The Long Way Home

None of this was part of the plan.

Which, I’m beginning to realise, is often where the interesting parts begin.

When I went down to the farm a few weeks ago, I thought I needed rest.

And I did.

I needed quiet. Long walks. Trees. Space. Days without too many plans. I needed to light a fire in the evening, read, sleep and generally remove myself from the noise for a while.

Then something funny happened.

I rested.

And eventually, my energy came back.

And almost immediately, so did my curiosity.

Naturally, after weeks of declaring my undying devotion to silence and solitude, I booked myself a little city trip to Melbourne.

I do surprise myself sometimes.

But perhaps that’s one of the best things about genuinely resting.

Eventually, the desire to engage with life returns on its own.

Not because we force ourselves back into it.

Because we actually want to.

And apparently, once my energy returned, so did my adventurous spirit.

I’d almost forgotten how much I love that part of myself.

The part that wants to explore.

To take the unfamiliar road.

To see what’s around the corner.

To change the plan because somewhere looks beautiful.

So when it was eventually time to leave Victoria and begin driving north, Choco and I took the long way home.

We drove through the Victorian High Country, then on towards Lake Jindabyne, through mountains, open roads and landscapes so vast that at times I couldn’t quite believe I was in the same country I’d supposedly come home to.

Then through the Southern Highlands.

I remember driving near Bowral one evening at golden hour, the late-afternoon light catching these magnificent old trees as I passed.

One would suddenly become illuminated, then another.

I found a creek and took Choco for a walk.

That evening, we stayed in the most charming little cottage.

And, naturally, I lit the fire.

Turns out lighting a fire has become one of my new favourite rituals.

Who knew.

There was something about that evening — the cottage, the fire, the quiet, Choco asleep nearby — that felt incredibly simple and incredibly luxurious at the same time.

Then we kept going.

Further north, the landscape became greener and warmer until eventually we reached Bellingen.

I knew almost immediately that I would love that pocket of the world.

The rivers. The lushness. Those magical little creeks winding through all that green.

I could completely picture having grown up there.

Which is particularly strange because I almost did.

When I was little, my parents considered relocating us to Bellingen. I was supposed to attend the Steiner school there.
Instead, life went another way.

We moved to France.

And standing there all these years later, I found myself thinking about how extraordinary that is.

One decision changes.

One road is taken instead of another.

And an entirely different life unfolds.

Had my parents made another choice, perhaps those rivers and forests would have formed the backdrop to my childhood.

Instead, I grew up in Europe.

I went on to live in Paris, Rome, Berlin, different countries, cultures and versions of myself.

And while I could picture the little girl I might have been growing up there, I felt no sadness for the road not taken.

Quite the opposite.

I felt enormously grateful.

I’ve had an incredibly rich life, filled with places, languages, people and experiences, and I know what a privilege that is.

But it did make me wonder how much pressure we put on ourselves to make the right choice.

The right place.

The right relationship.

The right career.

The right direction.

As though somewhere there is one perfect road and our job is to make absolutely certain we don’t miss it.

But perhaps life doesn’t work like that.

Perhaps there are many possible lives available to us.

And perhaps our job isn’t always to predict exactly where a road will lead.

Sometimes it’s simply to be curious enough to take the next turn.

This entire trip was a reminder of that.

When I returned to Australia, I thought I would settle, establish a routine and get on with building my life here.

Instead, I found myself driving through mountains and valleys, wandering around country towns, following rivers, walking unfamiliar stretches of coastline and occasionally changing the day’s plan simply because something looked interesting.

And somewhere amongst all of that, something happened that I hadn’t anticipated.

I reconnected with Australia.

Not simply as the country where I was born.

But as my country.

After spending most of my life overseas, perhaps I needed to experience it rather than simply decide to live in it.

To see more of it.

To feel its scale and wildness.

To reconnect with my Australian roots through the landscape itself.

Sometimes we need to venture beyond what is familiar to discover what else belongs to us.

And perhaps that applies to more than travel.

We can become so focused on maintaining our routines, following our plans and creating certainty that we leave very little room for curiosity.

But curiosity has a way of showing us things certainty can’t.

A different environment can reveal a different rhythm.

A conversation can alter a belief.

A detour can show us something we didn’t know we were missing.

And sometimes, after wandering for a while, we return to exactly where we started...
and experience it differently.

That’s how coming back to the Bay has felt.

It genuinely feels good to be here.

It’s warmer now. Everything feels more alive. I’ve already found myself exploring again, this time through Currumbin Valley and further north.

But I also think I’m different from the person who left.

I’ve rested.

I’ve explored.

I’ve reconnected with my adventurous side.

And perhaps most importantly, I’m not asking this place — or myself — to provide every answer quite so urgently.

Maybe that’s why everything feels a little different.

Sometimes it isn’t our circumstances that need to change.

Sometimes we simply need enough space to return to them with a wider perspective — and more of ourselves available to experience them.

And there was one little piece of the journey that somehow brought all of this together.

There had been a wall in my bedroom waiting for a painting.

Not just a painting.

The right one.

I’d deliberately left it empty rather than filling the space for the sake of it.

Then, wandering through an antique shop in Bowral, I saw it.

A painting that somehow seemed to capture this entire season.

I can’t really explain why.

It just did.

So I brought it home.

And now it hangs on the wall that had been waiting for it.

I love that I couldn’t have gone looking for that particular painting.

I had to find it somewhere I hadn’t planned to be.

Perhaps there is something in that.

Plans give us direction. Routines support us. There is nothing wrong with knowing what we want.

But perhaps we also need to leave a little space for life to surprise us.

Enough curiosity to take the detour.

Enough courage to venture beyond what is comfortable.

Enough trust to occasionally follow what draws us without knowing exactly where it might lead.

Because sometimes the things we find outside the plan are precisely the things we couldn’t have known to put on the plan in the first place.

And sometimes taking the long way home doesn’t take us away from our lives at all.

It brings us back to them more fully.