Introduction: end of innocence - Tasmania's search for home

In this current decade, homelessness as a newly felt vulnerability has arisen in Australian life, media and political culture in ways not seen before. Of course, homelessness and displacement are old sufferings at the heart of ongoing colonial home-making in Australia. However, the needed iteration of Australia‑as‑home - perhaps best captured in the go-to unofficial national anthem, I still call Australia home - is reaching fever‑pitch in a nation currently riddled with housing stress. Both dispossession and homelessness trouble Australian narratives of identity and belonging and produce an astonishing defensive compulsion to claim, cleanse and contain. As more and more of us are without homes that embed us long‑term in communities, our attention dwells - and is masterfully held, through canny politics - on the national homeland borders we think might still be defensible.