Coming home again: why we still call the Hawkesbury home

Going on excursions with other schools, the students from the city always looked cooler to me - taller, even.  

After finishing year 10 at Colo High School I enrolled in a city school and travelled in on the train every day. After that, I went to a city university, got a city job, found some city flatmates and moved out.

I made new friends, was given job opportunities, and had numerous conversations with people trying to explain exactly where Bowen Mountain was.

“Ohhhhh, the Blue Mountains! How beautiful!” they’d say.

“No, the Hawkesbury - out past Richmond,” I’d reply.

They’d seem slightly disappointed.

After I moved, my dad would joke, “Why don’t you come back home and live in your old room and work at the Hawkesbury Gazette!” And I’d say, “Yeh, right Dad!”

I wasn’t to know that these jokes would set in motion a chain of events which would turn my scoffing into a karmic reality. Furthermore, that I would actually end up liking it here.

Or maybe, unconsciously, I did want to move home. Who’s to say? My childhood here was tops - it was only when I got older that I started wanting… more.

Either way, the pantry was always better-stocked at my parents’ house, so I didn’t entirely balk at the reality that - after 14 years of being independent - I had no choice but to move home again.

Things had taken a turn for the worse in the city, you see, and I thought a little R&R time at home would help me sort things out.

At first, I travelled into the city at every opportunity. I was freelancing at the time, so I wasn’t stuck on a work schedule and had time to travel in order to socialise with my city friends.

I imagined myself a character in one of those American movies, moving back to her small hometown after years away.

People were friendlier, traffic was lighter, supermarket lines were shorter. But still, whenever I would go to the local supermarket and see people from high school, I’d ignore them.  

I thought I was better. The same old people seemed to be doing the same old things - the only difference being that they were older. I was older, and it didn’t take long for me to start feeling stuck.

Two-and-a-half years later, I was still living at my parents’ place, and had begun to spend most of my time hiding in the downstairs area where I now lived.

When Mum and Dad announced they were renovating that area and I’d have to move back upstairs into my old room for a little while, I was horrified.

Shortly afterwards, I landed a part-time job as a reporter at the Hawkesbury Gazette. And you know what? I liked it.

It’s funny how things work out.

Narelle Barnes was in my older brother’s year at high school. Like me, she moved away, then moved back again fairly recently.

Now 40, she has her own place in North Richmond, and couldn’t be happier. She loved growing up here, and never felt that ‘cringe-factor’ of being associated with The West.

“We had horses and cow, dogs, puppies and chooks - it was an ideal environment for growing up so I didn’t long for anything during my childhood,” she told me.

“We spent days exploring through the bush, riding horses on tracks and swimming in dams - we had space and a sense of freedom that I now know city kids don’t have.”

Narelle grew up in Grose Vale with her family, and was schooled at Grose View Public School, then St Paul’s Grammar School. She moved to the Eastern Suburbs soon after finishing her HSC.

“I was ready to explore and grow. I have always loved change and adventure - I had a desire to learn and experience life in the city, new friends, diverse cultures and people,” she said.

Narelle moved around to Seaforth, Vaucluse, Marrickville, Coogee and Melbourne, before deciding to move back in February this year.

“The main reason for moving back was to simplify my life, be closer to my family and have the luxury of more space and a slower lifestyle so I could start my own business,” she said.

Narelle runs Evolution To Equilibria, an executive coaching business. In her free time, she still spends as much time as possible outdoors, living a healthy lifestyle.

“The Lookout in the National Park at the end of Cabbage Tree Road is one of my favourite places in the world. I take all my city and overseas visitors there,” she said.

She also frequents the Cougar Dome, at the home ground for the Colo Cougars Soccer Club on Inalls Lane.

“I watch my brothers play in their local soccer team, a family tradition that’s continued on and off now for 30 years,” she said.

Lisa Pattison is a 33-year-old Kurrajong resident, who was one year below me at school. She grew up with her family in Grose Wold, then moved to the city when she was 21.

“I wanted to experience what I thought at the time was a better, more interesting world,” she said.

“I was bored of the Hawkesbury, there was nothing in the area to occupy late teens and early twenties of an evening, my brother had moved to the city, and I found myself drawn to city life, it's fast pace, the amount of different places to enjoy, and the different people you could meet.”

Like me, Lisa did feel a certain cringe-factor about where she’d grown up.

“A lot of people I met from the city, especially those from the Eastern Suburbs, didn't even know where the Hawkesbury was and sometimes looked at me as though I was from another planet,” she said.

“Or, they looked down on me. My ‘westy’ fashion and hair colour may have also raised a few ‘city folk snob’ eyebrows!

“Years on, I floated back down to earth and now, feel sorry for these people. The ones who judged me for being from the The West but had never actually been here themselves. Let’s just say, now I boast proudly about growing up here and coming back. I frequently refer to the Hawkesbury as God’s Country.”

Lisa now lives with her partner and daughter in Kurrajong Village. Though her parents have since moved to Nelson Bay, she still feels just as ‘at home’ here as she did when she was growing up.

“Every time I visited the Hawkesbury to catch up with family or old friends, as I drove toward the North Richmond Bridge, the Polo fields and paddocks on either side of me, and the mountains ahead of me, it was as though a feeling of warmth and safety washed over me. I would drive past my old home and tear-up,” she said.

“After eight years on the North Shore of Sydney and a further four years in South West Sydney, I couldn't decide where I wanted to live. One day I said to myself, ‘what the hell! I'll just have a quick look at Kurrajong’ and I fell  in love with a house in Kurrajong Village, and moved in two weeks later.

“I now feel more at home than anywhere I have lived in the past 12 years. I never imagined I would feel this way.

“The beauty the Hawkesbury holds and the kindness of the local people is not something you take notice of as a child or teenager, or at least I didn't.”

“I can remember longing to be elsewhere a lot of the time. The city or the beach. Always thinking ‘the grass is greener’ - especially as a teenager. Looking back, I can now say with great pride that I had one of the best childhoods a person could hope for.”