Where did the title of my blog come from?

I was asked this question and it was posted at CBO in September.

My blog’s name is Remote Treechanger. I live in a beautiful part of our State of Victoria in Australia. The area in our State that my family and I live in is called North East Victoria. The State is advertised with a map with the different parts of Victoria pictured as a jigsaw puzzle. Our piece of the puzzle, North East Victoria is advertised as Legends, Wine and High Country. I have always lived in North East Victoria, near shops like K-mart and Safeway and Target, but I have gone right to the edge to live, where visiting these shops including Aldi, takes 1 1/2 hours of hard driving. There is no looking at the views unless you wish to risk coming face to face with a log truck. We have been here five years in January.

Where I live is a lifestyle option. Where you hear the sound of bush birds. When you drive home from the big city or regional centre from the shops, when you are nearly home and top the last hill you are met with glorious views of the highest mountain in Australia covered in snow quite a lot of the year. The Legend in this place is The Man From Snowy River. People love him so much that they name their babies Jack or Riley or Clancy. The Man From Snowy River movie wasn’t set here but in Mansfield at Craig’s Hut. Every year here there is a festival and a re-enactment of Riley’s Ride.

I enjoy listening to songs like High Country by country music singer Lee Kernaghan. I grew up in the High Country in North East Victoria, but it wasn’t remote. It was only about 3 hours from Melbourne. And because of this reason the area has become very popular.

In Australia there are people who wish to live in an area outside the city. To start with they moved to the seaside locations. Our biggest cities in Australia, Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, even Perth and Darwin and Adelaide are all close to the sea. The only inland city would be Canberra our capital. It was a planned city, it was planned by an American Walter Burley Griffin. Before this relocating came about I think there was a TV program, a series called Seachange with the main actress Sigrid Thornton on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation channel, the ABC. I think it depicted her, a single lawyer enjoying small town life in a place apparently that is actually near Geelong at Barwon Heads.

My favourite article about this moving away from the city is by Cathy Sherry.

“Seachange. Contrary to popular usage, the expression actually means permanent, irreversible change made by the sea. It comes from Shakespeare’s The Tempest when Ariel sings: Full fathom five thy father lies;/Of his bones are coral made;/Those are pearls that were his eyes:/Nothing of him that doth fade/But doth suffer a sea-change/Into something rich and strange.

Ariel is playing on Ferdinand’s fear that his father has drowned in the shipwreck and that his body is being permanently changed by the sea. “Rich and strange” is a creative way to put it because, let’s face it, if he had drowned there would soon be nothing left.

The popular use of seachange is quite different, particularly in Australia, thanks to the ABC series. It now has almost entirely positive connotations of a change to a better life, usually out of the city…” [We seachange, but I don't know if we see a future]

Treechange is just a word for moving to a place with trees instead of the sea. The most popular places to treechange apparently are within two hours of Melbourne in the places that have hills. Where we live is 5 1/2 hours from Melbourne. Another alternative name for my blog with a similar meaning could be “Urban Not”.

Wallace Hut, Fall's Creek, Victoria