Something is constantly stopping me from continuing this story. Partly I think it’s because it’s “my” story, it is very precious to me. By now, about 13 months on from returning, it’s become some sort of weird Dreamworld. It’s like I’ve told the story aloud so many times to so many different people, emphasising on relevant bits depending on the context of the conversation, that if I wrote it down, that would become the “definitive” version and it would somehow come close to describing what it was actually like, but it won’t.

Even I don’t know and can’t understand the range of 1000 emotions I experienced during those two years in Australia. From fear that I’d brought Covid into the Sydney house and having to keep away from my girlfriend who I hadn’t really seen for months because of it; to pure stress about farmworking for visas; the pure joy of sitting peacefully with goats; the eternal frustration that there was always something wrong and why can’t you just be happy!; to – stop! – pinch me, I’m dreaming. We’re actually here living this life.

I think one of the saddest things was that after we came back, Claire posted that going back to Cornwall (after living in Norwich for nearly 10 years) gave her more of a sense of freedom than Australia ever did. I felt the same, in a way, that as soon as we were on the train from London to Cornwall, I felt like I was a tightly-gripped stress ball that someone was only now releasing after 2.5 years. But isn’t that sad? You’re over the other side of the world, in a country that I’d been dreaming of visiting ever since I was 10 years old and… It’s hard. It’s stressful. It’s unenjoyable. There’s a global pandemic. You feel trapped. You have hoops to jump through, you can’t just do what you want. There are rules. And people around you are struggling too. Your backpacker friends are finding it difficult. And when you and a loved one deal with that chronic stress in two different ways (internally combust, thinking everything is fine, and one externally combusting), that creates issues of its own.

At the time, I think I thought I enjoyed Australia. And I did. But what I didn’t realise until I came back was that I was in “survival” mode. I felt like I needed to look after someone, because they couldn’t cope, so I couldn’t look after myself, and I had to cope. There wasn’t any other option. I knew to some extent that I’d shut down sometimes but it wasn’t until I came back that I noticed the depth of the quiet unease.

That isn’t to say that I wasn’t very present in some moments and drunk the whole experience in. One of my favourite memories is driving down into Bundaberg, down Takalvan Street: the huge, wide, American-esque highway, sun shining, sunnies on, windows down, radio on, and undoubtedly smiling, probably on our way to Supercheap Auto to get something for the 4×4 (X Trail and a Navara). Just those simple, daily tasks were the high life for me. I loved it. I don’t know why. I guess I loved the sunshine, the space, the skies, the fact there was so much room and no traffic, the 1950s feel, the sense that everyone is so chill that you probably can do whatever you want, and there’s no road rage coz, No Worries, Mate. Anywhere off the highway was almost “desolate”. It still had that undeveloped, rural, wild feel to some extent.

It’s so difficult, when someone asks me how Australia was, to know what to say. I am both the luckiest person to have fulfilled such a dream and yet I feel robbed, I feel grief, that it took everything away from me, it broke me down, made me forget who I was and brought out the scorpion side in me.

I guess the main purpose of anything is not the experience itself but how we relate to it, what we do with it, and how we learn and grow from it. I think it will be a long process but I’ve already made a good start over the past year. I have such good and such painful memories, often concurrently. Allowing things to be both is a new skill I’m learning. I flit between acceptance of what was and simmering rage at everything that happened. Even this post started off as anger and through it, I experienced a bit of joy describing such a simple, wonderful car journey memory.

Until next time x