Connection to country

[Entangled]

Born in Scotland, I am a long time resident of Australia. Australia has been good to me. For a long time, I tried to dismiss feelings of belonging elsewhere as fanciful. I migrated with my parents when I was too young to remember the land of my birth but whenever I go back to the UK, as soon as I step onto the soil, hear the voices, I feel 'at home'. I have no family (just a few friends) there. What I am trying to say is: I feel a connection that is more than nostalgia, more than friends. It is almost as if the country is part of my DNA and I would love to know if anyone else feels like that.

[supercow]

I don't believe in genetic memory (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_memory_(psychology)) , at least, not to the level where you'd yearn for something you don't know.

 

It's in your head, but that's just as valid. How old are you, why not go for a few years on a working holiday?

[JockinTas]

It's obvious from this forum that people do yearn for the place they come from and look forward to returning.

 

I don't but on the other hand I do like to go back - mainly to see my old pals. I'm not really nostalgic about where I was born and brought up - lovely though it is.

[Suzukiscottie]

I've just had a chunk of home-made tablet with my morning cuppa. Scots will know what I'm talking about! :-)

 

I still feel a strong attachment to the old country (still have a gradually reducing family over there). That feeling may or may not change after tonight when I attend my citizenship ceremony, wearing a suit rather than my kilt.

 

 

Its been a few years since I was last in the Best Wee Country in the World, but it does have a nice sense of homecoming when you hit the tarmac at Abbotsinch Airport.

 

 

 

 

edit - glide on to the tarmac; sideways. Not hit.

[Entangled]

I don't believe in genetic memory (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_memory_(psychology)) , at least, not to the level where you'd yearn for something you don't know.

 

It's in your head, but that's just as valid. How old are you, why not go for a few years on a working holiday?

 

Thank you for the link.(I have not heard of genetic memory so I am keen to read it later today) Please don't get me wrong, I am not yearning to go back and live in Scotland. I am just fascinated by the palpable feeling I get when I set foot in the country. It doesn't happen in England and Ireland where I have family although I love both those countries. So I am exploring where this feeling comes from and am open to the fact that although my migrant/exiled parents tried to hide their grief and homesickness. They came out here after WW2 so that makes me super-old.

 

I am also fascinated by the belief of the Indigenous people of Australia of belonging to country. That seems to be beyond family ties and is something more spiritual

[Entangled]

Several other stories from friends and acquaintances have also fascinated me. One in particular: A very good friends is third generation quintessential Australian beef farmer – tough as a nut, practical and stoic. She visited to the village where her patriarchal family were the lords of the manor (so to speak). In the village church were sarcophagi containing some of her ancestors. While in this space, she started to cry and didn't stop being tearful for three days. she couldn't understand it - she was having a lovely time in the UK and her husband thought she had popped her cork.

[JockinTas]

No so much my parents generation but the two previous generations of my family (on Dad's side) emigrated to Canada and the US. They never set foot in Scotland again except for one great aunt who emigrated to Canada with her husband as newly-weds. They worked hard and bought a little farm in Manitoba where they had several children. Upon retirement they moved back to Scotland and bought a small holding and named it Appawamas which was the native American name for the farm in Manitoba. Their grown up children stayed in Canada but visited their parents often. I think my great aunt was always a bit homesick. We have letters she sent to her twin brother (my grandfather) full of stories about life in Manitoba but she always ends her letters wishing she was nearer to him.

[Quoll]

Yup, firm believer in genetic memory despite all logical reasoning to the contrary - whenever I crossed the coast in the approach to Heathrow my heart sang, even back in the day when I was really enjoying Australia. Getting back to England was like putting on old comfy shoes and I just "belong". I don't know whether it's the colours, the climate, the community or what but there's something that makes me feel happier where my roots are. DH, though, with Suffolk, Kent, Cornwall and Wales in his ancestry feels no belonging in any of them - he's an Australian so the bush is where he "belongs".

[JockinTas]

Yup, firm believer in genetic memory despite all logical reasoning to the contrary - whenever I crossed the coast in the approach to Heathrow my heart sang, even back in the day when I was really enjoying Australia. Getting back to England was like putting on old comfy shoes and I just "belong". I don't know whether it's the colours, the climate, the community or what but there's something that makes me feel happier where my roots are. DH, though, with Suffolk, Kent, Cornwall and Wales in his ancestry feels no belonging in any of them - he's an Australian so the bush is where he "belongs".

