Why do we live where we live?

I sometimes think about where people choose to live and why. I appreciate that for many people, there is no conscious choice at all.

Families and individuals locate where they are because it has ever been thus. Their family 'home' is there - they are carrying on the family tradition and even continuing to live in the 'family home'. When I hear about strife in a country - wars and abuse that has been ongoing for many, many years, I ask 'why do you stay, why don't you move somewhere else?'

Well of course, we identify ourselves by where we live. In my profile blurb, I start by positioning myself as an Australian. Australia is an old country with a very long indigenous history – and a very short non-Indigenous history.

My location here (Oz) is as a result of wars in Europe. My parents (as younger people) were fortunate to be able to immigrate to Australia with their parents and build {safe, productive} lives and ‘grow’ their family.

My parents came from Germany to live in Australia. My husband’s family came from Estonia. We are both our family’s first generation Aussies. There was a certain amount of ‘lack of choice’ in my family establishing themselves here. My parents and grandparents would have found relocating themselves to a country which didn’t speak their language, very difficult at times.

All around the world, people are wanting to and achieving their desire to relocate to another country – many people continue to come to our shores via rickety boats from war torn countries; I wish we could give them all a home. Developed countries offer a future for refugees, this is just not available to them in their homeland. So while I recognise that people move locations based on their safety and their well-being, this post is more about the CHOICE to live in a place other than that you grew up in.

My family and I have moved house a lot. In the past 29 years we have moved house (within Australia) 22 times! That’s a lot. I can imagine some of you thinking ‘what’s with that?’ Many of you may have lived in the same house in the same town in the same country your entire life. That’s definitely not something I am familiar with!

While my home movement sounds gypsy-like, it really sounds worse than it’s been. For many years we rented properties so our kids could grow up in nice areas (where we wouldn’t have been able to afford to buy a home). Rentals often sell – tenant out/new owner in; Other issues included, leases unable to be extended; rental increases; owner not keeping their side of the deal etc

We also have moved because of new jobs – in other states. We used to joke with family that we couldn’t afford to travel around our country, so we moved house instead. We have lived in Brisbane, Ipswich, Canberra, Hall (ACT), Sydney, Lismore – check them out on a map of Australia.

Who knows whether this moving has had a detrimental effect on our kids? Some of them would say yes and others, no. Maybe by saying that one lives in Hong Kong (previously Tokyo for 11 years); one Lives in Sydney, one lives in Christchurch, New Zealand and one lives here in Brisbane, you get the idea about how we like to live in interesting places. All our kids have moved house – individually and with their partners, many times!

So, we are moving - we know not where. It is totally dependent on how much we get for our present home. We want to have no mortgage.

As each day goes by, our plans/dreams change. Watch this space!