The same oceans, under different skies

[dolorosa_12]

After a 36-hour journey from door to door, involving an inevitable rail replacement bus, and a train full of drunk, singing football fans, I've returned from my trip to Australia, sleepy, restored, and a little bit melancholy. It was my first time back in five years, due to the pandemic, and it was a very packed schedule, filled with family events, various bits of long-postponed life admin, and lots of communing with the ocean. I was in Sydney for the most part, staying with my mum and sister #1 (who has moved back after five years in Melbourne), apart from five days in Woodend in rural Victoria with my dad, stepmother, and all my sisters.

I felt it would be easiest to summarise the trip under various subheadings.

Family and friends

Lots, and lots, and lots of family dinners in Sydney with various combinations of aunts — at Mum's place, at my aunt's place down the road, at cocktail bars and restaurants in the CBD, etc

A daytrip to have lunch with my dad's two sisters and their partners and one of my cousins in Thirroul, which is about an hour away on the train

Visiting anya_1984 and meeting her younger son, who had not been born the last time I was in Sydney

Easter weekend in Woodend — the first time all five of us sisters have ever been in the one place at the one time, in freezing temperatures, with the fire going nearly constantly, various dogs and cats slumbering on our laps, catching up with one of my cousins, meeting his new partner (who gamely came along to an Easter Sunday dinner hosted by one of my stepmother's brothers, with about forty people there, mainly her relatives, but also random people that my stepmother's mother had met at the pub and invited along, etc), chatting chaotically around firepits, eating too much food and drinking way too much wine

Cocktails and dinner with anya_1984, who has known me since we were twelve years old, plus a gang of people with whom we went to uni, which ended up being an oddly intense experience due to the passage of time, and everyone's various private griefs and struggles being aired

Getting the unexpected chance to see all of my cousins apart from the one who lives way out in Sydney's west and works irregular hours and the one who lives in South Korea and the one who had just gone on a trip to Spain the week before I arrived

Life admin

Sorting out various banking and superannuation stuff that inevitably accumulate if one is a migrant who has spent half her working life in one country and half in another

Going through all the books, documents, paper diaries, old high school report cards, boxes of photos, primary school artworks etc which I had been storing in my mum's flat since I left Australia in 2008, and finally throwing away the stuff that had survived five purge attempts since 2002. The remainder is in the process of being shipped over to the UK, now that we finally own our own house and live somewhere with an adequate amount of storage

Food

Just generally revelling in the fact that Australia is really, really, really good at food. I always say that the UK has improved massively in this regard since I first moved here, and that's true, but Australia really is in another league, and my mum lives in a part of Sydney that is particularly good in terms of cafes, bars and restaurants (and within easy reach of other parts of the city), so we ate very well

I ate a lot of fish and other seafood. The UK has good seafood, but it's generally different types of fish, and prepared differently, so it was good to sample all the stuff I can't easily eat in the northern hemisphere

Australia also generally has better East and Southeast Asian food, so I was keen to eat that at every opportunity — of which there were several

Two tasting menu dinners at high end restaurants — this one with Matthias, and this one with sister #1 as a birthday present for the past five years of birthdays

Cafe breakfasts. Just Sydney cafe breakfasts

All that land and all that water

Various walks and swims with Matthias around different bits of Sydney Harbour — catching the ferry to Manly and then walking from Shelly Beach up North Head, and returning to swim, walking from my mum's place to Barangaroo, walking from Nielsen Park along the harbour all the way home, with a swim midway, and shorter walks to any available body of water I could reach

Lots and lots of swimming at andrewboycharltonsydney with my mum, and sometimes one of my aunts, with the smell of the cut grass on one side and the harbour on the other, watching the naval ships drift by, under the broad sweep of the sky

I read a lot of books during the plane trips there and back, but while I was in Australia I stuck to rereading my old childhood paperbacks, including Rain Stones and The Secret Beach by Jackie French (a short story collection and standalone novel collection respectively, both with French's usual focus on family history, memory, and the Australian landscape), Hannah's Winter by Kierin Meehan (preteen girl spends three months in rural Japan with an eccentric host family and — together with a couple of other kids — must solve a supernatural mystery quest), and Shadowdancers by Sally Odgers (a portal fantasy in which people from our world have doppelgangers in another, with whom traumatic experiences can force them to trade places — one of my very favourite books when I was a teenager, absolutely read to death, to the point that the paperback is extremely battered and had been dropped in the bath at least once).

The trip itself was wonderful, but emotionally wrenching in weird and unexpected ways due to the passage of time, and the near constant reminder that migration and building a life overseas causes the space you occupy to close up behind you. I made that choice, and I don't regret it, but it is confronting to be reminded that life goes on without you in places and among people that once felt like home. It was my own choice, but it was a choice that was not without weight, and consequences.

My Instagram — ronnidolorosa offers a rather incomplete record of the trip, heavy on the sea and sky, since those were — apart from the people — the thing I missed most, and which are so, so different to the sea, and the sky in these northern parts of the world to which I transplanted myself.

