Dialogue: Leaving home for wider view

I remember very well the first time I realised that most people who live in lovely, small places desperately want to move somewhere bigger, smellier, more threatening, and fear that they will die of frustration (or perhaps kill someone out of it) if they do not.

This truth was revealed to me after I attended a peaceable little traditional tea ceremony in Osaka some 20 years ago. A series of happy accidents (mostly of birth) saw me living out early years not in Lower Hutt, as came horrifyingly close to being the case at one point, but in Tokyo. Now, Tokyo was pretty cool.

Actually, Tokyo was a lot like Lower Hutt. Or so I thought in the first instance. This was mainly because, like most diplomat types abroad in those days, we spent a lot of time hiding from the locals inside the embassy compound, which was full of people talking footy, sinking tinnies, barbecuing snags, like they'd never left home.

One fine day there in Tokyo, several of our teachers (smart nuns all) decided it was high time that we - spoiled, parochial diplomats' spawn - exposed ourselves to the local culture and its manifold beauties. "Japanese cultural traditions are age-old, beautifully peaceful, beautifully grounded and very possibly the work of God himself, so you will open thine xenophobic eyes to it," the nuns hissed as they shoved us on to our plush hired bus. "Suffer, little children." It was thus that I came to find myself enjoying the above-mentioned tea ceremony.

And, at first exposure, it did seem rather peaceful and beautiful. Silence fell as a couple of beautiful young women, tricked out in traditional costume, performed this exotic, age-old tea-making ritual. The women smiled as they poured the tea, smiled too as they offered the bowl to each member of the group. They really did seem wonderfully grounded, marvellously in touch with the national history and culture, living proof that people who chose to reside outside big cities had their priorities sorted.

We were terribly impressed; the nuns had really kicked a goal here. Or so we thought.

The unfortunate truth of the situation began to reveal itself an hour or so later when we returned to our bus. This was when we found the younger of the two women sitting on the curb. Turned out that she had had her fill of tea ceremonies - her one hope and aim in life was to get to Tokyo. Looked as if she'd do anything to get there, too. She looked a bit mental on it; you found yourself making sure you kept her in view, even when you were safely tucked away at the back of the bus. So much for inner peace.

But it's the reason I do not let myself fret much over the brain-drain. I consider it a fact of life that everyone who lives in a smaller place dreams of making it big in a bigger one. I like to think that the exodus will ultimately work in our favour.

I like to think it will produce, say, a Germaine Greer, a Robert Hughes, perhaps a Barry Humphries, maybe even a Clive James - people whose various immersions in sophisticated international cultures allowed them to ultimately turn a fresh, sophisticated eye to their own.

Distance brings perspective, after all, and perspective brings peace. Hughes wrote The Fatal Shore after honing his eye and style as art critic for Time; some of James' best (if least-known) essays assess the perspective and standards that expatriate Australians were ultimately able to bring to bear on their home nation. (He probably had himself, as well as Hughes, in mind here, but we'll give him the benefit of the doubt.)

Distance "sharpens the gaze,"James wrote, adding, memorably, that Hughes and even Humphries "might have remained comparatively blind to the uniqueness of [their] native topography if [they] had never left it."

I admit that it's a long shot to hope that we'll turn up a Hughes, but who knows? What we do know is that keeping everyone at home has its downside. People get introverted and paranoid - they adopt the embassy-compound mentality. They start out worshipping a Gough Whitlam and end up worshipping a Pauline Hanson.

It's about here a nation needs alternative views.