I’m very excited today. My post about celebrating our 10 year anniversary in Perth has just been published in the on-line edition of a South African magazine after I translated it into Afrikaans. This is the link:
http://www.sarie.com/lewe-liefdes/reise/suid-afrikaanse-gesin-se-lewe-australie/
The original English version is here: https://searchingforironman.com/2015/01/23/10-years-in-this-great-southern-land/
Airports have become a place of emotion for me, a result I suppose, of travelling mainly for leisure or to visit family or to fetch family who are coming for a visit and also of having moved countries and resettling twice. Standing at the check-in counter heading to an unknown world watching the necessities of your family’s life which had been reduced to a few suitcases sliding away on the conveyor belt has the inevitable effect of the reality sinking in of being a bit lost between two worlds. I can’t recall the last time I felt neutral about a trip, such as one probably would with regular travel for work, moving through airports with numbed emotions. It would either be excitement that I’m feeling about going on a long-anticipated holiday or when we’re fetching a family member who’s coming for a visit, or sadness when we farewell someone who is leaving, but hardly ever are there no emotions involved.
Anyone who has family living far away will have experienced this in some way or another. Since our family all live in Southern Africa, when one of them comes for a visit I usually find myself at the airport amidst lots of other fellow South Africans when an SAA (South African Airways) plane is due to land, and as I get older I get all emotional seeing other peoples’ faces light up and hurry forward as they spot their loved one/s – whom they in all likelihood haven’t seen for some time – walking out into the Arrivals hall, and I can almost feel their excitement and happiness at a long awaited reunion because I know what it is that they’re feeling. Likewise, an emotion-filled farewell moves me just as much since I know the feeling of airport farewell to a loved one too.
When our kids have travelled on their own there were some other emotions mixed in there as well – concern for their safety and wellbeing, trepidation at how they will fare on their own, excitement for their part since they were embarking on an adventure, apprehension at how I will cope without them, all the while reminding myself that the independence gained this way will stand them in good stead. Last year two of them travelled on their own for a month at the same time, making for an emotional mum (13 13 30). Of course the joy, relief and happiness upon their return and having them safely back (under my wing) is unrivalled.
When I’m the one travelling it’s become easier over time not to linger over farewells and to focus on something else instead to distract myself, such as things to do when I reach my destination, but it’s admittedly easier if you’re not the one staying behind. The person travelling does so with a purpose, whether it’s a holiday or maybe returning home after a visit to family and generally has something to look forward to for that reason, whereas those staying behind might feel a void left by the departure of their loved one who had to return to their own home.
On a lighter note, my husband travels a fair bit for work and though I don’t usually have to drop him off at the airport I once had to do the 80 minute round trip to take him his passport which he’d forgotten at home! On another occasion he was so convinced that he’d told me about his upcoming trip to Dubai (from Perth) that by the time he started packing his bag out of the blue and I asked him where he was going he looked at me in utter surprise and said: “Dubai, I told you!”, but I had absolutely no idea. The first I’d heard of it was when he started packing to go overseas for about a week. He was so sure that he’d told me but after a while of watching the sheer blank expression on my face he realised that I wasn’t teasing him and it was then that the penny dropped, a bit sheepishly I might add. He’d practiced a conversation with me about it in his mind because he thought this was going to be one trip too many and even practiced what my anticipated response was going to be, and then promptly forgot to actually tell me in person!
This time around we are fortunate enough to have a time of major excitement in our house again though, as my mum is on her way from Cape Town for a visit and in a few days’ time I’ll find myself at the airport again in the midst of some intense emotions waiting for SA280 to land. Ouma is coming!
SA280 just after landing in Perth
10 Years ago we boarded a plane from Africa and landed at Perth airport about 9 ½ hours later, walked out the airport into the late January heat feeling quite insignificant. The realisation that we knew no-one made this family feel a bit lost and it hit home as we walked into the “Arrivals” hall amidst people being welcomed and greeted by family, friends or business associates, not knowing anyone and subduedly making our way out the door to find a taxi. Arriving at our short-term rented apartment in the city the exhausted and jet-lagged kids fell asleep sitting up in chairs in the middle of the day while Ironman went out to organise a rental car and so our first week went by in a blurr of organising all the logistics of settling down in a new place with my husband having started his new job and the kids and I driving from one possible rental house to the next looking for one that would meet our requirements. We’d timed our arrival so the kids would be able to start the new school year which left us with 10 days to find a suitable school as well as a house to rent in the same suburb which proved to be a challenge in the middle of a mining boom and accommodation shortage but we managed to sign the lease for a nice house on the Friday afternoon and on Monday morning the kids started school on the first day of the new school year together with all the other kids. Two big and very important boxes were ticked.
