I’ve talked in previous blogs about how my connection to my country has evolved, in sudden flashes and slow trickles. Part of that, for me, has been finding out where my ancestors came from, and when they arrived in Australia. I’m not Indigenous, and while I envy the history and connection Indigenous people have to Australia, and think it an awe-inspiring thing, it’s not my history, nor my connection. I’ve had to find and construct those for myself. 

Turns out that my family, on both of my parents’ lines, comes from Cornwall. This was pretty exciting for me since, like 98% of the known Western world, I’ve long felt drawn to Celtic mythology and history. (I like to imagine there’s a little bit of Boudicca-style blood in my veins.)

Earlier this year, before I realised the strength of my connection to Cornwall, I went to the Cornish Festival in Ballarat and listened to the bards singing and speaking Cornish, and felt something that I can’t quite put into words. Maybe it was the result of an over-fanciful imagination, and a longing for something more, but I felt rather as if someone was playing a cello deep in my chest; a kind of resonance that was new to me. Later, after I’d done a bit of family research, it made more sense.

We came here in the 1860s – there are records of the ships, and so forth – and scattered ourselves around Bendigo (when it was still Sandhurst), Melbourne, South Australia, and East Gippsland. 

I’ve often been scathing of those Americans who claim to be Irish because eight generations back they had an aunt from Galway. But I suppose Americans must feel a similar sense of being grafted-on to a country that’s not really theirs, and a similar longing for some kind of connection to that continuity of history.

I think truth is the key to many things, not least one’s own identity. Bizarrely, I feel more Australian – and more at home in Ballarat – now that I know where I’m from. I have a strange urge to start writing stories intertwining Cornish legends with Australian landscapes.

Politicians talk about Australia’s defining trait being that we’re a nation of multiculturalism, so much so that it’s become a cliche. I’ve wondered what it really means, and doubted its truth, because to all intents and purposes I’m pure Aussie: white anglo middle class woman living in a predominantly white anglo middle class regional city. But that’s my privilege showing through, right there, because the truth is, for the majority of us there’s no such thing as ‘pure Aussie’; we’re most of us mixes and muddles of different histories and mythologies and lands.

So where are you from? What’s in your mix? And how strong is your connection to the land of your ancestors?