So.
He had been putting it off for so long he had managed to convince everybody, himself included, that it was never going to happen. But a felicitous and timely invitation, together with fortuitously available accommodation in the vicinity of the place, drew him out of whatever shell he had erected around himself, and he knew that it was time.
His researches uncovered the important information that the farm had been split up and sold off, to three different owners, identities unknown, since he parted with it, ten years ago. He found this knowledge distressing at first, almost as if somebody that he once knew had died unexpectedly. But, once assimilated, it actually made his decision to go back there easier. There was no more unfinished business, no half-severed ties. He could be a comfortable stranger.
Nevertheless, he had no idea what he might find there, and less idea how he would psychically handle whatever he did find.
They travelled due south, a direction they had never been before. An hour or so out of Canberra, the temperature briefly dropped below zero. At Bombala, the drinking fountain in the park, even though it was in direct sunshine, was covered with ice. They stopped for lunch in Cann River, which he had first visited in 1972, on Grand Final day, an unusually high-scoring affair between Carlton and Richmond, and which he last passed through in the May school holidays of 1979.
The mind does funny things. When they turned into the main street of Bairnsdale he remembered that this was where he had bought the cassette of Meat Loaf's "Bat Out Of Hell", many years ago. When they turned onto the road from Morwell to Mirboo North he thought of the lengths to which his father went to find a cure for his bad back. He remembered that they included acupuncture, and that nothing that he did really worked. When they went through Mirboo North he recalled going to Sue Williams's 21st birthday party at a restaurant there, and he wondered where she might be now. When they got into the hills around Leongatha, with their green paddocks dotted with Friesian and Jersey cows, he was home, in a way that Canberra will never be home, and yet at the same time his elation was tinged with the certain knowledge that this will never be his home again.
He spent time around Leongatha. He was surprised to discover that he had forgotten his way around its back streets. 84 McCartin Street has new front steps, and has lost its tree ferns, but otherwise looks just like the house he left for Melbourne 20 years ago.
He took the boys to visit their grandparents in their permanent home at the Meeniyan Cemetery. One of the boys discovered other Emmersons: it appears that persons unknown (but suspected) have had the graves of his father's parents (who died before he was born), and two or three other relatives, just names to him (although one of them he might vaguely recall being mentioned by his father in relation to a fatal boating mishap), relocated to a central part of the cemetery. He was aware that they had been buried outside the modern boundary of the cemetery but he had never been able to find their graves. He took the time to stand before the graves of his uncles Jack and Charlie, who had been such a presence in his childhood. He felt less emotional than he anticipated. He felt peaceful. Among friends.
Fish Creek. The town has undergone a renaissance as an artistic and latter-day hippie centre. It looks good. This made him happy. The board listing deceased members of the bowling club contains a number of names he didn't expect to see: a reminder of the time that has passed since he was a part of the life of the town.
He drove down the one and a half miles of potholed dirt road to the farm. He drove to the top of the hill, got out of the car, and listened. He listened to the silence. The silence, there, is a very big silence, and he had forgotten it. He had a curious sensation of travelling back in time, but of having travelled back to a universe that was not the one he left. It was undoubtedly the same place, but some things were not how he expected them to be. (If you have read the second book in Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy, you might think of Will taking Lyra to his Oxford (which is similar to, but different from, hers), and Lyra's surprise and confusion upon looking around: yes, I recognise this place, but where is this, and this, and this.) The house has been done up and hidden from the road by generous tree plantings. The dairy, which his father built with his own hands, and which carried sounds and smells of its own, is gone. A new wetland has been created. All the big, spooky old cypress trees have been cut down. They walked down the road that used to go to the dairy, and up the other side (via a straight stretch of road that wasn't there before) as far as he felt comfortable going. It is a public road now, but still he felt a little bit like a stalker. He pointed things out to the boys as they went; told them stories. He expected them to say "Yes, dad, can we get back in the car now?", but they were actually very attentive, very good. He took in the view. Like the silence, the view is very big. The sky goes on almost forever. It is a view he can see with his eyes closed, but it was nice to be able to see it with eyes open. Two wedge-tailed eagles circled the air currents far overhead. They, too, were a part of his childhood: eagles lived in a dead tree on a remote part of the property for many years, but they had been gone for a long time. He thought he heard them whispering, "Yes, you have come back. We have come back, too."
He realised that he had forgotten the sound your boots make as you walk over waterlogged ground. South Gippsland is a very wet place, and this is a very wet year. Canberra is a very dry place and has been in drought most of the time he has been living there. You do not hear water underfoot in Canberra. It is a lovely sound. He had been missing it, without even realising that he had been.
He knocked on some doors. He said hello to people he has not seen for a very long time. He was relieved to see that the years have been good to them. For some of them it is the first time they have met the boys (who were so patient, and so friendly, he was very proud of them. He was in their position once, when his father took him on something of a pilgrimage back to Malmsbury, his father's own childhood home, meeting "old" people and having no idea of who they were or what he was even doing there.)
He got to catch up, and this was the reason for his going back, with numerous relatives on his mother's side. They are entirely the nicest people you could ever wish to know, and on all of the available evidence this has rubbed off on the next generation.
And then it was over. The question of whether he will go back there again seems much smaller now. To have gone back after ten years, and seen that the farm, his dad's farm, is in good shape and in good hands, was something he needed to do. Now it has been done. It was okay. He was okay. (Although he wonders whether the appearance of silent but real tears numerous times while watching "Toy Story 3", a couple of days later, was some kind of emotional aftershock.)
Later, back home in Canberra, which somehow does now feel like home in a way that it didn't before he embarked on this journey, he sits down and smiles. He closes his eyes and sees the green, rolling Gippsland hills of the mind, hears the shucking sound of rain-sodden ground underfoot, the cows tearing grass from the ground, the sound of baby calves calling for their mothers, of milk tankers driving along the main road late at night. It is true what they say: you can never go home again. But you can go to some pretty nice places that just happen to feel like some kind of home, that may even have been home once, a long time ago. And you can be happy in the knowledge that they will always be there, and that enough of what you remember so fondly will always remain, so that, if you do go back there later on, sparks of memory will catch fire and rise up into a bright and warming flame.
