Oh, TI, my beautiful home

Last Saturday, 6 July, Seffy, Kibbim and I flew to Cairns … on a one-way ticket.

     Tony has been keen to move to the mainland for over five years.  I have refused, saying I’d think about it down the track and it's a long track.

The sun is not setting on my TI adventure.

     I have known the move to a regional centre was inevitable, for the children.  If you want what the city offers (sport, singing lessons, more challenging academic pursuits), you need to live in a city.  It’s unreasonable to complain about not having access to extra-curricular activities in a small, remote community like TI. There are so many rewarding aspects to life on TI such as a slow pace of life, the freedom of a small, safer community and fresh air, but Tony and I want our kids to be able to cope with city life and not shy away from crowds and traffic, self-service checkouts, footwear, being able to drive at the speed limit and remembering to lock the car, which are the reasons I DON'T want to move.

     I’ve won the battle to stay long enough and earlier this year, Tony and I decided we would head south in January, 2014.

     However, a recent visit to Cairns reminded me my mum needs some support, a fact she heavily disputes!  So, I’ve come down for just a few months, hopefully.  The kids and I have found ourselves living with Mum in a three-bedroom, masonry block abode in the suburbs.  
     Mmm.  Not what I have ever experienced, considering my family travelled much and moved house often when I was growing up. In fact, I spent a fair bit of my childhood in PNG in a little community very much like TI.

     After five days of this new life in Cairns, I am longing to go home. Strangely, I have never  thought of TI as my home.  It’s Tony and Ina’s home, it’s the kids home, but for me, it’s always been a temporary residence.  

     Why?

     First reason, I grew up abroad and tremble with fear at the thought of a mainland, mainstream existence, wholly alien.  Four years at uni and three years in Cairns did nothing to assauge my culture shock. Arriving at the TI wharf in January, 1994 was like arriving in PNG where I spent many years of my youth and it wasn’t home. Merceneries, missionaries and misfits are said to be the only non-Indigenous residents of the tropics.  I happily embrace the misfit category.  
     So at the TI wharf, I was met by a white guy, with a fag hanging from his lips and the waistband of his Stubbies exposing half a white arse.  He reminded of one of the many characters I recall from PNG that didn’t quite fit in to general Australian society, but found a niche in a community far away, generally where it was hot, humid and had lots of palm trees and there was a slowness to the way people moved and spoke.

     “Hey, love,” said this white guy as the minutes passed, “you the girl coming to work at the Federal?”

     Second reason.  TI is an Indigenous community.  I am white.  Europeans, overwhelmingly transient public servants, are often referred to as markay, white spirits which I have thought of as apt as most of them are there and then they are not there (Just some white woman).  I assumed I didn’t have the right to call TI home for this reason. 

     Last reason (this is reading like a persuasive text), because of my background, I have a big mouth and loud voice and am happy to challenge irrational decisions and behaviour by anyone in the Torres Strait (and anywhere).  This is, while not strictly culturally inappropriate, not the done thing.  I suspect it may be one of the very few negatives about living in a small community where most people are related and can’t say anything that contradicts someone who is seen as their elder or in a position of power.

     Therefore, TI wasn’t home until I left the island.  Temporarily.

     I've had lots of time to think about the concept of home, because I have had lots of time driving in the @#$%& car on the @#$%& highway.  
     Now I realise, home is where I feel most settled and that is TI.  I have raised my kids, I have bought property, worked, volunteered, run businesses, walked the length and breadth of the island, traversed the ocean, painted the equivalent of acres of landscapes and have lived there a few months shy of twenty years.  I married the man I love and settled with him in his family home on his island home.  Just because I am white doesn’t mean I can’t call TI home. Oh, TI, my beautiful home.

     So there.  I am only leaving temporarily.  Anyway, I have a return ticket for a week’s stay in August.  You didn’t think I’d get on the plane on Saturday without knowing for certain I was returning home?

The sun always rises the next day ... and it has, thus far, been entertaining being with two island kids as they stuggle to come to terms with life in the big smoke. Shoes have been a big problem.  Stay tuned.