Home

If you're driving out from Castlemaine, continue through Chewton until you pass over Lawson's Bridge, then take the next left down Golden Point Road. Then, take the first right, a dirt road going up a steep hill. You'll pass a house made of pale yellow stone. Follow the road around and continue on straight ahead, and you'll get to my house.

Of course, it isn't my house any more. But it was, for some years. From there, my brother and I would roam through the bush for hours and hours, casting yabby nets into the murky lake in the pine forest, building cubbies in the ancient gum tree in the front yard and kicking the football along the grassy patch next to the fence covered in blackberry bushes. We'd climb the big gum until dinner was ready, with our little white dog running around the base, and see the sunset light the scene on fire.

When I dream of home, I dream of the Chewton house. It has been a refuge from monsters, a converted hospital, a gathering place for overseas friends and a place to return to. Sometimes it doesn't even look like the Chewton house, but I know it is. I know the feel of the place, the solid impenetrable comfort of the house that my parents designed and built.

I've lived in many houses in my life. Not as many as some, of course, but a good seven or so. None of them reverberate in my memory as much as the Chewton house, not even Brunswick Road, which I would very much consider a home. The house is something that I long for. Or, perhaps, I simply long for the time in which I lived there. It was a much simpler time, before divorce and death and dreaded adolescence.

If I could buy back the house today, I would. Even though it's reasonably isolated and simple. Because it's home, and nowhere else can ever quite compete.