Introduction
17/01/00
Home has always been a word that held almost religious significance. An Italian immigrant, my
father conjured images of a place that was aesthetically rich, morally intact and beautifully
preserved. Little wonder that from childhood I began to set goals to visit and live, at least
temporarily, in this place of flowing congeniality and hospitality. A Nirvana where at last, as an
ethnic Australian caught between two cultures, I would be regarded as one who belonged without
having to survive the intricate rites of passage of the 1970 Brisbane teenager’s world. A world that
due to my diverse home influence, was neither second nature nor easy to negotiate.
The home I searched for was not miraculously found in my parents’ paese Castignano, Ascoli
Piceno, Italy. Nor was it to be found where my first cousins lived, a seaside resort on the
Adriatic Coast, not unlike the place I call home now, Noosa, Queensland. I have lived and
worked in many spectacular places, mostly by the ocean; always as the outsider, the foreigner, the
colonial granted time to sojourn and experience. I found home only when I found, as described
in that infamous movie Midnight Express which I had rented to scare my brother and I on the eve
of our overseas adventure, sanctuary, that place of inner peace. Home is the place where you are
able to hold your life’s journey in the palm of your hand and gazing on it – experience
fulfillment.
Home never meant to me what it does now – we lie awake in hospital, my son and I and we
visualize the bricks and mortar that mold our family nest. On the children’s cancer ward, home
can mean down to the Cancer Society accommodation at the bottom of the street and outside of
the hospital, but home, home – that’s sanctuary – that’s your real home and your real bed. At
home, we gaze out upon the waters of the Coral Sea and know how blessed we are to live in
such a place: where the ocean changes every day; and our perspective on the world, reaches to
the horizon; and we fantasize about the day in 2006 when we can say to each other with great
confidence, Kial is recovered.