When my sister and her family renovated their home, a kind absent neighbour a hundred metres or so away offered an empty place to stay through the worst of the refit. Left behind, though, was my sister’s noble cat, with a plan in place to return daily, topping up bowls and delivering encouraging pats as they navigated the steady stream of tradies together.But then a funny thing happened. The cat, having got wind of its family relocation, promptly upped its own four little leg-sticks and wandered down the street, crossing the road, moving into this temporary abode with them.The cat’s home, as it turned out, wasn’t anchored by location, but by the company of the oddball bunch of humans who slung jellymeat and jowl rubs in its general direction.I’ve been thinking about that cat a lot over these last three years while living out of not much more than a suitcase between Auckland, Boston, Spain, London and now Sydney with our small family unit of three.What is it exactly that makes a place a home?What ties you to an area where all the sensory touchstones of familiarity seep just a little deeper under your skin, triggering that strong emotional response? A feeling you get from the moment the plane wheels touch down or the suburb is reached. Perhaps ignited when nostrils are filled with that unique localised blend of pollens and pollution that sends an instant brain signal that this is where track pants and slippers are a suitable outfit of choice.Driving through Sydney’s urban streets this last week, past row after row of houses that felt so much more familiar than we’d seen in Massachusetts, the seven-year-old in the backseat piped up to ask, “Dad, how many people in the world are there?” I stabbed at an answer of 6bn (Google corrects me to 8.3bn) followed by, “OK, well how many houses in the world are there?’’It turns out that in Australia there is a house for every 2.5 people, a drop from 4.5 in 1911. A number sitting in stark contrast to my first university flat where seven of us lived (with just one toilet, and that toilet was outside). My mum cried when she first saw that place, but I thought it was paradise. A home to us, Skid Row to my mum. The drop in numbers per house has been attributed to people increasingly living alone – and perhaps a better supply of toilets?Before leaving New Zealand, I filmed several series of a TV show following plucky Kiwi couples rescuing and removing exhausted houses on the verge of demolition. Television is a wonderful vehicle to be nosy under the auspices of work, and this one was a doozy. With giant cranes they hoisted the homes, sometimes whole, sometimes in chainsawed chunks, on to the back of Mad-Max-esque truck-trailers before setting off into the countryside, barrelling towards a bare section armed with ambitious renovation plans and a soon-to-be blown budget.Being able to revisit these couples over a year of progress and experiencing their transformation was a privilege. I watched in awe as they put down new roots quite literally with the first foundations.It was surprising to learn that this activity of old house recycling is very particular to this Australasian corner of the world. New Zealand’s isolated nature and historically limited resources has hard-wired a Presbyterian-like refusal to let anything go to waste deep into our DNA. Especially whole houses.One story that really stuck with me though was a lovely older couple looking to escape the city by moving closer to family in quieter rural surrounds. So attached had they become to their home – after raising a family and having lived such a huge part of their lives among its irreplaceable 100-year-old character villa features, with its bay windows and vertical panelling – they made the curious decision to simply pick up and take their home with them. It was fascinating and revealing. They were so connected to the memories and familiarity, the security and comfort the house gave them, that they hoisted the home out in the dead of night, delivering it to a brand new location next to their daughter, her husband and grandkids. It was the ultimate compliment to an organised structure of wood, glass and corrugated iron that clearly had become part of them.A home is so much more than a place where you sleep. Countries that have enhanced renters’ rights, which keep people secure in place longer, create a greater stability with that important broader sense of community – something which evolves over years as good neighbours become friends and even family.Attempting to encapsulate this broader feeling of home using English language feels a bit clumsy when New Zealand’s Indigenous Māori language does it so well in just one word: Tūrangawaewae. It translates as “a place to stand” but is used to describe so much more than that; “a home base or area where one has the sense of belonging through kinship and connection, which empowers identity foundation and security”.While New Zealand will always be home-home, I am looking forward to experiencing a bit of this here now in Australia.