Patriot Realm

Before the Cloud, before memory sticks and streaming services, we passed stories the old-fashioned way.

Around kitchen tables. On verandahs. By the campfire.

One voice, one story, and a few wide-eyed kids leaning in. That’s how memories lived. That’s how history stayed alive -  not written in textbooks, but woven into families.

Here, in this little online corner we call home - part pub, part postcard, part old bush telegraph -  we still hear those voices. The ones who say “I remember when…” and really do.

Before The Voice became a political battleground, we had a voice too. It wasn’t perfect, it wasn’t polished, but it was ours. It was Australian. And it mattered.

We’re joined by contributors who are in their 90s now. They’ve lived through wars, blackouts, first computers, lost loves, first loves, only loves, and the long march of change. They don’t post for attention. They post because they remember. And remembering matters.

Not just for themselves, but for us.

We used to run a regular Saturday feature called “I Remember When…”. Simple stories -  camping as kids, building billycarts, riding in the back of utes without a seatbelt. Nothing earth-shattering. But they stirred something. Readers would respond with their own memories -  some joyful, some bittersweet -  and for a moment, we all remembered together.

Somewhere along the way in our pathway to modern life we started to lose the thread. Families spread out. Grandparents moved into homes, or lived entire lives apart from their grandkids. The great storytellers ...  the ones who could hold a child captive with a single “Well now, let me tell you what happened…” .... are fading from the kitchen tables and backyards where they once reigned.

And it shows.

We ask ourselves why younger generations seem disconnected, impatient, sometimes unmoored. But how can they know the value of age if they never spend time with the aged? How can they respect experience if it’s boxed up in facilities and forgotten birthdays, or reduced to a brief FaceTime or Whatsapp once a year?

We talk with reverence about Indigenous Dreamtime -   stories passed through songlines and generations -  yet we are letting our own memory-keepers disappear without a word. But make no mistake: we have a Dreamtime too. It may be wrapped in kitchen conversations and chats around a family dining table instead of ochre and ash, but it is no less sacred.

I think of my own great grandfather. He was blind by the time I came along. I was only five. But he would sit on the verandah and gaze out at the nothingness -  and see everything. He would speak of things that happened fifty years earlier, and you knew he was back there, in his mind. Watching it unfold. Living it again. And I, small and wide-eyed, lived it too. Because someone told me the story.

He told me about serving in the Boer War. He spoke of placing a tarantula and a scorpion in a biscuit tin and betting on which one would emerge victorious. Was it true? Who knows. Who cares. I was a child, and he was a time traveler. I gasped with wonder. That’s what mattered.

I remember him being well looked after, tidy and neatly dressed. Someone obviously cared for him and about him. Probably his daughter and later his son. My brother remembers his stories and being captivated by them. A gentle soul who had the joy of children who listened..... today, my daughters, now in the fifth decade of life, must think about my Dad in the same way.... the man who told stories and created magic with words and the lilt of a gentle voice. My Dad had a manx accent and his voice still echoes when we mimic him on family get togethers... and we smile and  laugh and remember. 

Those memories last a lifetime.

That moment ..  that telling....  is not a minor thing. It’s not just nostalgia. It is legacy. It is humanity.

And computers can’t do it. Only people can.

We talk often these days about honouring stories,  about giving voice to memory, identity, culture. But we must tread carefully if we begin to suggest that some stories are sacred while others are disposable. That some memories are Dreamtime, while others are just dreams.

Because memory does not belong to one group. It belongs to all of us.

The tale of a child learning to swim in a rainwater tank, or a man escaping war through jungle vines, or a blind great-grandfather recounting a battle with scorpions and tarantulas from a biscuit tin... these are our Dreamings too. They are not footnotes. They are foundations.

If we silence those voices, or leave them behind in aged care rooms and forgotten letters, then we are not becoming more inclusive...we are becoming poorer.

Maybe all memories should be equal. Not some more equal than others.

Because when we forget the everyday Australians who built the roads, raised the kids, fought the wars, and sat quietly telling stories on verandahs... we lose the thread of who we are.

And in the end, it’s not about history books or political platforms.

It’s about honour.It’s about humanity.And it’s about remembering, together.

You see, when those stories go quiet, so does something essential in us all.

And when we listen,  really listen, we don’t just learn where we came from. We remember who we are.

In the end, it’s not the type of story that matters. It’s that the stories are told at all.

Whether it’s the Rainbow Serpent or an old man on a weathered verandah, what matters is that someone leans in to listen, and someone takes the time to speak. That something of who we were is passed on to who we might become.

But we must never elevate one voice or memory above another.

Because when a nation starts to edit its memory, to favour one story and forget the rest, something vital is lost. And that must never happen.

Because that would mean the stories didn’t matter. And I believe all stories matter.

Even mine.