Wednesday, February 23

 

I’ve replaced the incorrect post I made on Monday with the correct one and apologise for my confusion.

 

Watching the Back Roads episode on Monday evening, featuring Longford, brought home to us that we will never be true Longford natives.  We have our home here and we enjoy what the town has to offer but we have no shared history with the area.  If we lived to be 100 years old, we would never be more than johnny-come-latelies to a town with a rich heritage we can only observe as outsiders.

 

Back Roads, of course, highlights the differences between this area and others they have visited over the years.  They’re not interested in the world we occupy: the grocery store and the café and the Chinese restaurant we frequent.  They want to talk to the family who have farmed here since the 1820s, the family who can’t wait for the hunting season to begin so they can shoot unsuspecting stags, and the hotel publican who yearns for the days when Longford was one of the premier car-racing circuits in Australia, noted for having killed more drivers than any other. 

 

They winkle out the heart-breaking story of Rob Wilson who was born a hermaphrodite in the days when this condition was little understood.  The story, of course, was treated with dignity but I still felt like a voyeur intruding on his privacy.  Rob is clearly a person of real strength who has become a world leader in breeding rare chickens.  It’s a remarkable achievement for someone who started life with the cards stacked against him.

 

At the end of the program, Marilyn commented, ‘It’s not the Longford we know,’ and she’s right.  Our Longford is limited to the main street, the doctor’s surgery and Stickybeaks Café where we might go for an occasional meal.  We still find our social life in Launceston and Deloraine.  That’s the problem with a life spent moving from city to city where work takes you.  You never really belong anywhere. It’s hard to put down roots in a new town and you can only look at the lives of long-term residents with some envy.

 

We’ve become adept at identifying people who’ve lived here all their lives.  They have a stamp on them which is easy to read and a confidence in their environment.  I like to think you can tell by their accent too. They may never have seen the sun rise over Magnetic island, or canoed down the Kangaroo River, but they’re comfortable in their skin and in their surroundings.  I can’t help thinking there’s something to be said for having limited horizons.