The First Week in Oz

At the beginning, each day was an adventure.

Everything was new – it was ‘pinch me’ exciting being in AUSTRALIA with my FAMILY – and ‘punch me’- what the hell has happened with all the media interest in our journey?

I remember floating a little that first afternoon – was I really here, was this actually happening? Had I really just eaten three slices of white bread, margarine and hundreds and thousands? As the afternoon moved into evening it was time to give in to the exhaustion we felt – the trip across Australia had been pretty relentless.
Wilbur, one of Ellie’s dogs, came and cuddled up with me on her bed – Ellie had lovingly moved out into Thoma’s room for us – and sweet sleep, on an actual bed, came easy. 

The next morning, I woke up early and my first thought was ‘we have so much time’… We had nearly two and a half months stretching ahead of us. 

When Ellie and Thoma travel to the UK, even though they come for three weeks, we usually spend just ten days together and it passes by so quickly. Two and a half months was the same as seven of those precious visits!
So Much Time. 

My whole body smiled as I hugged myself …it was too early to put the kettle on so my thoughts wandered back to our journey here, Turkish cats and the wonderful dogs in Kazakhstan, the torrential storm in Tbilisi and the big red bus into China, cycling through the forests in Laos, planting tress in the mountains in Thailand, so much beauty in our world…I sighed a little wistfully and even when I thought about Georgian minibuses they didn’t make me shudder quite so much anymore. I’d liked all the drivers after all…how bad could it have been? (Must remember to pack my ‘rose tinted’s’ for the journey home)

Wilbur wandered in and jumped up on the bed – he is so completely adorable that dog. I stroked his beautiful soft ears and belly and every time I tried to stop, he’d pat my hand…(pretty insistently – this is your actual job now human).

Eventually it was time to get up. I went to get breakfast and Ellie was there, Ellie in her kitchen! We hugged and she showed me where the bowls were kept …and I’m sorry if this sounds a little crazy but it actually brought tears to my eyes, knowing where my sister keeps her bowls in her kitchen (…I did have a moment of self reflection, noticing that it could be a tough few weeks if I started crying every time she pointed out where something was kept in the kitchen ‘is that where we keep the tea towels?’ – ‘OMG, the cheese grater is kept in the second drawer down’ ‘…are the dustbin bags really purple?’…but I decided I didn’t care, if I felt like crying I’d cry 🙂

We sat and had breakfast or rather I did and she had her morning barrocca and coffee. We looked at each other and she smiled that smile I know so well… ‘lets take the dogs for a walk!’ We grabbed the harnesses and the doggy poo bags and I retrieved my sandals from their dog proof hiding place. When I turned back Ellie had her hands on her hips.

‘Now,’ she said – clearly meaning business, ‘there’s a few things you need to know about Australia.’

‘Firstly the sun will burn you even when it’s behind thick clouds because it’s vindictive.’ ‘Secondly, we have 21 out of 25 of the worlds most deadly snakes…if you see one, don’t go running towards it trying to get a closer look – either stand still, or if it’s brown, move away fast.’ 

Snakes! I so wanted to see one …I couldn’t wait to get my first selfie with one of the striped tiger ones, or the black ones with red belly’s – even the brown one would be cool…

My attention moved back to Ellie, she was still talking and I guessed I’d missed a couple of ‘Stralia’s most deadly’… ‘don’t try and pull them off…they attach at both ends and their teeth can get stuck in the skin.’ (What had she been talking about…?) 

She moved on quickly and went through a fairly lengthy list of the spiders I needed to look our for and she even told me about a teeny weeny blue ringed octopus about the size of an egg cup, ‘it will kill you without a backward glance,” she said. I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to encounter one of them on the walk round the park but what did I know…this was ‘Stralia!’ 

…It all sounded so exciting 🙂

We got the dogs ready and headed out into the warm sunshine. Pretty much my only experience of walking dogs on leads had been trying to stop them pulling ahead or dragging them to come with me when they have had their head down a hole for ages. 

Ellie doesn’t do it like that.

‘Who is the walk for?’ she asked me, 50:50 I was going to get this right, ‘the dogs?’ ‘Yes, the dogs, let them go where their noses take them, simples.’ 

We still had a rough route we followed but when they stopped, we stopped, and when they went off in a random direction for a while, we followed. I liked it, it felt respectful and way less stressful than the way I’d ever done it before

As we meandered about Ellie introduced me to some of the locals, punk doves (doves with cool hair styles), galahs (pink and grey parrots) and bin chickens (a sort of ibis with a bald vulture like head and a very long beak, and like the foxes in our cities in the UK they have adapted to the world we’ve made and are doing very well thank you).
It was such an ordinary thing to do, wander around the playing fields with the dogs – the houses, cars and streets reminding me of home, the clothes people wore were familiar and I could understand what people were saying, but, with the exception of the grass, nothing in nature was the same. I’d see a black and white bird that looked vaguely like a magpie but the Aussie magpie is bigger and way more vicious – apparently, during the Spring, there’s a stretch of road near the beach where the people wear crash helmets on their way to work to stop the bloody things dive bombing their heads.

One of the magpies gave me ‘a look’ but Ellie said they ONLY attack in the Spring…

As we walked back in the gate Ellie glanced at her phone. “Well that wasn’t part of the plan’ …the message was from Mike. 

Grace, my soon to be niece, had tested positive for Covid.

The whole family had been in Ellie‘s living room the day before, our wonderful little welcoming committee…

Bugger.