As we’d said our farewells to friends in South Africa they would jokingly talk about the “honeymoon period” of a move to a new country such as we were doing being about three months, but having moved to Dubai just under a year prior and absolutely loving the adventure of that I felt like the honeymoon period was over when our plane landed in Perth. Being uprooted twice in under 12 months to move continents, settle down, make friends, ensure the kids are happy and doing well at school, finding substitute products in the shops to the ones you were used to, finding a hairdresser who cut my hair the way I liked it and all the rest of it, didn’t come naturally for someone who loves being in their comfort zone but I knew that this move was best for my family so I was determined to make it work. During our visit here in August 2004 while I was still grappling with the idea of having to move away from Dubai where we’d just settled a few months prior and the exotic adventure of which we were thoroughly enjoying I was under so much pressure from my husband to like Perth that I broke down in tears one day telling him exactly that: “You’re putting too much pressure on me to like it” but walking down Hay Street, Perth, another day during that visit I realised that I would be able to live in this city and that I would be able to make it work and knowing that was enough for me at that stage. I knew that the lifestyle would be better for the kids and the whole family in the long run.
Looking back, the first year was definitely the hardest but we made good, lasting friends who became our “Perth family” over time. We found the people of Perth to be very friendly, welcoming and accepting with a great sense of humour and got used to driving on the left-hand side of the road once again, everyone driving strictly at 100km/h on the freeway (after the manic speeds on the roads of Dubai), the green of the Eucalyptus which was very different to the bright and lively green of the oaks and plane trees in Stellenbosch which was one of the things I missed at first, the idea of not knowing when exactly we’ll see our family again, hearing many different accents around you every day, total fires bans during summer because of the extreme bush fire risk, and Vegemite. I only made one illegal U-turn (in my defence, I didn’t know it was illegal) and got pulled over for it by the police – much to my absolute distress, being someone who likes to do the right thing – but they accepted my explanation that in Dubai U-turns are the order of the day and a very large part of the traffic system. Having given up a work-life of accounts, financial statements, various types of tax returns, payrolls, monthly financial reports, spreadsheets and intricate cash flow forecasts built on different variables to being a stay-at-home-mum in exciting Dubai where everything was new and interesting and something as simple as picking up the kids from school was an excursion because of the distance, traffic and some crazy road users to contend with, to being a stay-at-home mum in a quiet Perth suburb where everything worked in an orderly manner as it should, it quickly felt like my world had shrunk to a triangle of going from home to school to the supermarket and back home and repeating the same day after day, and it didn’t take me long to feel a bit claustrophobic but after a weekend away in beautiful Yallingup and Margaret River after about four months I felt like my horizons had expanded and I could breathe again. With all of Ironman’s travels for work he didn’t experience this problem but instead found interesting places of exquisite natural beauty for us to visit as a family which we started doing as soon as time and budget allowed and before I knew it I’d fallen in love with the splendour that the Western Australian coastline and bush offers. The beautiful, clean beaches; colour of the water whether it be the crisp, clear Southern Ocean around Esperance and Albany or the warm, turquoise waters of Broome; the unique charm, beauty and magnetism of Rottnest Island that makes you never want to leave there; the red pindan sand of the Kimberley, age-old forests of the South-West and the vast open spaces. I love being in the countryside and still have the need to get out of the city every now and then and breathe some fresh air and I’m lucky to have the opportunity of so many great places to visit and many more gems of places yet to see. I discovered that one could actually live anywhere as long as your family was safe and healthy. I also realised that I only missed certain things (other than family and friends of course) about our life in South Africa when I actually stopped to think about those particular things (which didn’t happen every day), but when I did a deep yearning for some of those things and places would overcome me and I couldn’t help but wonder if I’d ever visit a specific spot again and I’d miss the very distinct vibe that is so colourfully part and parcel of the rainbow nation and I learnt that a photo of an African dawn or sunset still pulls at the heartstrings like no other, but life keeps us busy and there was no time or point in longing for something that wasn’t a part of my daily life as it was at that point, dwell on it or mope about it. I have been very fortunate in that my family (near and far) are all in good health but we do miss them and have to remind ourselves that lots of people live far away from their families nowadays. We have so much to be grateful for living in a safe and beautiful place that offers the kind of freedom of amazing lifestyle that it does, and the privilege of so many opportunities. One cannot but love a country that offers you the opportunity to put on your shoes and head out for a safe morning walk on your own on a quiet country road you’ve never been on and to just follow the road to see where it takes you and to keep going to see what awaits around the next bend and then as a bonus to stumble upon views such as this:
View towards Yallingup, Cape Naturaliste Peninsula
A landmark moment in my memory was the first day of the kids’ second school year, one year after arriving. After having gone through so much change during the preceding 24 months and constantly feeling like I was doing something for the first time and still learning my way it hit me on that day and I thought: “I can do this. I’ve done it before.” Such a simple thing but it meant so much at that stage. After a while we started to feel like we’re not the newcomers anymore and that we really belonged here and embraced many things about the Aussie lifestyle such as gas barbeques (after having used coal for our braai all our lives) which meant that the barbeque was ready within minutes and also that I was able to cook something on the barbie without fuss when the man of the house was away; blower vacs (a blower and vacuum combo perfect for the garden); having a bread machine and making our own preservative free bread within two hours or less; the concept of “suck it up” (just get over it); driving for hours and then looking at the map and realising that we’ve only covered a small portion of this vast country, and to say “No worries” (no problem), to stop calling a traffic light a robot as well as lots of other descriptive sayings and acronyms. We wrote the citizenship test and became citizens on Australia Day in 2009; I’ve swallowed a fly – I think that should count for at least a 50% credit towards the citizenship test – and had many more near-misses like that; started a book club together with friends which has become a close knit group of us who treasures and looks forward to book club night on the calendar every month; I’ve given up the stay-at-home-mum status and took a part-time job in 2008; I now struggle to say phone numbers in Afrikaans which had been my first language for 30 odd years (I now feel like I have two first languages); come to appreciate the Freo doctor (cool sea breeze) on a warm summer’s arvo; we’ve enjoyed lots of sunset barbies at the beach with friends; have an annual “moving to Perth” anniversary dinner with friends who arrived within a week of us and whom we met at school on the first or second school day; done many a road-trip and love the vast beauty of this great southern land but I still catch myself sometimes as we drive home after a long trip away nearly saying we’re going back to the Cape (Cape Town) and not Perth, it must be so ingrained in me, and also discovered that it’s still heart-breaking when the Springboks lose a test match. Especially in Perth. I have a number of favourite places in WA though, from Denmark to Rottnest Island, Coral Bay and Broome, and love each one too much to choose it above another. After 10 years in Perth it’s fair to say that our experiences living in both South Africa and Australia (and throw in Dubai for good measure) have all shaped, formed and influenced us as people and I wouldn’t change it for a thing. This child of Africa will always have an unbreakable bond with Africa but is undeniably also Australian and loves living in Perth. Fair dinkum.
