At the request of a friend of mine, I've been asked to revisit this blog in the hopes that being here, in this space, could teach me something. I've neglected this space of outward introspection for three years for many reasons, but I'm going to contribute the following.
So the thing about Leeton is that it is cyclical. We grew up here, all of us. Running through the palm lined streets, buying lollies at the corner stores and breathing the fresh country Australian air. As children, we swam at the local pool, we went to local schools, we lived in this town through the blazing summers and frozen winters, lining up for busses and huddling together under the art covered metal bus stops as the infrequent inland rains poured down.
As we grew up, we experienced our young lives through this town. We went to high school, we fought with out parents, we made friends, we lost friends, and we laughed and cried. The town holds for all of us the memories of our youth, good and bad.
As each of us escaped the pull of this tiny town for the freedom of the closest city in reach, we opened our minds and our world to the ideas of free education. It was important, we grew, we loved, we learned in Wagga, and it became our home.
But the foundations of our self, our core, the centre of who we are, comes from this place. This tiny frozen town in western New South Wales is our home. I don't know about you guys, but when people ask me where I'm from, I take a perverse pleasure in telling them it's Leeton. I know they don't know where it is, and when I say it's a small town, I see their minds eye picture a windswept shanty town with eighteen people, each on acres and acres of land, a farming community. I never correct that assumtion, for it changes their perception of me in ways I find interesting.
I can't help observing the interactions of the people of this town as I walk through the streets, and nostalgia is rife as I do. I know far fewer people here than I thought I did, though through my Grandmother, pretty much everyone knows me.
Life in this town goes around in circles. Everything we experienced growing up here is being experienced again by each new generation, and it makes you think. St. Joseph's, Parkview and Leeton Primary are all still active, and children still line up in the heat and the cold to get into classrooms, the same busses that took us to school still trundle around of a morning, reaching through the sleeping town to deliver these kids to their schools. Adults still line up at the end of the day in cars to pick their kids up, and the main street is still busiest as school finishes.
The streets have a certain timeless quality to them, that's for sure. Walking down the alleys that cross between the main roads of the town, everything looks exactly like it did twenty years ago, a snap shot of a time where life was easier. I've often complained Leeton isn't progressive enough, but it is so easy to remember moments of your life in a place where nothing changes. It's surreal and nostalgic at the same time.
One moment sticks out in my mind so far - I went to the trots on Wednesday night. Horrible evening, cold as anything I've experienced in five years, but as we walked through my Grandfather's old turf, passed the bar that still bares his name, we were greeted like family by the people that took his place. There have been four presidents of the showground since my grandfather, but we are life members of the place, and each one of these people knows us by name. Each greeted me warmly and told me how big or small I was when they last saw me. My Grandmother, though struggling to talk, was treated with great respect and each person patiently listened while she struggled out a greeting. And all around us were their children, young boys and girls who ran through the grounds as the horses raced their circles, laughing and ducking through the frost in the playground they had grown up in. That was me. They ran up and down the same stands I did, seemed to be playing the same games, were comfortable in the space in the same way I was. The connection I felt in that moment was difficult to describe.
Life in this town is cyclical. I suppose, in a sense, that's true of everywhere, but life in Leeton moves so slowly, it's like watching a remake of your life every time you come home, different actors, rebooted for the change in years, but still very much the same.
