The end of the affair
The big Australian adventure came to an end some time ago. There was a welcome reprise earlier this year, however, when we returned to Victoria for a family celebration in Torquay (Rocky Point Lookout viewed from Surf Beach, above). We made the most of a two-month stay to fit in a couple of mini-trips to destinations we hadn’t reached in more than a decade of living in Aus.
Life without the prospect of another trip down-under any time soon is hard to take, especially as an English winter bears down, even if beautifully cloaked in gold.
In the beginning – 2010 – the move to Australia might only have lasted a few months: nothing was certain. As it was, we spent 12 years there: lived in two state capitals; took numerous opportunities to travel further afield; and ventured several times into my favourite landscape – desert.
Years ago, I entered a competition; to write the final paragraph of a non-existent book. I wrote it as if the writer were taking off from Brisbane International Airport; peering down over endlessly blue Moreton Bay, climbing above the clouds, vision increasingly impaired by tears of yearning for an irrecoverable situation. Of course I wrote as if it were me, which it eventually was, but from Melbourne. Needless to say, you would have already heard had I won the competition.
I knew leaving Australia on a one-way ticket ‘home’ was never going to be easy. I had totally embraced life down under, becoming an Australian citizen; leaping at the chance to change my job so I could travel-write on my own terms and become an environmental protector.
I think I may have already mentioned somewhere a South African lady I met soon after my arrival in Brisbane all those years ago. She was well travelled, had four grown-up children – each one living on a different continent – and appeared to take moving around the globe in the wake of husband and sons completely in her stride. She was a great welcomer to my new world. But there was another kind soul –– let’s call her Esperanza –– who posited that if you’ve grabbed the opportunity to live for some time in a couple of places (or more); immersing yourself in the culture, learning a new language, perhaps, or sending young children to school there; then you might have doubts ultimately about where you call home, as does my friend.
The idea of drawing a line under a project you weren’t ready to abandon –– because you were having a great time and didn’t want it to end; and because life in the old country might have changed, or not –– seemed a troubling step to take. I began blogging in the first place after we made a momentous decision to uproot and move to the diametrically opposite corner of the planet. Now we’re back ‘home’, feeling a bit out of place still, because everyone’s life here had moved on at least a decade, for better or worse, and… well, as I say, it was a tad disorientating. I am currently writing this in Mallorca, having just been drenched in the heaviest downpour I’ve experienced anywhere since Queensland’s worst ‘Wet’. I wonder where on earth I am, in truth.
A few weeks ago I went up to Manchester to stay with my sister-in-law for a few days. On one of them we nipped into the Peak District National Park and walked by the Macclesfield Canal (below). It was inarguably beautiful, along a flat meandering tow path by calm water, with many views to a gently Peaky backdrop. The country I grew up in looked green and verdant and lovely.
And then there was this: an imposing relic that figured large in my childhood. The mill struck me as bereft in its silence, with broken panes and massive emptiness. Are there plans for a conversion to many ‘units’ with ‘stunning views’ but also the ghosts of industrious times gone by? The mill is a significant monument doomed to a what-can-we-do-with-this fate, which made me rather sad.
The Vernon Mill in Stockport, not far from where I was born in Woodbank, and the Goyt Mill in Marple, where I went to grammar school with two still-best friends, were outliers of the Lancashire cotton-spinning industry. The Goyt was built relatively late, in 1905: both existed because of their close proximity to the River Goyt, a tributary of the much more famous Mersey.
Later, after our walk, I thought: if you’ve been captivated living in vastly different faraway places, does it affect how you see the landscape of your childhood if and when you return? Does the long-ago seem overcrowded; a bit twee; even dull? Blue sky with cottonwool blobs enhances a scene, but in Tupperware-lid dullness or relentless drizzle, nostalgia may be smothered by disappointment.
It’s funny the things you miss as time goes by. And I also wonder, not living in Aus, nor the North of England, where do I say I’m from? Maybe it depends on where I am when I’m asked, and who’s asking. Maybe I’m overthinking this, but I suspect few people want to hear a long roaming tale about where you’re living these days or how your old stomping ground appears to you now.