We had so much on in the next few days, then it was Christmas, and then Ellie and Mike were getting married on the 28th.

Bugger again!

Ellie had a sore throat within 24 hours and Mike tested positive the next morning, the skittles were tumbling and it looked like we might have to cancel a whole heap of stuff, including Ellie’s ‘hen do’. 

Nothing to be done about it now though, so Rosa and I sat down that afternoon and started to write her CV.

One of the things Rosa knew would help the trip feel more manageable for her had been a more settled life once we hit Australia and so Ellie, Rosa and I had agreed that she would try and get a job locally and Ellie would figure out how Rosa could have her own room at her house.

As soon as the CV was finished Ellie printed it out for us and we took it round the local shopping arcade – Rosa plucking up the courage to go and talk to people in a bakery and the local ‘dollar shop’. Both looked possible but we knew there was a Subway on the corner by the roundabout, so we went there as well, and by that evening she had her first shift…

Rosa loves a good Subway. It was definitely her favourite of the three options. The work visa had cost Rosa a lot so it would take her a while to pay that off but it wasn’t just about the job and about the money, (although that will come in handy when we’re trying to get home)… it was about the courage it takes in a foreign country to go out and look for work, and then, when you get a job, to actually go out and do it… Watching her walk out from her first shift in her disgusting bright green and yellow Subway t-shirt was another one of my proud mama moments…

We did so many fun things in those first few days – it felt like we were storing up a lifetime of memories.
The evening Rosa got her job we went to Hunter Valley Gardens, to see Australia’s version of the Longleat Christmas lights. Later that week we went to the local Reptile Park and saw up close some of the truly terrifying things in Australia – with Thoma doing a fabulous job as our tour guide. We could feed wallabies and wild lorikeets in the park area in the middle, the weather was hot but not melty (apart from for the poor bastard in the Santa costume taking photos with the little kids…for him it was melty!)

It was sociable, exciting and very ‘Christmas’ despite the weather being so different. We got to have a great run-up to Christmas. Lots of decorating trees, lovely meals and movies, last minute shopping for things that we knew everyone needed and wanted… It was fun, and it was with my sister.

Ellie’s Christmas present to me was a haircut, a wonderful luxury after four months of slowly turning into a sheep. (It was only after the haircut that she was willing to let me meet her friends 🙂

Every day was full and lasted an age and alongside all the fun and family we did several radio and newspaper interviews and, after only four days at my sisters, we found ourselves preparing for Australia’s version of the BBC to come round to interview us.

…at 7 o’clock in the morning.

We were going out live on their breakfast show (no pressure). We cleaned up any dog poo in the back garden, moved tinsel around and even moved the Christmas tree next to the sofa in the living room. We worried about what we should wear, we were going on telly after all, it didn’t matter that I’d worn holes in all the clothes I’d bought with me when we were going on the radio, but I did not want to look like a scruffy sack on the TV.

I struggle not to freeze in front of a camera and saying something that makes sense whilst at the same time ‘staying relaxed’ and ‘being myself’ is like juggling a typewriter, a bowling ball and a shark. I’m not much better on radio either so I wasn’t wildly enthusiastic about the initial press interest and yet, hadn’t it been my idea to write a press release to send to our local radio station, Somerset Sound? …and didn’t I want to challenge myself around what I have to say?…to trust that not only what I think but the way I think? To notice that I like listening to people who are themselves, I do like the voices of really clear confident people who know how to speak on the radio but the people I really admire are the ones who speak from an honest place inside of themselves. If I was going to find that place in me then I need to at least try and speak up when there is a chance…maybe 🙂

So, I had gone out with my sister and bought my ‘interview shirt’ and decided that ‘positive’ was the way to go.
The production assistant who came round to film us decided to do it outside because the light was better (so glad we’d picked up the dog poo) She was a really warm person and we chatted away, it turned out she wanted to do something like this herself one day which helped us relax, …and then it was over – relief! 

We went back to planning our day – and then ABC rang us back, they really liked us and wanted to do a more ‘in-depth piece’ for the evening news… Shit! 

Ellie agreed to be interviewed this time as well – I look a bit like a tomato in the footage, but it was okay. The story is a sweet one and we wanted it to be told. The journey, the family, the wedding …and climate change.

Our first radio interview was the BBC World Service, and the interviewer was funny and warm, and we all enjoyed it a bit – it wasn’t too long, and we felt proud of ourselves for talking about the climate.

By the end of the last interview though we had been blown away – we could never have predicted the level of interest…

Newspapers:

• The Mirror – http://tinyurl.com/5n8tstw4
• The Daily Mail – http://tinyurl.com/4ucxrhda
• The Metro – http://tinyurl.com/2b3vsj2e
• The Telegraph – http://tinyurl.com/5n7xn62w
• Online on the BBC (twice) – http://tinyurl.com/2p89srkr (…and we’ve heard reports that it was in other papers back home as well)
• ABC Australian News online – http://tinyurl.com/5n6kueet

Radio:

• The World Service
• ABC – (three different ones around Australia) =- http://tinyurl.com/2hzwdfk9
• 5 live
• Radio 4
• Somerset Sound – https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-somerset-67881326
• Radio 6 (apparently)

TV:

• ITV Regional News – http://tinyurl.com/y7c3t896
• BBC Points West 
• ABC Breakfast – http://tinyurl.com/yk957j55
• ABC National News