Home

Sitting in a drab chain hotel, gazing out the window at the scene and thinking of home. Mind ticking over. Home. What is home. One thing's for sure, there's no place like it. Ever since man first started building shelters and living in caves we've had a need and desire to have a home, a place to hang your hat at the end of the day, not just shelter from the elements but somewhere for the soul to grow. Not that far outside the bustling city centre of Sydney is a small cave, you can park nearby and wander along a bush track for an hour or so, where, at the end of the track you'll find Red Hands cave. The fine pigment heightened hand shapes of the Aboriginal family that called the small cave home are still clearly visible, hundreds certainly, perhaps thousands of years since that small family group called this place home. Ritual or decoration. There's no place like it. Down a tiny little sub-Soi off in the north of Bangkok somewhere sits a small home, unremarkable amongst many unremarkable homes, for sure, but have a quick peek through the shutters and there, taped to the wall you'll see the new Thai King in his own special place of worship. A thousand years and several thousand kilometers from Red Hands cave, the story remains the same. Ritual or decoration. There's no place like it. Some estimates have the number of people now living outside their birth state as high as 220 million. That's a lot of "homeless" people on the move, more than at any other time in history. There are any number of TED talks and self-help gurus available to tell us that home is not the place you were born, it's the place you find yourself. How these 220 million people find their home should be a matter of concern for all of us, refugees and asylum seekers are being harangued and persecuted on an increasing scale, walls are even being threatened by some. Leaders are ranting. We all need a place to call home and we all have the right to security and the idea of home is becoming less about a plot of land and more about a piece of your soul.