Sunday 5 September 2010

A Llandilo by any other name...

Last weekend I went to a place completely new and yet familiar to me. It was a town I grew up in, and yet I had never been there before. All of the houses and the shops and the signs filled me with nostalgia, yet the memories they brought back were based somewhere entirely different. Confused? Let me wash away the incredible shroud of mystery that is certainly encircling your mind after these Sherlock-stumping sentences and tell you: I visited Llandeilo in South Wales, and I grew up in Llandilo, New South Wales.

Much as I love unique tongue-twistery Australian towns like Woolloomooloo, Coonabarabran and Murwillumbah, I spent the first 20 odd years of my life in a tiny Welsh-named suburb best known for being on the way to somewhere else. People in neighbouring Penrith and Windsor, perhaps with a whiff of English derision, claim never to have heard of the place. I guess you’d call it a ‘one horse town’, but for the fact that horses probably outnumber people in Llandilo.

All we have is a fruit and vegetable shop, a post office, a school, a volunteer fire brigade, a fish and chip shop and a Christmas tree farm. There’s also a little church and a little hall which you can rent for your next square dance (call Maud on 7774 3287 to book (but not at 4 o’clock because she’ll be out feeding the horses then)). This sounds like rather a lot, but when you consider that footpaths in Llandilo are rarer than caterpillars wearing gumboots, and that the entire population of Llandilo can probably fit into the hall and still have room to practice their latest hula-hooping routines, that should give you a clearer indication of its size.

It’s hard to say whether it’s because Llandilo is so ‘inconsequential’ that I found this trip so thrilling, or whether I would have been excited even if my hometown was a bustling metropolis, but when I made it to Llandeilo I was grinning like a Cheshire cat who had just discovered a bowl full of mice doused in double-cream. Of course I’ve made comparisons between places I’ve visited before, but nothing like this. Absolutely everything my eyes fell upon sparkled with twin-citied enchantment: the flowers on the street became flowers I was seeing in Llandeilo, the car parked on the side of the road became a car parked in Llandeilo, the delicious wild blackberry I ate off of a bush carried far more meaning that it would have anywhere else: ‘I am eating a blackberry that grew in Llandeilo!’

Before arriving, I had already learned that, just as ‘Wales’ is pronounced differently by Welsh people (they give it two sing-songy syllables so it comes out as ‘Way-yels’), ‘Llandeilo’ is not the smooth-sounding Aussie-fied ‘Landilo’, but is pronounced with a generous injection of phlegm: ‘phllllegm-andilo’. Llandeilo in Wales is still semi-rural, but it actually has far more to its name than its Australian offspring. This meant that apart from smiling at the flowers, cars and blackberries, I could delight myself even further by noticing: Llandeilo has a bank! Llandeilo has cafés! Llandeilo has a town hall! And, bizarrely, Llandeilo has a luxurious boutique hotel?

I’m never usually one for touristy knick-knackery, but here I wanted to buy anything and everything with ‘Llandeilo’ emblazoned onto it. We went into a cookwares store (Llandeilo has a cookwares store!) and explained to the shopkeepers that I was looking for something ‘made in Llandeilo’ because I’d come all the way from the other Llandilo in New South Wales, Australia. And, would you believe it, not only had the two shopkeepers been to Llandilo in NSW, they actually got engaged there. They were British, but lived for a time in Richmond, which is just up the road from Llandilo. Unfortunately they didn’t have anything made in Llandeilo, but they did give me a bag with ‘Llandeilo’ written on it, which I filled with postcards (Llandeilo has postcards! Alright, alright. I’ll stop that now) and some other mystery gifts which will be weaving their way home very soon.

It’s a well-known fact that when British settlers arrived in Australia they deemed the place ‘terra nullius’ (empty land). They then pulled out their giant cattle-branders and stamped the newly conquered landscape with names from home: Newcastle, Liverpool, Cardiff, Blackheath, Stanmore, Ipswich, Salisbury, Stratford, Warwick, Sheffield, Penrith, Swansea, Lland(e)ilo. I’m not sure whether they chose the names because they saw an actual resemblance to the equivalent town back home, or whether it was just to quash homesickness by surrounding themselves with familiar words*. Maybe it was a mixture of both. If we take the ‘familiar words’ angle, though, I can see from my trip to Llandeilo that there is some comfort to be derived from seeing a word that you know embedded deeply into a patch of land that is not home. The view may be different, the weather may be different, there may be hotels instead of Christmas tree farms, but there is still this glorious name touching everything, and you feel strangely possessive of it and tied to it whether it is really ‘yours’ or not.

I wonder if the early settlers ever thought about the full-circle impact this ‘naming’ would have on future generations. To them, they’d always know the original town first, and its dryer, browner, less-densely-populated equivalent second. To us, the children who grew up in the dry, brown, empty namesakes, it could only ever be the other way around. Looking at the map of Australia in comparison to the map of Britain, we might even wonder why on Earth they decided to stick Swansea just down the road a bit from Newcastle…

I left Llandeilo with a little bag of stuff and enough photos to fill a bathtub. The next stop will have to be Penrith, which is where I tell everyone I’m from since no one ever knows Llandilo. I’m pretty sure the Penrith in Cumbria will have some stark differences to the Penrith in Western Sydney. When you tell someone in England you’re from Penrith they beam at you, angling to score an invite to your quaint little cottage near the Lakes District. When you tell someone from Australia you’re from Penrith, their face drops and they make all sorts of unfair assumptions about you. All those from The Riff, am I right?




*Although the politics behind this process of renaming a so-called ‘empty’ land is something that makes my heart hurt, writing about it would be another blog in itself, so I will leave it be. I will, however, remind everyone that the original inhabitants of the Australian region that became Llandilo were the Dharug people.

