Finding a Home in Sydney

« Return to Australia

Welcome to Australia.

I had arrived just in time for a family reunion of sorts; aunts and uncles and cousins, some of whom I had never met, some of whom I had last seen fifteen years ago when I lived in South Africa. Early morning clouds had burned away to reveal a clear, blue sky. My cousin Lance drove me through Sydney’s eastern suburbs, past the beaches of Maroubra, Coogie and Bondi. I was deeply upset. Sydney is often compared to Vancouver and Cape Town, and these three coastal cities are usually cited as the three best cities in the world. Every time someone mentions Sydney in Vancouver, I find myself getting on the defensive. ‘But look at our mountains!’ So driving past these gorgeous, packed sandy beaches, the funky restaurants and bars, the winding streets along the dramatic cliffs, I had to swallow a bitter pill of reality. Sydney is everything they say it is - absolutely beautiful.
‘Look, we pay for it,’ explains Gary, an old friend from high school who moved to Australia twelve years ago. ‘Sydney is not cheap, but look at the quality of our lives, look at the weather!’ It was another blue-sky day, and any time anyone tries to trump Sydney with another city, Sydneysiders, as they are known, have an ace up their sleeve. Weather. Hot, dry, often. It’s Rio without the political, criminal and socio-political mayhem. It’s Vancouver, a lot bigger with better beaches and without the rain. I could go on but we just drove past some girls who seem to be clad in bikinis made of guitar strings.

Australia is an island posing as a country posing as a continent. There are only twenty million people, most of whom live by the sea, and as the sixth largest country in the world, it is difficult to imagine just how big and empty the land is. New South Wales has some six million people, and just about every one of them seemed to be tanning on Bondi Beach. ‘There was a fourteen-foot shark sighted the other day, and I heard they had to pull about fifty thousand people from the waters,’ explains Lance. Even though the last fatal shark attack in Sydney took place in the 1960’s, I made a mental note to scan the horizons for fins before dipping any toes in the warm Pacific. If the spiders don’t get me first. The fact is, there are more things that can kill you in Australia than anywhere else; spiders, snakes, sharks, gators, the ozone-less sun, not to mention distracted lifeguards. I narrowly avoided walking into a monster black spider, swinging by its web in the cool, breezy night. ‘Oh that’s small,’ says Lance, taking a wide berth. But with Australia’s famous hole in its ozone, it’s quite possible the critter was radioactive.

The family barbie was warm and delicious and if Sydney is not my home, it immediately felt like one. My great-aunt and uncle, neither of whom I had ever met, invited me to stay in their lovely penthouse with a fantastic view over the Eastern suburbs. With thousands of South Africans relocated in Sydney, I was bumping into old friends I hadn’t seen since high school in Johannesburg. South Africa were playing Australia in a five-day cricket test match, which is the equivalent of a Canada-US ice-hockey series, and the whole sunny lifestyle left me a little homesick, a perfect combination of my formative years in South Africa and the last decade in Canada. Damn these colonial hangovers!

Gonzo Gallery for Finding a Home in Sydney

view full gallery

Tweet