I went back there last year, I felt I no longer belonged, and yet every so often (when I sat on the 38 bus, when I saw a movie at Manuka Greater Union, when I joined the queue at Silo on a Saturday morning, when I sat drinking hot chocolate at My Cafe and managed to bump into four people I knew) I would feel that yes, yes, I was a Canberran, this is my place, these are my people, this is what life ought to look like.
It's the things of childhood that make the strongest impressions on us and cause us the most confusion.
Of course, only a person who's grown up in Canberra can really feel the punch of the humour of this particular show. This is the milieu of our childhood, after all.
It got me thinking about the effects of 'home town' on people once they've moved away. I'm someone who lives, breathes, eats and dreams nostalgia, so perhaps my thoughts are more a reflection on me than of the general population.
I lived in Canberra for 15 years, from the age of three. I first left Canberra when I was 18, the year I started uni, and yet it took me five years (during one of which I lived back in Canberra) to truly leave. During those 20 years of association with the place, it imprinted itself firmly on the landscapes of my mind, on the landscapes of childhood. Canberra, for me, is what childhood looks like.
The rest of the country views Canberra with scorn and derision as a sterile, 'planned' city populated with politicians and public servants who leave the place every weekend to live somewhere more vibrant. But for me, that rhythm of leaving and returning, that pull to Parliament House and its satellite buildings and the cafes and bars of the surrounding suburbs is, well, natural. It's the way your friends' parents, your parents' friends live their lives. It's in the background as you go about your business of being a child.
For a child and teenager, Canberra is a different place. I can't speak for northsiders or residents of Tuggeranong or Belconnen, but as a child of the inner south, life had a definite pattern and progression. The 38 bus route, that spidery line from Civic to Woden, threading through Manuka, Forrest, Kingston, Red Hill and Narrabundah, was our boundary line, defining the limits of our world. The students' route from Telopea to the shops and bus stop at Manuka, walked by so many that there was a track worn in the grass of the oval, the food court at Woden Plaza, La Perouse Street, Manuka Pool, Essen and Gus's, these were the known world, the markers of meaning.
I think about Canberra, about the past in general, more and more, because I'm about to leave the country.
What Canberra is to me is deeper than blood, it's something essential to my soul and identity. It's funny, when I went back there last year, I felt I no longer belonged, and yet every so often (when I sat on the 38 bus, when I saw a movie at Manuka Greater Union, when I joined the queue at Silo on a Saturday morning, when I sat drinking hot chocolate at My Cafe and managed to bump into four people I knew) I would feel that yes, yes, I was a Canberran, this is my place, these are my people, this is what life ought to look like.
It's the things of childhood that make the strongest impressions on us and cause us the most confusion.
