‘When we first came here, I feared we’d made a mistake’

We expect our children to grow up and move away from home and find a place for themselves in the world. And our two both did this, one living and working in Berlin, the other returning to Melbourne from the UK and creating his own family with his partner. I left home at 15, then came alone to Australia at 16, never to return to my family, except for brief visits.

Credit: Simon Letch

Twenty-two years ago, my wife, Stephanie, and I moved from Port Melbourne to the town of Castlemaine, situated in the country of the Dja Dja Wurrung people, who are still here and very present to us. At that time, our son was planning an extended visit to Europe with his partner, and our daughter, who was 11, was finishing primary school and would be needing a new school the following year.

The moment felt right for us to make the move we’d been yearning for for some time. When people ask our son these days how old he was when he left home, he says, “I didn’t leave home. Mum and Dad left home and took my sister with them.”

A few days after we moved into our new place in Castlemaine, our daughter asked us, “Where’s the beach?” She had spent her childhood in Port Melbourne, two minutes from the beach, taking cold, windy walks in winter and diving into cooling waves with her friends over the long, hot summers. For her 11th birthday, she’d organised a beach party, playing her own mix-tapes and dancing with her friends, passers-by joining in and making an event of it.

After Port, Castlemaine was quiet, maybe just a bit too quiet, and definitely far too monocultural. But we had a garden and four walls not touching the neighbours’ places and I could write in my new study and Stephanie was close enough to commute to work along the freeway or by train.

On the day Kate turned 18, she moved out of home and went to live by the beach in St Kilda. And when she was 21, she bought a one-way ticket to Berlin, where she soon became a successful and popular DJ.

Steph and I visited Berlin many times, and saw her playing in dark, grungy clubs. For 11 years, she lived in Friedrichshain, near the River Spree, getting about by bicycle and U-Bahn. She’d often fly home to visit in our summer, bemoaning the long Berlin winters.

Over the past few years, she’d noticed Castlemaine changing. She found she was meeting people her own age here, photographers, business people, chefs, artists and musicians, who became friends. Then, three years ago, her brother, our son, and his young family left Melbourne and bought a small farm 20 minutes from us in a lovely, hidden location. They soon had cows, chickens, goats, their old cats and a kelpie pup. We now see our two grandchildren nearly every day during term time and frequently on weekends.

And this year, Kate returned to live in Castlemaine with her partner, a Frenchman from Bordeaux. Sitting in the sun with us here, drinking coffee in the morning, Kate describes Berlin to us as going the way of all major cities, with corporate investors moving in and kicking DJs out of the old warehouse clubs, building high-rises and shining, new shopping centres. She DJ’d at a new club recently where they were selling non-fungible tokens for thousands of dollars. That did it: she accepted that the magic of the old Berlin bubble had burst.

When we first came to Castlemaine, I feared we’d made a mistake. Castlemaine, I decided that first week, was an old people’s home.

When we first came to Castlemaine, I feared we’d made a mistake. The town would fall silent at 5pm when the shops closed and remained that way ’til morning. Except for the church bells, Sundays were also silent. The only sound in the evenings was of the bagpipe band practising its mournful dirges in the Botanic Gardens. Castlemaine, I decided that first week, was an old people’s home.

This year, 2022, I asked Kate and her partner, “When you come home to Australia later this year, will you live in Fitzroy or North Carlton?” Without a pause, they both said, “No, we’ll live in Castlemaine.” She is old enough now to reminisce with nostalgia about her adolescent years here – the frosty mornings, gum trees in the mist, lying on grass fragrant from the sun’s warmth, the melancholy call of black cockatoos flying over with stately grace.

Since we came to the town, young people have returned and brought with them the energies of youth in the arts and in business. In the evening now, after the shops close, another, younger Castlemaine comes to life. For a couple of young, cosmopolitan people with ambition and energy, the decision to live in Castlemaine rather than inner Melbourne makes complete sense. The town is ready for them now.

So both our children and their partners and families are once again living close by and sharing their lives with us on a daily basis. The reunion has been a wonderful, unplanned and unexpected enrichment of our lives. Here I am at last – and who would have imagined it? – surrounded by a loving family in my final years, after all.

Alex Miller’s latest novel, A Brief Affair (Allen & Unwin; $33), was published in November.

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