After coming out of an excruciating period of lockdown in Australia, the last thing I should be craving is the idea of ‘home’. But for weeks, I have been battling a kind of homesickness. These aren’t daydreams of where I grew up or even thoughts of old abodes. Instead, I’ve been yearning for grey, rainy UK — often to the point of heartache.
Two years ago, I returned to Australia after working overseas for the first time. I worked as a journalist for one of the major suppliers of regional news in the UK in 2017. When I said yes to the job, I’d felt the light-headedness of going on a quest.
Like the protagonist in a Tolkien novel, I packed my bags and braced myself for a trip into the unknown. I still remember the excitement, anticipation and nervousness the moment I stepped off the plane. I’d promised myself I would overcome any obstacles with grit and high spirits.
Working and travelling solo had turned me into a different person. I remember the time when I rushed to a stand-off between an armed man and police officers in Brighton, determined to do my job well and prove myself a cub journalist. I was more outgoing, confident and resilient than I ever was back ‘home’. In the quaint British towns and cities, I had slowly built a newer, bolder version of myself. Before I knew it, the UK had turned into a training ground for adulthood, and not long after — my second home.
I was more outgoing, confident and resilient than I ever was back ‘home’.
Growing up, I thought the notion of home was simple: a place of nearness, familiarity and comfort. Then in lockdown, I found myself plagued with fernweh, or farsickness. The word was coined by German nobleman, Hermann Ludwig Heinrich von Pϋckler-Muskau, who was an avid traveller. Feeling farsickness means you are homesick for a distant place — typically the country you lived in for a period of time and where you have experienced significant changes.
In the past few months, anything could trigger me into a state of fernweh. When I go for a walk on a cloudy day, I think about my life in Essex and Sussex. When I go for a stroll under hazy sunshine, I recall my first trip to Hastings and if I am eating a scone, I remember my visit to Lewes where I spent an idle afternoon sitting at Southover Grange Gardens. I watch Would I Lie To You? Antiques Roadshow, Keeping Up Appearances and obsessively follow UK news to feel connected to that second home.
I miss the life of being that inquisitive expat and the thrill of getting to know a different country. It’s not your regular post-holiday blues — those fleeting pangs of nostalgia from having fun abroad. Instead, fernweh is missing an actual life you had built elsewhere, a place where you experienced the highs and lows and where you matured.
Fernweh is missing an actual life you had built elsewhere, a place where you experienced the highs and lows
In lockdown, I often found myself feeling guilty about the farsickness — does anyone really have the right to long for life elsewhere, when there are thousands of Australians stuck overseas, desperate to come back home?
It took a while to make peace with fernweh. Our second home — whether it’s an ancestral or self-made one — shouldn’t just be a mere aching memory, and I have learnt to turn it into a source of motivation. When I am down, I recall the things I achieved while I was a fish out of water. How I found more courage than I ever thought I would.
Now, I try to draw strength from my nostalgia. If nothing else, living abroad has given me the resilience I needed to get through some of the most difficult, isolating months. There’s no written rule that everyone can only feel “at home” to one place, so rather than averting the feeling of fernweh — I choose to embrace it.
