Belonging is a local issue

OPINION: A bloke I know has lived in Geraldton for 36 years.

I reckon he’s about 60, so he probably arrived here in his mid-20s, and he still doesn’t think he’s accepted as a local.

My time in Geraldton is a good deal shy of my friend’s, but I feel as if I am a total and thorough Geraldtonian.

So what is it that makes a person a local?

Is there a qualifying period? Is it the correct pronunciation of Durlacher? Did you have to be here before they pulled up the railway line along the foreshore? Is it about a sense of belonging?

I know some people who have been in Geraldton since the mid-1980s when they moved here from Adelaide. And they still believe they are South Australians.

Many people born and educated in Geraldton move away after school and never to return.

Are they Geraldtonians?

And even the word itself, Geraldtonian. Who uses it and what does it mean?

If you are from Kalgoorlie, you are hardly a Kalgoorlian, if you are from Bunbury, not a Bunburian, and Albany, surely not an Albanian?

I wonder if there has ever been any contemplation at a local level of developing a Geraldton citizenship ceremony? Not one for immigrants wishing to become Australian citizens, but one for those who have come to live in Geraldton who want to be recognised as true locals, as real Geraldtonians.

There probably would need to be a qualifying period, let’s say 10 years, and there would be tests on local geography and what time various bottle shops open.

Of course you’d have to relinquish all claims to your previous place of living.

“Do you solemnly swear to forego all previous attachments to Melbourne and pledge allegiance to Geraldton?”

I think they would be popular ceremonies. They’d be conducted down on Champion Bay where the new citizens of Geraldton would be baptised in the calming waters of the Indian Ocean in front of a coffee shop.

It is a great city by the sea, and we are some of the luckiest people on earth because, local or not, Geraldton is the place that we get to call home.