Rottnest Island
Coral Bay
Broome
Our local coastline with view towards Hillarys Boat Harbour
Perth city view from Kings Park
Imagine a Wallaby in New Zealand, a Puma in South Africa or an All Black in Argentina. It’s a strange feeling when so settled, at home and happy in a different country to be faced with split (or not-so-split) loyalties when it comes to sport, and for some reason especially rugby in our case. Settling in this great southern land with its own spectacular beauty, vast open spaces and welcoming people makes you grateful for the freedom of lifestyle it offers, humbled by the amazing opportunities and proud to call it home, but when a national sports team from your country of birth (that other great southern land) visits, there is but one choice and that is to deck the Springbok colours.
Springbok rugby emblem
As is the case with everything in life peoples’ experiences differ and not everyone will feel the same way, not even all South Africans (otherwise a rugby game in Perth would have been like a home game for the Boks) and the memories we carry with us that helped shape us over the years are all individual. I, for instance, have vivid memories of growing up with the Springboks being an icon of national pride. Of listening to commentary of test matches over radio broadcasts on short wave before the days when sport was on live TV and also of a time when we were visiting friends in northern Namibia (South-West Africa at the time) where we were watching a local rugby match being played in the sand (it was too dry to keep a rugby pitch watered and green) and all the farmers’ vehicles were parked around the “field” and everyone was watching from their vehicles whilst listening to famous rugby commentator Gerhard Viviers commentating on a rugby test match on short wave on their vehicles’ radios, his commentary so descriptive that pictures weren’t needed.
Memories of going to school at the foot of Table Mountain next to Newlands Rugby Stadium, of Saturday afternoons spent watching rugby and eating biltong, growing up in the era of the great provincial rivalry between Western Province and Northern Transvaal, songs being written about rugby and later of the great man Nelson Mandela, our beloved Madiba, working hard at reuniting the rainbow nation and supporting the Springboks, making the 1995 Rugby World Cup and South Africa’s victory such a big part of national unity and identity.
Madiba and Francois Pienaar, Springbok captain, RWC 1995
Being married to a man who loves rugby passionately and will watch most matches “just for the rugby” regardless of who’s playing, and whose support of the Springboks meant that our social life has always been arranged around the rugby (we even turned up late at a wedding reception years ago because of a rugby match being on at the same time) did nothing to lessen my own support of the Springboks. On the contrary, I think it’s quite contagious because our kids seem to have inherited it as well. I suppose that’s not surprising considering that one of our first dates was at a WP vs Northern Transvaal rugby match – the first Friday night match at Newlands – and as such I was honoured to have cracked the nod to be invited along to such an important event. There has also been a great deal of loud “correcting” comments being made to the ref (on TV) over the years and the option nowadays to pause live TV makes for some in depth (replay and) analysis of on-field events and decisions. In his defence, I have to admit that my husband is a bit of a walking encyclopaedia when it comes to rugby and other sporting facts, tests, players, dates, scores, tries, runs, and other records and has an unreal ability to retain all those details (as opposed to detail about everyday life).
I have to confess that my sporting allegiance extends to cricket and other sports as well. It’s just not something I’m able to turn on and off at will, but I do support the Wallabies when they play all other countries. In that context the South African national anthem – Nkosi Sikilel iAfrika (God Bless Africa) and Die Stem (The Call of South Africa) “… sounds the call to come together; and united we shall stand…” – will always hold a most special place in my heart but I am equally honoured to sing Advance Australia Fair; “Australians all let us rejoice, for we are young and free…”. I am proud to be a Springbok supporter in the Land Down Under.
Searching for Ironman 