Recently, Fiona Kotvojs shared a very interesting observation when she and I were down at the Folk Festival selling thousands of sausages and steak sandwiches for the Cobargo Fire Brigade (as you do when you’re a vegetarian who feels guilty for not attending training). She started to count down all the second and third generation people who grew up, left and have now returned to call Diggies home. The list is impressive.

Glen remembers picking up rocks as a child to clear the paddocks on the amazing land he now farms. Fiona was raised from birth at Wyoming, and returned to build a home with a view with her husband Alan after some years away. My neighbour, dear friend and podcast creator genius Jake returned to buy the house his parents built. My other neighbour Sky makes a gorgeous garden near her mum Susy, and Eva has also recently returned. Another multigenerational family is in residence and across the road from them lives Daniel, who grew up further up the road! Next door to Daniel’s parents’ place lives Suzannah who has returned to live with her father. Bruce built a place next door to where he grew up, and his daughter has returned to live in the old church. Jimmy lives near his dad Stan, and Heather has returned to run the nursery, started by her mother Merryn, that she has been kicking around in since she was a small sapling herself.

That’s eleven households on our road, and that’s not counting the many kids, like Jen’s and Sticky’s, who come and camp out for a while between projects and travel.

What strikes me is how quietly this happens. Children grow up here, head out into the wider world (as you must) and then, somehow, the compass swings back. Perhaps it’s the smell of the bush after rain, the particular bend in the road where you first rode a bike or the memory of stones lifted from paddocks by small hands. Whatever it is, something holds the thread.

Some places people simply move to. Others grow their people slowly over generations and, with remarkable patience, wait for them to come home and put down roots again.

The recent Landcare event on dingos, cats and weeds out at Diggies was a major success. Thanks Sally Anne! Photo credit Flick Ruby

Flick Ruby