Home – Rosa’s Blog

I didn’t expect Australia to feel so much like home.

The landscape and the wildlife was so different from anything I had seen, completely uniquely its own. It was relentlessly hot, and ridiculously large, and  sparsely populated. And yet, the people were surprisingly friendly, and the atmosphere was laid back and easy to exist within. Australians were used to British visitors, and I didn’t ever feel like I was out of place.

And then we got to Sydney where my auntie Ellie picked us up, and took us back to her home. Her home we had only ever seen through a Skype call, and now got to see and experience in person. And when we got there, the whole family was there to greet us. A familiar face in my cousin Thomas, as well as Ellie’s partner Mike and his two daughters Grace and Lucy. People I knew so much about, and yet had never gotten to meet. My almost-cousins. Of course, we got on instantly, as I was sure we would. And then, of course, how could I forget the four dogs who were also there to greet us? Ellie and Thomas’ beloved cocker spaniels Wilbur and Martha were there, alongside Mike’s crazy collie Molly, and a friend’s dog that Ellie was dogsitting called Cheddar.

A whirlwind of tearful greetings and wildly barking dogs later, I got to settle into what would be my room for the next three months. A bedroom all to myself, that Ellie had specially prepared for me. It’s not easy to explain in words, after four months of travelling, how welcomed a room of my own to live in felt. It was hard not to feel instantly at home. I would get the chance to get to know my amazing almost-cousins who would be my real cousins by the end of the trip, and a chance to befriend Wilbur and Martha, and I’d get to spend significant quality time with my Auntie that I had never gotten to do before. I just knew how much I was going to love it here.

I had gotten myself a work visa for Australia with the intent to get a job while we stayed there, and so, not three days into our stay in Australia, I was out looking for one, handing out my resumes to anyone that was interested. I ended up going to three different shops asking for a job, and in Subway, the third and final place I went to (which was the place I had gone into solely because that was where I most wanted to work), I struck gold. The manager just happened to be there at the time, and so he briefly interviewed me before offering me a trial shift the next morning. I had already gotten a job! And in Subway, no less!

The trial shift was a success, and then I was in business. I was a Subway girl now. Or a ‘Sandwich Artist,’ as is the official title for my job, apparently.

Before we knew it, it was already Christmas. And then, the next day, we set off to the blue mountains for a week, where Ellie and Mike were getting married. I really got the chance to get to know my soon-to-be cousins that week, and so by the time the wedding came around I already felt like they were part of my family.

The wedding itself was a small, personal, and beautiful affair.

What a place to get married – on a cliff overlooking a huge valley of blue-tinted eucalyptus. It felt so special, and it really felt like we had made it at that point. We had travelled all the way from England, and now, on the other side of the world, I got to be there to watch my aunt get married.

Eventually, our lovely trip to the blue mountains had to come to an end. Grace and Lucy were going off to Vietnam for a month with their mother, so we wouldn’t get to see them until February which was a bummer, but my mum and dad were also going off to a house sit (really close by actually, but they wouldn’t be living in Ellie’s house), which meant I got to just chill and spend time with Ellie, sometimes Thomas, and their dogs. Wilbur, in particular, took a liking to me and would scratch and scratch at my door until I let him into my room, where he would scratch at my arm until I stroked him. He drove me crazy, but he was so cute about it that I kept letting him get away with it.

I was really getting into the flow of work and a general daily routine. Me and Ellie would watch What We Do in the Shadows over dinner each night, which I so enjoyed. It was starting to feel like normal life, like this really could just be home. One of Ellie’s friends, Michelle, had a daughter a year younger than me, Beth, who I got to know, and we went and out together a few times, as well as deciding to (ironically) watch all the Twilight movies together, and that was a blast. I was even making friends here.

Before I knew it, it was my birthday. I had never had a birthday in the height of summer before. I decided to make the most of the hot weather and go to ‘Aqua Splash,’ a sort of inflatable water park that was set up in the sea and only up over the summer holidays. I invited Beth, as well as Thomas and a couple of his friends. My mum also decided to come in with us. And it was a blast. Finally I understand why people love having summer birthdays – something I never thought I’d get to experience.

Every little thing like that, every time me and Ellie went out walking the dogs, the times I got to drive her car, the exhausting evening shifts at work, all fed into a comfortable, stable and happy feeling. A feeling of familiarity. Home.

When Grace and Lucy got back from their trip, I went over to visit them at their mum’s house, where we stayed up until 3 in the morning, to that point where you get slightly hysterical and start to find everything funny, to make a cake for Lucy’s belated birthday party the next day (she had turned 17 in Vietnam). And I got to meet her friends, and, as I had expected, got on very well with them. It was great fun.

We got to see them more in the weeks that followed, but February was rapidly slipping away. This home I had grown so accustomed to, I would soon have to leave behind. If I focused on it too much, I wouldn’t be able to handle it. So I continued on like we weren’t going to leave in two weeks, in one week, in three days.

And then it was time to go. To leave this home, these people, the dogs who wouldn’t understand where I’d gone or why my bedroom was now empty. I reminded myself that I had a cat back in England who had probably felt the same when I had left, and who I needed to come back to. This comforted me a bit – Ellie and Thomas loved those dogs and they would always have that love. My Tequila was still waiting for her version of Ellie and Thomas to get back: me.

Nonetheless, tears were shed, goodbyes were uttered that felt far too soon to say. The weekend before, we had already had to say goodbye to Grace and Lucy, which had been heartbreaking on its own, but saying goodbye to that house and that place, even my job, which Beth had gone and handed her resume into when I had handed back my uniform, was so hard. It was nice that Beth might end up working there, it felt like a continuation of sorts… One of my favourite coworkers, Madiha, was working at the front when me and Beth came in, and she gave me a couple of free cookies to say goodbye.

After packing our all-too-familiar, all-too-heavy rucksacks once again, we were off. Leaving this cozy little suburb behind. Ellie took us to the train station in Sydney where we would be catching our Greyhound bus that would take us away from her. Of course, it was heartbreaking all over again to say goodbye to Ellie, who I felt closer to now than I ever had. I love her so much.

And then the bus set off. Leaving the land of safety and home, to once again set out on what felt like an impossible voyage. It felt all too familiar, like leaving behind our little train station at Castle Cary all those months ago.

We would be going back there, now. Every step would take us closer to our little home in East Pennard, even if it took us further and further away from the tiny pocket of Australia that I had come to think of as home, as well.

I had always known it would be hard to go, at the end of our stay in Australia, but ultimately I knew it was worth it. I can now call a place home that before I had only been able to try to imagine. And despite the pain, and the sadness of parting (and the three month trip back ahead of us), that makes it all worth it.

To know that part of the world. To have existed within it. To want to come back to this place, some time in the future. I owe that to this trip. And I will try to remember that, on the long long voyage home.