PORTRAIT: Lincoln Vaz ...
WHERE
THE
SOUL
LIVES
Is Finding Home The Greatest Adventure?
"
Every time I look at the shape of the Australian land-
mass a momentary smile flashes across my face,”
grins Lincoln Vaz, a New Zealander who recent fin-
ished an 85-day ride around Australia.
“It’s everything between deeply profound, and re-
markably unexceptional. A person, place, sound,
smell. It says, ‘G’day mate’ in a servo attendants voice.”
Lincoln’s adventure started as a simple ride without
too many plans, to go with the flow, to see sights and visit
towns. It became so much more as he discovered not only
Australia but also what it means to call a place home.
“As human beings, the definition of ‘home’ must extend
further than the physical and physiological comforts,”
Lincoln started to explain. “We’re emotionally and men-
tally far more complicated than our distant cousins, so it’s
a bit more than an address when one discusses home.”
Lincoln points out that he discovered one’s home is
much more than a structure, it encompasses mental and
emotional support; filled with love, warmth, comfort and
memories. It’s a spiritual place that needs no walls, just a
connection between being and human being.
“I’ve lived an increasingly semi-nomadic life over the last
10 years. No single place has ever quite felt like home,” he
went on, explaining that he has forced himself to believe
that home is where he lays his head each night. He believes
it’s worked quite well.
During his ride around Australia, Lincoln says he slept
in numerous places including; strangers’ houses, hostels,
gravel piles, shipping containers, beaches and even a mud-
dy patch mixed with ‘cow shit’. He looked forward to a
place to rest each night, to take in the day, to recover.
“But none of those places were home,” he’s quick to point
out. “I never missed the place I was in the night before.”
Continually he found himself longing for a physical
place yet couldn’t quite put his finger on why this feeling
had manifested during this ride around the continent.
“Never in my life have I looked forward to, and long to
be at a physical place,” he smiled shyly. “Somewhere I fore-
see emotional needs being amply met.”
He points out that perhaps it is something spiritu-
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