The Beauty of Coming Home

 

I initially began this project thinking that I would focus on the house that I currently reside in during the week while I attend Uni. Since starting my media course at RMIT, I have been living at a house in Elwood with my dad. Going from living at farms and beaches on the Mornington Peninsula, moving to the city was an incredibly daunting and pretty drastic change to begin with.

 

I wasn’t used to the traffic, the fast pace, the trains and trams, or the crazy people I would encounter on a daily basis. But over the past few months I’ve completely embraced this different sort of life, and have since learnt to love the culture and craziness of Melbourne. But no matter how much I enjoy the excitement and thrill of the city, there is just something so magical about coming home to Point Leo on the weekends.

 

My house here is the one I have loved and lived in my whole teenage years. Point Leo is my special place, and I am seriously in love with every little element of it’s existence. From the lush green wattles to the long and idyllic stretch of sandy beaches. Driving home through the pine trees on the long and windy roads each Friday night, I always feel the most beautiful wave of escape and peace wash over me.

 

Each Image, sound, or film I have included is my attempt at communicating the beauty, warmth, happiness, and joy I feel for the place I call home. I focused on capturing photographs that were bright, welcoming, and held a sense of meaning and significance to me. All the little things that make a place so special.

 

I think the main thing that I discovered as I set about photographing and recording sights and sounds around the place, was that it wasn’t really the building itself that meant so much to me. It was not the walls and floors or pieces of furniture that I had become so fondly attached to. Yes I do love my bed and that big white blanket. Aswell as my books, shells, and crystal collections. But at the end of the day, these are merely just objects and things, and things will always come and go. They exist and then they disintegrate, and they’re demise is rarely a significant or heart felt event.

 

What will always and forever draw me back home is my family. All the people that I love so much. I think it’s really comforting to know that no matter where we end up or where each of us go, when we all eventually come back together, that will be home. The memories, laughter, arguments, joy, pain, and the lessons we have all learnt side by side. I have grown as a person inside this place, but really it has nothing to do with the building itself, and instead everything to do with the people who were inside it. My Mum, my Brothers, my Step Dad, my Pets, my Boyfriend, my Friends.

 

Without them this house that to me is full of so much life and love and memory and meaning, would simply just be an assortment of bricks, timber and roofing. Just any other place on any other street in any other town.

 

So I will forever be grateful for the childhood I had, the lessons I got to learn, the memories I was able to create, and the people I was blessed to share that time with. That’s what reminds me of home, that’s what makes coming back here so special for me.