Nine years in Australia

Jethro's take on his mummy: he took this 28th October 2013

Nine years ago, to the day, I arrived in Australia. It was a profound feeling. I was 41, and my life was starting over.

I remember Francis meeting me at the airport and feeling particularly awkward. I remember thinking that nothing could make him understand what was going on inside me, and that I wasn't going to try to explain. I was just going to get on with it.

I noticed that so many people leaving South Africa were running from something, and I wasn't. I was going TO something. I was going to a new life with a man I had met in Spain, learning Spanish. I was seriously starting again. Life was changing:
- from being single to being part of a couple
- from being well known to completely unknown.
 - from a life of dance and consulting to a life of little dance and no permission to work.
 - from years of experience to not being recognised for any experience.

I had left my home with four bedrooms plus a flat for a shared room in a shared unit. I had left being a landlady for being a partner of a renter. I had left a huge circle of family and friends and colleagues for a country where I knew one person well, two more people quite well, and about ten people vaguely. I had left the mountain and sea for the suburbs.
Instead of a house filled with belongings I had just one suitcase with my clothes and my cutlery (!). Instead of a car I was on foot.

Yes this was still 34 degrees South. Just not Cape Town. It was Sydney.

Some of this was apparent on the first day, and some only became apparent over time. Slowly but surely it sank in that I'd really taken this enormous step at 41. It was my sister-in-law's birthday and I wasn't there to celebrate it. Today, nine years later, it's her birthday again and I'm not there to celebrate it. But I am celebrating, instead, a nine-year journey to date.

I woke this morning thinking about the highlight of each year:
2004: Discovering the tango, flamenco, latino dance and music scene in Sydney and my first New Year's Eve fireworks over the Bridge and Opera House
2005:  A five day trip, alone and camping, to the heart-stopping beauty of New Zealand's South Island; buying our home in Heighway Avenue in Ashfield and joining Sing Australia
2006: Our wedding; visitors throughout that year from South Africa
2007: Being allowed to work. Restarting Making Things Work. Dancing Tango at Darling Harbour. 
2008: Magical trip to Europe with Francis
2009: Jethro was born. Becoming a mum at 46. Starting to work with social enterprises in earnest.
2010: Jethro's baby naming ceremony. Becoming an Ausralian Citizen. Taking Jethro to South Africa to meet the family.
2011: Marjorie's visit to Sydney; An African drumming course
2012: Moving to Oatley to the green and the blue of nature once again
2013: Marjorie in Sydney again. Embarking on the Key Person of Influence course and restarting my work as Beyond Win-Win.

And then, of course, there have been the annual highlights - Jewish high festivals on the North Short and the Eastern Suburbs, re-acquainting with cousins I knew as a child in South Africa, annual Christmas celebrations (the street party in Heighway Avenue, the Mother's Group party and the Chilean-Iranian-South African-Australian party each year), Chinese New Year and all the diversity type celebrations in Sydney. And lots, lots more.

Today I am celebrating a long journey that, in the scheme of things, is only just starting. It's amazing, though, that I've lived in Australian almost one fifth of my life. Just one more year and it will be a decade. Hah.

 

 

 

 

We wish you a Multi-Cultural Christmas

There's a whole lot to be said about living in the inner-west in Sydney. It's an incredible melting pot of cultures, and with that, opportunities. Every cuisine imaginable, every kind of music, clubs and social groups of many nationalities and neighbourhoods offering the opportunity to meet people from every corner of the globe.

Francis and I have made it our business to immerse ourselves in as many different kinds of opportunity as we can absorb into the time available. We love the Addison St market in Marrickville with it's Casa Latina where the latin american community meet and dance and play and sing on a Sunday. We enjoy the Gladstone Pub, also in Marrickville, where our friend Mary-Jane Field has introduced us to the Bolivian community who spontaneously celebrate their music by jamming together on some Saturday nights. We follow our friends Marlene and Faramarz around, watching their festival productions of the Chilean national dance, the Cueca, and have even learnt it (at a time when I was about five months pregnant!). We frequent the  Camelot Lounge, a club run by a chap called Yarron from Port Elizabeth who is known for his amazing band, Monsieur Camembert. I don't think there are many places in the world with more camels under one roof - big ones, small ones, pictures of camels, even flying camels - or more stairs to reach a club! One of my best evenings there was a Yiddish night which I attended with Marjorie, the woman who was my nanny when I was a child in South Africa. I think she knew more of the culture than some of the Jewish people there.

This Christmas has been, as usual, a multi-cultural one. The annual Heighway Avenue Street party was, as usual, filled with foods from many nations, games for the children, and great music and even some dance in the middle of the closed street. As anyone who has visited us at our home knows, within ten doors of where we live are representatives of New Zealand, China, Australia, Pakistan, India, South Africa (Durban), the Phillipines, Mauritius, Ireland, Lebanon, Poland... the list goes on. The kids are like a troop this time of year - dashing through the street on bicycles, jumping on one another's trampolines, dropping off hand-me-down clothes.

Christmas Eve was our annual meeting-of-cultures in Baulkham Hills - yes, out of the inner-west - with our Chilean, Iranian, Chinese and Australian friends. It's always an outrageous evening of foods from our various cultures and a wild game of giving and stealing Christmas presents. And over the last two years the addition of the new generation, Jethro at 2 and Kian at 6 months, has added new flavour.

To top it, yesterday was Christmas in Ashfield with Francis' parents - something we often do at Christmas. 

While almost everything is closed, the Ashfield shops remain open with up to 20 Asian Eateries doing business as usual. This year we took a friend of mine's niece, Kristin from Germany. She has been backpacking and had been staying with us earlier in the year with her friend, Judy. They house-sat our home while we were traveling. After a fruit-picking stint up north, she and Judy moved in with Nikki-next-door to couch-surf. Over the season two more friends have joined them - one from Germany and one from Sweden. So we invited them to share Christmas. Another adventure in sharing stories of different cultures, and what we all usually do at Christmas. They turned up, all clean and shiny in their party frocks and joined us for dumplings, and later for fruit and other delicacies at home.

It's been another year of enjoying all that Sydney has to offer. A highlight was West African drumming with Saul of Soul Drumming. Brooke dragged me along, and I've taken to it like a duck to water. There's discipline and fun, and the body percussion (see picture) works well when your hands need a break from beating those drums. The pictures are of the performance on our last night, in Newtown. Four of Saul's groups came together to drum - about 50 of us in all - and Jethro was pretty taken with it all. At two, he is now "drumming like mummy" at every opportunity. Long may he have the opportunity to glean from Sydney all that Francis and I have been lucky to have in the inner-west in our seven years here.