 

................ and my eldest son has always wanted to live in Ireland. His paternal grandparents were from Dublin and Cork but my OH was born in Brisbane. Son backpacked around Ireland on a holiday visa some years ago and now he lives and works in County Kildare. He feels very at home there.

[Thom]

I'm similar in a way. When I first went to Land's End in Cornwall, back in 1982 on a Uni climbing course, I felt some attachment to the area, even though I'd not visited there before.

 

I managed to live there for 10 years and still own a house there.

 

I'm returning to live in Blighty, and will not return to the area I was born, as I feel no connection to it.

 

I will move back to Land's End, and not just because we have a house there.

[Entangled]

Thanks for all the replies. I find the stories of this inexplicable 'sense of belonging' fascinating, I will try to find time today to find out more about genetic memory. The author Dean Radin looks at unexplained connection to place and people EG How twins separated at birth, growing up in different countries can have lives that evolve in identical ways. He maintains we are linked to some people and places on a molecular level - quantum physics – I can't understand most of it but it still interests me

[Guest]

Whilst you are doing your reading have a Google for 'Terrapsychology' as well.

 

I am an aetheist, a scientist i.e. Richard Dawkins biggest fan and yet I experienced a sense of country when I voluntarily was exiled from it. It fascinates me too and even more so after an Australian friends visited, who had never been to the UK before and she described the exact same experience on arriving at the South Downs - a place she had never visited but where her family had migrated from.

 

I feel it generally in the UK and even Europe to some extent but particularly in Scotland but I am not Scottish and was 35 when we originally moved here. It was a place with which I'd always had an affinity and interestingly it happened that my parents were working on the family tree and my mothers family were all from Leith. I suspect with a name like Anderson my dad's are too but they weren't able to trace that. I do recall sharing this at work and one particularly delightful colleague saying 'I thought you were too nice to be English' Hmm!!! Actually the only racism I have ever encountered and bizarrely she was an immigrant from Pakistan herself!

 

I truly believe I need lakes and mountains and green landscapes to be content, if I were to ever move back down under it would be to NZ or Tasmania!

[Thom]

http://philipmarsden.co.uk/books.html

'‘Fascinating and hauntingly evocative... Philip Marsden has written a truly wonderful and enjoyable book

Jan Morris,

Literary Review

 

 

 

'Equally entertaining and enlightening... Marsden’s references are glittering. This is a timely volume, describing in beautiful prose the opulence of our natural and human fabric. Guaranteed to fill the windows of Cornish bookshops, it is a superb and educative work which should be read everywhere'

Horatio Clare,

Independent

 

 

Why do we react so strongly to certain places? Why do layers of mythology build up around particular features in the landscape? When Philip Marsden moved to a remote creekside farmhouse in Cornwall, the intensity of his response took him aback. It led him to begin exploring these questions, prompting a journey westwards to Land's End through one of the most fascinating regions of Europe.

 

From the Neolithic ritual landscape of Bodmin Moor to the Arthurian traditions of Tintagel, from the mysterious china-clay country to the granite tors and tombs of the far south-west, Marsden assembles a chronology of our shifting attitudes to place. In archives, he uncovers the life and work of other 'topophiles' before him - medieval chroniclers and Tudor topographers, eighteenth-century antiquarians, post-industrial poets and abstract painters. Drawing also on his own travels overseas, Marsden reveals that the shape of the land lies not just at the heart of our history but of man's perennial struggle to belong on this earth.

 

Amazing book, I've been sending copies to friends to help them understand why I must leave Aus.

[ABL275]

Born in Scotland, I am a long time resident of Australia. Australia has been good to me. For a long time, I tried to dismiss feelings of belonging elsewhere as fanciful. I migrated with my parents when I was too young to remember the land of my birth but whenever I go back to the UK, as soon as I step onto the soil, hear the voices, I feel 'at home'. I have no family (just a few friends) there. What I am trying to say is: I feel a connection that is more than nostalgia, more than friends. It is almost as if the country is part of my DNA and I would love to know if anyone else feels like that.

 

We've been out here 5 years and maybe it'll change when I've been here longer but whenever I go back to the UK, from the moment I step off the plane all I hear is the accents of Mumbai, Karachi, Mogadishu and Belgrade, especially amongst the airport security staff.

 

Britain has ceased to be be British to me: I'm far more likely to hear English spoken here than in Britain which makes the ACT far more familiar to me.

[Guest]

We've been out here 5 years and maybe it'll change when I've been here longer but whenever I go back to the UK, from the moment I step off the plane all I hear is the accents of Mumbai, Karachi, Mogadishu and Belgrade, especially amongst the airport security staff.

