This Land is Mine………
When I was 16 years old, three years after we arrived as immigrants to Australia, something started to change in me. Things do in adolescence. Gerry and The Pacemakers brought out their song ‘Ferry Across the Mersey’. I can remember singing my heart out along with the words, but one day, when we got to …’ because this land’s the place I love’, I burst into tears.
I can remember at 11, when the boat left Land’s End on our way to Australia, I felt an awful sinking feeling as I stood on deck, watching the only landmass I had ever know drift inexorably out of my reach. I didn’t realise it was grief, but I knew life was changing and it had something to do with leaving behind what I had known. That day at 16 I knew what it was, Australia was so different to anything I had experienced before. I didn’t fit in the way I was. I was pale, not tanned, I spoke funny, and was shy. I didn’t know how to be an Australian. I did try, giving myself third degree sunburn, to try and tan the lily whiteness that everyone thought was so funny. I developed an Aussie twang, and it too, was not enough. Somehow my mouth would not behave when it pronounced ‘dance’ and ‘France’. It still doesn’t. I just live somewhere that it doesn’t sound funny anymore. In Queensland, at that time, it was a sign of a ‘bloody POM’.
So, when I heard the love of country coming from the mouths of British pop stars, the floodgates opened. It didn’t matter that they were talking about Liverpool, and I was a Londoner. It was about ‘over there’. At the same time another song was out that spoke to me of the same longing of a different people for their homeland. That song you can hear by linking to the YouTube below. It was the theme from the popular film of the time, Exodus, about the returning of the Jewish people to Israel after their apocalyptic experience in the war. I could resound.
But something else started to happen in me. I kept having nightmares of being crammed into ovens, waking up unable to breath. One night, I found myself singing the soundtrack of Exodus, and for some reason my breathing eased. From then on, my obsession with all things Jewish began.
My heart bled for them. The horror they had endured not only in the war, but for all the generations before, driven from town to town, vilified, killed, and beaten. Their strength was the culture that held them together, at each Passover, where they intoned “Next year Jerusalem”. In 1947, that time had come. In that same year I was born. More about that later. It was no wonder to me that they were using anything they could to get the hell out of Europe and make next year, this year. I wanted to help. I also had this undeniable urge to have a Star of David tattooed on my wrist. But at sixteen, you know, you grow out of things. Except I didn’t.
In 1967 I was preparing to go on my big OE. As you do. My best friend Lex, and I were planning a trip to the U.S. via Britain. It was about the time that the 6-Day War broke out between Israel and Palestine, so I wanted to go and live there on a Kibbutz and do my part. Lex didn’t want to go into a war zone, and as she was the first female love of my life (though she didn’t know it), I wouldn’t go without her. As a compensation she bought me a Mogen Dovid (Star of David) to hang around my neck. I wore that star for 14 years. Instead, I spent quality time renewing my acquaintance with my land of birth, finding the acceptance and energetic compatibility that I had so long sought.
I lived for 6.5 years in Britain, connecting to her soul and my ancestors within and amongst her, finding myself. My spirituality was stirred from being there and something awakened that I don’t believe would have if I hadn’t taken that route. While I wore my star, retaining my support of the Israeli people’s right to a homeland, I had found my own. For many years that followed, even though I returned to Australia (again due to the fact that Lex could no longer continue to live in Britain) my spiritual ties to Britain were, and remain, core within me. I had found myself.
So it was with some consternation that I fell in love with New Zealand on a holiday here in 1990. I felt the land call to me, not letting me go until I chose to move here. I am sure I have told that story somewhere in all my writing, so I won’t go into it again here, but I was very confused. In a session with a therapist that I needed at the time, I heard my inner wisdom tell me that England was my Mother, and New Zealand was my Lover. That we inevitably leave one to cleave to the other. However, we never lose our connection to the Mother as it is in our DNA. It was indeed a young Māori woman in Australia who told me that if she, the land, was calling me, I had to go.
Fast forward to 2023 when the Gazan people are trying to stay alive while the Israeli government are demonising them and trying to wipe them out. To begin with I had split loyalties. I didn’t like what was happening to the Gazans, but I understood the Israeli psychological need for their land. Their land! Hang on. What about the Gazans land, who have been there all along? When does it become a good thing to drive a people into the sea in order to own the land they live on? When did this start to be OK? Well 12,500 years ago actually. That's when the first smart-Alec put a fence around a piece of land and everything on it and labelled it ‘mine’, making way for colonialism on a grand scale. Colonialism couldn’t exist with out the concept of being able to ‘own’ something.
The song that started this journey for me is reproduced in the wee YouTube I have given you the link to. When you have finished reading this post, please watch it. It’s not long but it describes visually what I never could with words alone. Because every single indigenous group that has been driven of and been replaced, either partially or wholly, by others could sing it with feeling. “This Land is Mine! God gave this Land to Me. If I must fight, I’ll fight to make this land my Home”. Māori people, Aboriginal and Torris Strait Islanders, Native Americans, Celts, Irish, Scottish people from Cornwall, the indigenous peoples of South America, all who have been displaced by people that wanted to own the land they lived on.
Well here the rub! Owning anything, especially land, is an illusion created by the first fence builder. Ever since, we have deludedly fought to gain and retain what was never ours in the first place. Like the Gypsy peoples understanding, we borrow it for a while, with the understanding that we will co-operate with it while we are there. And that is all people, all things, because WE belong to HER not the other way around. The Earth can shake us off any time she wants, and right now we are really pushing the envelope with our wanting to own more and more. This land is not mine. Neither is Britain, though she caretakes the bones of generations of my ancestors for me. I belong to the Land, so do you. There is a Māori whakatauki (saying):
“From the Mountains to the Sea, I am the land, and the land is me.”
Now ain’t that the truth: wherever you are.
Here’s the link to the YouTube. Please watch it.