11 comments:

Julien said...

Unfair assumptions when you mention your place of origin... The exact reason why nobody knows where I am from ! When people asks me which is my place of origin, I answer "up there" and points behind my right shoulder, waving my hand a little bit.

Even an answer such as "somewhere in Western Europe" is not enough to avoid assumptions. I became such as master at tricking people on that matter, that some of my workmates still believe I was born in South Africa.

Thus being said, I at least am fond of the place I live in, and I should definitely visit Brussels, Illinois/Wisconsin/Ontario/Manitoba...

...Or maybe visit Madame Brussels in Melbourne ?

Sophie said...

All those from The Riff, am I right?

I find responding in French tends to shut them up long enough for me to get on with my day.

Starkadder said...

The confusing part for me is growing up in Camden (NOT New Jersey) and living in Tahmoor, a name you might think redolent of peat and wandering Brontes. Bizarrely, it seems to be an attempt at an indigenous term for "Sod me, but there's vast numbers of pigeons around here" (approximate translation).

Thre's a tawny frogmouth roosting outside our window. It says "oooo" a lot. Beautiful even at two in the morning.

Sarah said...

Julien, I guess unfair associations taint almost every place, don't they? I know where you're really from anyway. It rhymes with 'Mile of Dark', right? And, you appear to know my own country better than I do: I've never heard of Madame Brussels in Melbourne...

Sophie, unfortunately after all my French lessons I can only say 'Il pleut comme vache qui pisse’ with any confidence. This is largely courtesy of the French-speaking South African (or is he from Melbourne?), Julien (above).

Monsieur Starkadder, now that you mention it, 'Tahmoor' does sound like a place for wandering Brontës. I like your translation of the name, too. Maybe I'll use that next time I'm at Trafalgar Square.

Oh, and I wish I had a tawny frogmouth roosting outside my window. The only sounds I hear at night are the squeeeeeeeeeeeking brakes and gutteral groans of double-decker buses. I do have some 'wildlife' around though. I found a spider in the bathroom and named him Frank.

L. said...

This is awesome. I totally know what you mean about feeling that strange sense of comfort at seeing a familiar word, almost like the word itself makes it an extension of home. I admit I sometimes feel that way when passing through 'Canada Water', even though the area is nothing like Canada at all (aside from the fact that there's...water...nearby). But funny how if you pronounced 'Llandilo' the Welsh way back home, everyone would just think you were choking on something!

Julien said...

It is true, Sarah, that unfair assumptions are made upon any place. And as far as I hate assimilating people with their place of birth - and I hate it when people think about me as the Channel Islander of the neighborhood and make supposedly-nice comments such as 'oh I have read an article in the newspaper yesterday about offshore banking on Guernsey, that's almost your place uh, I thought about you immediately" - in the meantime I can't stop my mind from jumping to you anytime something Australian is presented to me - may it be a picture of Julia Gillard or an oceanologist explaining that stingrays are most often found over the shores of Brisbane.

This is certainly because, before I met you, my only direct experience of Australia was renting a videotape of Priscilla Queen of the desert. As a result, you were my introduction to that - oh my, is it a continent or an island ? I always forget. Anyway, I would not have heard about Madame Brussels and the Principalty of Hutt River if it weren't you and your lovely face.

Well, Kate Bush already introduced me to the aboriginal dreamtime, but no woman would ever match Kate Bush, you know that, don't you ?

Jay (Helly's Friend) said...

"best known for being on the way to somewhere else"

Great line!

I now pass it going to Penrith once a week and only just noticed the sign on my last visit. I was under the impression you lived in Penrith, as I'm sure your sister says you do for the same reasons you did.

What an amazing story, right down to the shopkeeping couple!

There is a little hilltop town in Italy called Bovino, which is my surname, and, at some point in my life, I'd love to visit it for that same feeling you've described.

You're a very funny, talented writer. I look forward to your next blog!

Sarah said...

Linds, yeah I had a feeling a dodgy stop on the DLR wouldn't have many similarities with the real Canada. You know how sometimes you look at a tube map and see a station you never noticed before? I think Canada Water was one of those for me once, like West Silvertown or Cyprus.

Julien, it's the same with Sabah. Whenever the papers dissect the political situation in Sabah I always think about you. You are a Sabahian, after all, right? Am I getting closer?

Jay, why thanks! Yes, we've always told everyone we were from Penrith because it was easier that way. Just like 'Vienne' is easier to say than our actual surname...

I'm sure you'll make it to Bovino one day, and you'll take just as many cheesy pictures of yourself posing underneath the 'Bovino' township sign as I did with the Llandilo one. I hope the sun is smashing down in Italy when you go to visit, too, as it did for me in Wales.

Julien said...

Oh I am so moved that you think about me anytime Sabah is mentioned in the news ! And it happens quite often indeed, with all these linguistic problems in Sabah, the game of cat-and-mice between political parties to decide if Sabah will finally have a government or not, and all these assumptions made in the foreign press about the future collapse of Sabah - I think British tabloids often rambles about the fact that 'a Sabahian is now ruling the UK through the European Union'...

If only I were from an Anglophone country...

Helly (Jay's friend) said...

Great blog Sazza chats! It reminded me of that photo book you made a few years ago with all of the 'iconic' Llandilo images like the Christmas tree farm, the 'piece of cake', the gnarly tree and of course...cows!

As for unfair assumptions, I'm never quite sure how to take it whenever somebody says 'Well you don't seem like you're from Penrith!'

Me- 'Ummm....thanks?!'

Julien said...

PS : I stated in a previous comment (see above) that no woman would ever match Kate Bush and I just learnt recently that I were wrong. I offer a complete and utter retraction.