Gumbaynggirr Country.

I lived there for years, eventually finding my roots there, I reconnected back to that old place. Familiar memories of countless school holidays spent on the tire swing, hidden in the shade underneath that old fig tree whose arms reached out across the whole back yard of Nan’s place. Memories of waking early in the morning as Nan would walk down back to the saltwater creek with a hand line and bait to catch breakfast.

‘You boys hungry?’ She’d ask with a grin.

Fry bread and fresh fish tastes like heaven to a 10-year-old.

It didn’t take all that long for that place to remember me; I was welcomed in as family welcomes family. As Country welcomes you back to her.

Up the ranges and across the tablelands, we made our way to Anēwan Country. Another place that I’ve lived before. I even stretched it out and lived there for seven-ish years. I’m a bit like my grandparents I suppose, following the work and the weather.

If you have not found yourself in Armidale in the autumn time, it is a magical place that doesn’t seem real. It’s where the trees around town, and along the sides of Elm Avenue, near the University, turn from the brightest green, to every shade of red, yellow and orange that you could imagine; it’s as if the leaves have caught hold of all the sunrises and sunsets of summertime and refused to let them go. It’s when the warm sunshine of the mid-autumn days give way to the cool evening breezes that find their way down the back of your collar to send shivers up your spine. Small reminders that wintertime waits for us not far away, and that those beautiful painted leaves will eventually turn brown and fall to the earth who is waiting patiently below. The trees will stand witness to our stories and the seasons, stripped bare, waiting for springtime that eventually comes.

We were in Armidale for the Winter Blooming Festival, where I sat ‘in conversation’ with the brilliant poet, novelist, editor and amazing human Omar Sakr. For me, it was a privilege to sit across from him as we discussed what it is like being poets in oppressive places.

It was one of my very few visits back there since moving away years ago. One of my fondest memories of the time that I lived on Anēwan was when I helped a friend to write a play called Homesick.

We posed a question.

‘What if when you are homesick, you are not sick for home, but home is sick for you’?

Home was sick for me; and sadly, home had been sick for some time. We headed south down the Moonbi Ranges where we crossed a place called Poison Swamp Creek, just south of the village Bendemeer. Poison Swamp Creek is where colonists poisoned milk with arsenic and gave it as a ‘gift’ to local Gomeroi people, subsequently murdering my ancestors. Not a nice story, but I repeat it often because as far as truth telling is concerned, this colony is short of truth listening.

After Poison Swamp and other places of non-mention there’s a certain point on the road where the hills drift apart, and you can see the her out until the earth disappears over the horizons edge.

I live for that moment and that’s when I know I’m almost there.

We met our family and our friends Kate and Raymond at a place we call the Red Shed. It sits on a property that they have cared for, for many years; they have lived with Country, lived with love and respect. Kate and Raymond are some of our family’s most cherished friends. It’s there we firstly smoked ourselves with gum leaves for protection and cleansing, the oldest ceremony on the planet. We ate food prepared on the cooking fire. For cultural reasons it sits separate from the smoking fire.

We then walked up to see the Dhinawan teaching site.