There was something hypnotic in the way my car sped through the vast Queensland expanse. The grey of the asphalt, scorched into the ochre earth, no longer felt imposed upon the landscape, but as part of the land that had stood for millennia, unchanged, unmoved.
Driving, I felt awed and, in a way, overcome, at the thought that I too, was momentarily a part of what many before me had experienced, before moving on, and that there would be many after me. Only the mountains and the land would remain standing, silent witnesses to history and the people who were part of it.
I had come to Australia three years ago by chance rather than any intention or plan. I had lived in America for ten years by then, having migrated from New Zealand with my family to join my husband’s extended family who lived there. I had spent ten long years in what felt like suspended animation; living on the periphery but somehow removed from truly living life. In New Zealand, I had enjoyed stable public sector employment, a two-income household, home ownership, and all the things we take for granted in any first-world country. But America was an eye-opener. It wasn’t tree-lined boulevards and people living the American dream. Rather, that felt like a fallacy, created by media hegemony, which lures us into an alternative reality, one that exists only in curated Hollywood movies and soaps, fed to a global audience.
We had landed in Los Angeles, the city of angels. All I could see were swarms of homeless people navigating the streets with their worldly belongings in trolleys. Parks were full of empty bottles, makeshift tents, and people whose vacant eyes reflected their empty lives. It felt surreal, like I was walking through a set of some post-apocalyptic movie. Then, we moved to Houston as my husband found work in the IT industry geared to the mammoth oil and gas sector in Texas. We soon bought a suburban home in a gated community, which I thought would be the beginning of our new “normal,” but I couldn’t have been more wrong. The high walls of our new neighborhood insulated us from the world that existed outside. The lake situated in the middle of the homes with its fountains and well-manicured lawns lulled an onlooker into thinking all was well with the world, but you only had to drive out of the big security gates to know it wasn’t so.
Our children had started attending local schools by then, and every single day I waited at their bus stop, half expecting to hear of yet another school shooting. There were metal detectors at schools, and all the school buildings looked like prisons, with no windows looking outwards, just impenetrable concrete. I started becoming hyper-vigilant, starting at any unexpected sounds even if we were just shopping at a Walmart store.
Maybe things would have been different if I had started working there. Employment and an associated identity had always been important to me, and I had worked since I was nineteen, but when we migrated, our youngest was just a toddler, so the plan was to start working once she started school. By the time this plan could come into effect, my mother-in-law, who lived with us, developed Alzheimer’s dementia which progressed at an unbelievable speed. One day she was normal, her cheerful and sociable self, and the next she could not recognize us, her son, daughter-in-law, and the grandchildren whom she doted on. She became unrecognizable, and her personality changed rapidly. She became delusional, accused me of stealing her possessions, constantly screaming, shouting, and banging on doors or trying to leave the home or piteously calling for her other children. We had to tell our neighbours of her condition, fearing that they might think we were abusing her.
My husband has three other siblings: a brother who lived in another city and two sisters who lived ten minutes away, but their disappearing act would make you think he was an only child. We looked after Mum by ourselves at home as her condition deteriorated for six interminable years until she passed due to Covid. No respite, no holidays, no help. We footed her medical bills, the cost of her medication, and later, her adult nappies when she became incontinent. The American health system presents a complex landscape. While it offers provisions for individuals with very low incomes, those in the middle-income brackets typically rely on private insurance, which can involve significant costs for premiums and out-of-pocket expenses for services. It didn’t help that we weren’t citizens, so we couldn’t expect government assistance either.
The macrocosm of American society was no better, with racial and social tensions seething palpably just under the surface, as the world saw when the George Floyd tragedy unfolded. It wasn’t a surprise that my blood pressure rose alarmingly and eventually became a chronic issue.
Anyway, circling back to how I came to call Australia home. My parents have lived in Australia for decades, working as medical specialists in Queensland. They were appalled at the state of affairs in America and asked me to make the move for an umpteenth time. Something must have clicked, because I found myself on a plane, destination “down under,” not just as a visitor this time, but as a permanent fixture.
Australia claimed me its own from day one. My parents’ home overlooked the Ross River. Every morning there was a gathering of wallabies on their front lawn, chittering and curious about my presence. They seemed to be welcoming me, a long-lost traveller who has finally found home. The cockatoos were not so circumspect. They filled the evening air with their loud shrieks, asking “what took you so long?” as they picked at the low-hanging mangoes in the turgid summer heat.
I marvelled at how unaffected Australian people were. When I had visited earlier, it had been from across the ditch from Auckland, but now my world had expanded, and I had seen much more of it, in its harshest and cruellest form. I noticed Australians have a charm uniquely theirs, firmly lodged in the belief that everything will turn out right. The first time I heard the phrase “too easy,” it struck me that it really sums up so much about this country that is also a continent. It doesn’t matter where or how or when one got here, as long as you have something to offer, Australia seems to embrace you, warts, and all.
It wasn’t long before I started working in the public sector again, in a job that is meaningful and socially productive. I could traverse years of heartbreak, frustration, and ill-health in a few short months. Of course, I am not blind to the flaws of this young country or its history or the injustices it was built on, but all things being relative, I can only say from my experience that it is a whole lot worse on the other side of the fence.
I have renewed appreciation for the everyday things we take for granted, like universal education and healthcare, social welfare, being able to walk on a beach without carrying a handgun, being able to send children safely to school, and go driving on a grey road that stretches into the horizon through this ochre-red land that I now call my own.
Maybe this is what Australians mean by “living the dream”!