Comments

[yarnofariadne]

It sounds like a really wonderful trip. I'm so glad you got to go! ♥

[dolorosa_12]

It was fantastic — I'm only sorry that I had to leave! I was very lucky to be able to get back, given how far away it is from where I live now.

[gingicat]

I'm glad you had a good trip!

[dolorosa_12]

Thank you!

[corvidology]

It's good to read that you had such a wonderful time!

The trip itself was wonderful, but emotionally wrenching in weird and unexpected ways due to the passage of time, and the near constant reminder that migration and building a life overseas causes the space you occupy to close up behind you. I made that choice, and I don't regret it, but it is confronting to be reminded that life goes on without you in places and among people that once felt like home. It was my own choice, but it was a choice that was not without weight, and consequences.

This resonates with me in a way that only another migrant would understand... only it wasn't a deliberate choice in my case.

[dolorosa_12]

This resonates with me in a way that only another migrant would understand... only it wasn't a deliberate choice in my case.

I'm sorry — but unsurprised — to hear that it's a fairly universal feeling among migrants. We can be happy and at home in our new countries, but still those bittersweet feelings remain, and it's no reflection on the places and people among whom we've found new homes.

I think with a degree of awe about my ancestors who emigrated to the other side of the world in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, because there was a finality about the break between their lives in Europe and their new lives in Australia and New Zealand. There was no videoconferencing software, no email, no quick or easy way to travel back for a visit (and some of them were convicts and wouldn't have been allowed back even if they'd wanted to go). Even my parents (who lived in the US for five years in the 1980s) were limited to paper letters and expensive phone calls once a year on birthdays. It's comparably easier to maintain connections these days, but still imperfect.

[chestnut_pod]

Welcome back; so glad you had safe travels.

Many congratulations for the parts that were happy, and <3 for the parts that were bittersweet.

[dolorosa_12]

Thank you!

I think the bittersweet parts are inevitable — they kind of go together with the happy things. If I didn't feel loved by my Australian friends and family (and didn't have fun when I was back with them), the things that were bittersweet wouldn't feel that way.

[vriddy]

It sounds like a wonderful, and very packed trip :) The bittersweet parts also resonate.

[dolorosa_12]

It was indeed wonderful, although I'm sorry to hear that those parts of it resonate. It's an odd, and unfortunately inescapable feeling.

[thawrecka]

We do have some great food in Aus. I've never managed to get over to the UK to sample the food there, but I hope when I do I have good luck with it.

[dolorosa_12]

Australian food (and Australian versions of other cuisines) is just fantastic. As I say, the food scene in the UK is pretty good now, but it really is no comparison. I hope you make it over to the UK at some point — I can definitely offer recommendations!

[spikedluv]

I'm glad you had an enjoyable, if busy, visit!

[dolorosa_12]

Thank you!

[svgurl]

That sounds like a packed trip for sure! Glad to hear that you had such a nice time, even if there were parts that were bittersweet. I can only imagine how jarring it is to see the differences in the place you once called home, especially since you haven't been able to go back in a few years.

[dolorosa_12]

Thank you — and yes, it was definitely jarring!

[trepkos]

I can see how it would be both emotionally fulfilling and exhausting at once! I remember seeing Andrew Boy Charlton pool, and buying a tee-shirt there and sending it to my (gay) best friend in the UK.

[dolorosa_12]

It's such a great pool — I've been swimming there since I was a small child, back when the pool was a lot less fancy (but still in the same beautiful setting), and although some things have changed, it still remains the same hang out spot for gay men that it's always been! I had no idea you'd been to Australia, much less Boy Charlton pool!

[trepkos]

I never swam there, but we passed through, and I thought the tee shirt looked VERY gay! Steve was very pleased with it. We were in Oz for 3 months, in Manly over Christmas 1991, then to Brisbane, North Straddie, Airlie Beach, Cains, Kuranda, Port Douglas, Mossman, Alice Springs, Uluru, Coober pedy, Kangaroo Island, Adelaide, and then back to Sydney. I loved it - so much fantastic wildlife! Everyone very friendly and helpful.

[dolorosa_12]

Oh wow, what an incredible trip! I still haven't been to most of those places!

[trepkos]

It's always the way. I have hardly visited anywhere in the UK.

[lirazel]

I'm so very glad you got to do this and that it sounds like it was a wonderful time, even with the heavy emotional stuff. What a trip!

[dolorosa_12]

Thank you, and yes, it was absolutely wonderful, emotional stuff included. If this sort of thing didn't make me emotional, I feel there might be something wrong.

[lokifan]

That sounds wonderful!

Just generally revelling in the fact that Australia is really, really, really good at food. I always say that the UK has improved massively in this regard since I first moved here, and that's true, but Australia really is in another league

The Aussies I know are all massive foodies, so that makes sense :)

[dolorosa_12]

I've never met an Australian who wasn't obsessed with food, so either I self-select into social groups of like-minded Australians, or it really is a common cultural thing. Who knows?