Return to Oz: There’s No Place Like ‘Home’

Before John and I moved to Sydney in 2010, we’d been to Australia a number of times on vacation.  But we were still just tourists. And even the most experienced tourists miss the nuances of everyday life.

By the time we left Sydney to return to America in 2012, I knew two things.  First, in the immortal words of Arnold: ‘I’d be back’.  Second, that my visits would never feel the same as my pre-expat days.

And I was right on both counts.  We arrived in Sydney a week ago for an extended Holiday.  From the start, this trip is different than other Aussie vacations.  Instead of a posh hotel, we’ve rented a flat at 66 Darling Point Road…just down the street from our old home at 99 Darling Point Road.  I’m sure numerologists would have field day with that, but I’m just thrilled to be back in the old ‘hood, seeing our old friends, and doing the same old things that we did when we lived here.  Back to the nuances of every day life in Sydney…

And very quickly, I've come to remember things big and small that I’ve missed, and perhaps haven’t missed since we’ve been gone.

First, what I’ve missed  

• Tasting the intense flavor of fruits and vegetables.  When I first moved here, a friend asked me what was the biggest difference between living in California and Sydney.  When I mentioned the taste of the fruits and vegetables, he looked at me like I'd lost my mind. But I stand by my answer. It's as if I'm tasting green beans, bananas and avocados for the first time. It's amazing how all the produce tastes in comparison to the mutant, mass produced stuff that passes as food in America. Yum.

• Charging my iPad in an hour. Yes, those clunky round plugs look funny, but give me 220 outlets all day long.  Devices charge quicker, hair driers dry faster, and U.S. electric toothbrushes explode!  Oops!

• Drinking exceptional Aussie wines. In a grand conspiracy to keep the good stuff at home, the Aussies have decided to export their swill, so that wine snobs around the world will avoid Australian wines like the plague.  Little do they know that some of the world's finest, and also most unusual wines are made and consumed in Oz.  Scarborough White Label Chardonnay, Turkey Flats Rose,  any Torbruk  Shiraz, and of course, Rockford Sparkling Shiraz!  Yes, a dark  sparkling red wine that will knock your socks off.  A dark, sparkling red wine that will never be tasted by the French!

• Watching the bats take flight at dusk. This was a nightly ritual when I lived at 99. These gorgeous, colorful fruit bats, known as Australian flying foxes would glide by our window every night, showing off their 6 foot wing span as they took flight from the Royal Botanical Gardens. When I left Sydney, there was a mass effort going on to evict the huge bat population (numbering in the tens of thousands) from those Botanical Gardens.  The plan was to annoy them with loud noises and bad music.   Apparently, however, bats and humans have different standards for what they find annoying.  Watching the sky at dusk on our first night at 66, I watched my old buddies swoop across the harbor, and light in the fig trees next to our balcony.  All is right with the world!

• Eating Lamb.  Aussies love their lamb.  And our local butcher (yes, we still have them here) sells an amazing variety of lamb cuts.  Lamb steaks, lamb filets, lamb rumps, lamb backstraps (what is a backstrap?)...you name it, they sell it!  Since we've been home, we've only been able to get racks and legs. So where do the other parts of American lambs go?  Or are we back to the mutant nature of food in America?  hmmm.  Perhaps this lamb fact should remain silent...  

And now things that I haven't missed:

• Excruciatingly slow internet. While the politicians debate the cost of a new telecommunications infrastructure, Australia can boast that they have the world's slowest broadband connections.  Since I've been back, I've taken to reading paper newspapers again, as it is faster for me to walk to the market and buy a newspaper than it is for me to load the Morning Herald on my always charged iPad!

• Roundabouts.  I believe these are a vestige of British influence. The idea is innocuous enough--traffic will flow smoothly if everyone obeys the right of way rules.  And it probably works for the polite Brits.  But for the Aussies, a roundabout is just an organized free for all...a sanctioned game of chicken.  Give me good old stop signs or traffic signals any day!

• Fearing for my life every time I see anything that crawls.  Every insect and snake in Australia seems to be a deadly cousin of some annoying but benign creature in the rest of the world. And I guess they eat their victims after they poison them, because it's not unusual to encounter spiders that are the size of small dogs!  Hide, Scruffy, hide!

• Waiting for someone to back into a parking space.  Enter any crowded car park, and you will fall into a line of cars waiting as the next person backs into their spot. What could easily be be a simple, singular maneuver turns into an elaborate set of moves that takes 3 times as long.  I really don't get why this happens.  Perhaps it's a function of the rotation of the earth in the Southern Hemisphere!

• Missing my dog who is waiting back at home.  The entire time we lived here, Marley, our geriatric standard poodle waited for our return.  Sadly, we had to say goodbye to Marley last year.  But now we have Tasmania, the 1 year old standard poodle waiting for us, as Australia has some of the strictest dog quarantine laws in the world.  I guess I don't quite understand how a country with mutant spiders can fear rabies??

Wishing you all a Happy Christmas and New Year!!  We'll be ringing in the New Year by the light of the summer fireworks

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