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Some reached back for the island to the point where a sensual rejection of the new place was made. Some found sufficient sameness, such as heat and humidity, to feel at home in the new place. Some rejected Christmas Island in its sensory entirety and felt glad to be going back home where people knew what the right things were to eat. Some people balanced on frayed and fragile lines between old and new worlds, occupying the twilight of the middle, especially when a curious anthropologist asked about such things as how to make deep-fried chilli fruit bat.
Drawing on these memorialised sensual experiences, the memorials made in stone, the truncated arcs that locals move in, the constantly evolving material memories of buildings, the ways in which curious and iconic animals are drawn into metaphors about being local and native, and about invaders from over the water gives some insight into what life is like in the migration exclusion zone and into what it means to be a local of Christmas Island, Indian Ocean, Australia.