 

Britain has ceased to be be British to me: I'm far more likely to hear English spoken here than in Britain which makes the ACT far more familiar to me.

 

This is not about people though, so it doesn't matter what language is being spoken, it is about a connection to the land itself.

[bristolman]

We've been out here 5 years and maybe it'll change when I've been here longer but whenever I go back to the UK, from the moment I step off the plane all I hear is the accents of Mumbai, Karachi, Mogadishu and Belgrade, especially amongst the airport security staff.

 

Britain has ceased to be be British to me: I'm far more likely to hear English spoken here than in Britain which makes the ACT far more familiar to me.

 

Britain is a truly successful multicultural nation that is true. Part of that is hearing accents from all around the globe, something that anyone living in Australia would also be familiar with.

[bristolman]

I have been thinking about this and it was a little different for me. I came back to England with my parents and did the bulk of my schooling here and at that time I considered myself to be nothing but Australian and I planned a return to what I thought of as home. Basically school turned to work and from there I met a few really good friends and got into motorbikes and much fun was had. Long story short I did return to Australia with my new wife and set about starting a new life there BUT there was something inside that was drawing me back to England, not really anything tangible but just lots of small things. There was the feeling that I was actually much more English than I was Australian. I seemed to identify with England rather than what was my actual home, where I grew up. Even after more than a decade in Queensland there was something drawing me back like a magnet and it turns out that feeling was correct. So for me not so much a lifelong feeling but something that has always been there beneath the skin.

[starlight7]

My youngest who is in her 30s and was born here has told me she feels a deep, deep sense of belonging in London. I was brought up there( 20 mins from Charing Cross by train) but don't really feel anything like that. Our family on my father's side can be traced way back in London ( pre 16th century) Maybe there is something in the DNA after all?

[Guest]

I like to think of it as what someone once described as 'ancestral memory,' which I take to mean an innate connection with the land, an intuitive feeling of belonging in that environment. During my last trip home I caught the train up north from Euston on a beautiful mid-summer's night. As the train left London for the Hertfordshire countryside I felt comforted by the familiarity of the soft, rolling landscape and it's gentle contours. It was captivating and inviting in direct contrast to Australia's countryside which I often find stark and to an extent, threatening. That doesn't necessarily make it ugly, it's just that it carries no appeal for me and therefore I have no desire to immerse myself in it. But give me Oaks and Sycamores, hedgerows and winding country lanes and I'm a man totally at one with the space around him. :smile:

[dxboz]

I have lived in Australia for many years but everytime I go back to Scotland I go to the castle beside where I lived and touch the walls and feel 'home' - first thing I do when I get back - I just connect - I still call it home - I do feel it is part of me and I feel the connection with all my ancestors

[Wa7]

It's strange isn't it, the feelings you get when you get to where you are heading. I can't really describe my feelings other than a sense of realism straight away upon landing in the uk on my holidays back there.

[ramot]

Really interesting thread, does any one know why some of us feel so differently to others?

i feel almost no connection to UK when I land or when I am there. I am only there to visit my son and grand children, but I am a born and bred Brit. sad to leave family and friends when I leave, but not the country.

Yet when I get on the Bruce Highway I know I am home.

Lots of people appear to yearn for their home land when they get older, but I am in my 70's and wouldn't go back if my son wasn't there.

Does it make a difference in most cases if you lived your life mostly in one place before you left UK? because I have moved all my life, so don't associate my childhood with any particular place?

 

still doesn't explain though why some of us feel so at home in another country.

[bristolman]

I don't think it can be explained really. When we would visit Geelong, where I grew up, there was no feeling of belonging and it just felt like somewhere we used to live. It's like some love the beach and others can't stand it, we are all wired differently. I have never felt more at home than when I am in England even though I left as a baby. It's impossible to explain.

[Marisawright]

Really interesting thread, does any one know why some of us feel so differently to others?

i feel almost no connection to UK when I land or when I am there. I am only there to visit my son and grand children, but I am a born and bred Brit. sad to leave family and friends when I leave, but not the country.

Yet when I get on the Bruce Highway I know I am home.

 

 

I don't know - someone mentioned genetic memory but I don't think it can be that, either. Like you, I don't get any kind of warm fuzzy feeling when I arrive anywhere in the UK. But I do remember getting that feeling when I first arrived in Sydney - and none of my family has any connection with Australia at all, except for one auntie.

[Entangled]

Thanks for this - I will try to get this book.