This article resonates with me. I'd go a step further and say we carry our landscapes around with us, that homesickness could probably more properly be called landscapesickness.

For me, landscapes mean a huge amount. I find it very hard not to think of the region in which I grew up in WA as my home, even though I haven’t lived there for 24 years and have come to develop a very strong affinity for the environment and sense of place in tropical Queensland over more than two decades.

But then, I’m a field-oriented botanist, geomorphologist and ecologist. I just couldn’t survive without really getting to know the natural values of the hinterland wherever I lived and getting out there and exploring remote places, as I have just done for a couple of weeks. So a strong landscape affinity just comes naturally.

I wonder how significant a sense of place is for many people though. It seems to me that it is not well-developed in most urban people. They might develop some sort of appreciation for their town or city but few really come to appreciate the greater hinterland, apart from perhaps a few fishing spots or swimming holes.

Many people who live in my town just don't seem to have a very good impression of the hinterland at all. Whereas for me the hinterland is everything and the town itself is pretty boring.

And as for the great Australian iconic places such as Uluru and Kakadu, the Snowy Mountains and the Sydney Opera House, I doubt that they hold more than a tiny place in most Australians’ sense of country and belonging.