The Garden

Looking to ride out the chaos of the pandemic in more familiar territory, my partner and I secured seats on one of the last Australian Government flights out of Mumbai, a decision that would see us separated for almost a year. We’d been hanging out in our apartment, waiting for the panic to clear, but when friends working for an Australian government department said they were gonna catch that one, we jumped too.

Within a few months, having left the twenty-fourth floor of an apartment building in Mumbai, I passed through a half-dozen dark and empty airports to finally wash-up in a garden in Antananarivo.

Back in Melbourne, we were lucky enough to find space with very generous friends. My partner started her new school leadership job online, we were supposed to be moving to Malaysia. She finally got permission to leave Australia and get into Malaysia but my job and the attached visa had dissolved in all the hand-sanitiser and so I was looking at a few more months on the floor.

When a friend in Madagascar needed an Art and Technology teacher to fill a gap left by a fleeing teacher, I jumped on a plane. Lots of planes actually.

In Tana, I spent a bit of every day organising my despair into marks and lines: poems, sketches paintings.

My goal became to fill the mostly empty house I was living in with enough pieces to stage a one person show.

The residue of a thirty-five year search for a place to call home, without ever really finding the right word for it.

You can get The Garden from various online dealers around the by searching for “Fred Biggar The Garden”… Get the Book