Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau – The Land of My Fathers

I’ve noticed a change in myself lately. Not a huge one, but a change nonetheless. An intense wanderlust has overtaken me. I want to cash in all my worldly possessions and fly to the other side of the world forever (although I concede my worldly possessions would barely raise the airfare). Why?

I read a book.

Not a huge step, I know, but it was a book I found in the British History section of my local library while researching my Celtic ancestors (unfortunately the other book I picked up was of the wrong time period). What it was doing there, I don’t know, but I picked it up anyway. May as well give it a bash.

The book was about Wales, the homeland of my father. He emigrated to Australia when he was my age, seventeen, and has stayed here since. I started reading and once I managed the understand the fragrant prose, it was a good read. It managed to answer one of my questions (the Celts I’m descended from migrated into South Wales from the Iberian peninsula long before the Roman invasions) and raised many others, the first one being, what am I?

I don’t feel Australian at all, if there is any Australian culture to be felt. I have always felt a sense of not belonging, not fitting in. A short, tubby, pale-skinned, dark-haired girl doesn’t fit in a land full of tall, blonde, blue-eyed tanned beautiful people who live at the beach. I hate the beach. Hate sand, hate saltwater. I love forests, but unfortunately we just have sub-tropical rainforests which, beautiful as they are, doesn’t quite fit. I love mountains but I live on the flattest continent in the world. I always look forward to winter, I hate summer. I love rainy days. The incongruous Australian.

Wales has always intrigued me, because that’s where my father came from, a tiny country which no one knew anything about (I didn’t even know where it was until I was about eight). When I was growing up, he always had a strange hybrid accent and used a different vernacular to us. I was lucky enough when I was ten, nearly eleven, to go and visit England, Scotland and Wales, the land of my many fathers (I never knew until later that I also had big English and Scottish strains). I didn’t quite know what to make of it all, both because I was so young and because it was so different. Cardiff, where my father grew up, was quite disappointing to me, because it was a large urban area (I don’t know what I expected – a couple of villages in the mountains with lots of frolicking sheep, I suppose), but I visited my father’s old house and where he grew up. It was at night, unfortunately, so I couldn’t see it for what it was. Now I look back on it, Cardiff was beautiful and I loved its strange castle, although I unfortunately was only able to see it from the bus.

The next few days we weaved in and out of England and Wales on our way to North Wales. What I remember of it was mountains and valleys, green and grey with grass and stone, and the stone farmhouses and white dots of sheep. I have never seen so many sheep in my life, before or since. I remember going through the forests of Wye Valley, past small streams raging with snowmelt. I wished I could take a walk. It was a grey day and utterly beautiful. Wales is always more beautiful on a grey day, its natural lighting, I guess you could say. The town of Llangollen in the north won my heart, a beautiful place nestled in a valley with the requisite grey sky. The signs were bilingual, in a language that was unknown to me, and still is. It looked like the signmakers had made awful mistakes and got letters mixed up, taking out vowels willy-nilly. My father attempted to teach me the Welsh national anthem, since I was determined to learn a song in the language of my fathers (well, so I’m guessing. My traceable family has only been English-speaking, and one of my great-grandfathers is Irish. Go figure). I failed miserably in terms of pronunciation. Back to Sindarin for me.

I came back to Australia and went back to school, more obsessed with my love of America (until I found out how hard it was to get any chance of residency). The memories of Wales started to fade, as did the many beautiful things I saw. I was simply too young to appreciate it and the photos have long been mislaid. 2001, the year that changed my life forever, started to get me thinking more about my past and my heritage. My father told me a few things, about how my grandmother named me after a deified Arthurian queen in old Welsh and my Celtic ancestry, but that was it. My father, bless him, wasn’t too interested in being Welsh and couldn’t tell me anything else.

Now I’ve been learning everything I can about Wales and its culture. The more I find out, the more I want to go back. Unfortunately Australia doesn’t have a history I can relate to very well, and what European history it has isn’t very old. According to the book I borrowed, the Welsh have a temperament I can relate to – full of passion, haste and hot-headedness. I’m a cymraes (Welshwoman), whether I like it or not. My longing for Wales grows year by year, but unfortunately the terrible exchange rate prevents me from trying anything. It would be terrible if I hated it and I wanted to come home with my tail between my legs. That's the one thing I’m scared of – what if Wales doesn’t live up to my expectations? It’s one thing to visit, but another to live there. Unfortunately my relatives over there don’t know me from a bar of soap (come to think of it, my relatives over here don’t either) so I have no support. I would be totally alone.

My father didn’t like it much. All he’s really said about it was complaints about the bitter cold, the snow, the endless rain. Thankfully, it was fairly sunny there and didn’t rain once, although the wind nearly cut me to pieces. But I think I would like it, my father being a very big sun-worshipper (he loves 40-degree weather, insane man) and me hating the sun. There wouldn’t be much of a cultural difference, me growing up with British television and people all my life. But I’m still scared to take the leap into lush green fields, never ending drizzle, endless mountains, a beautiful but incomprehensible second language (which is on the rise, thankfully) and bleating sheep. I might one day, I might not. It all depends. But I’ll make sure my red passport is always ready.