100 Days in Australia
We’ve just passed our 100th day of living Down Under, not including 14 long days spent in COVID-19 quarantine on arrival.
In the last 3-and-a-bit months we have moved country, parachuted into a new town, started new jobs and had a third child… because #YOLO.
How it is going? I would say… ja no well fine. We’ve had three distinct phases: arrival adrenaline, eye of the storm and now an unfamiliar season where we’re all at home for 3 months while Cath’s on maternity leave. All that to say it is hard to know how its going because the game keeps changing.
A short word on quarantine. It was a wholly bizarre experience. We spent 14 days trapped inside 2 adjoining hotel rooms in Adelaide. Surviving only by following a detailed schedule of activities and crafts we emerged in one piece at the end of it, relationships intact. I noticed that within a few days we stopped even thinking about the outside world. This little South Australian bubble became our world.
Interestingly, the boys have asked ‘When can we go back to the hotel’ a couple of times since departing. For them, 14 days with unfettered access to mom & dad was a hit. It has been a surprise to see how easily they have adjusted to the move and highlights that as parents we are probably 90% of their stability.
And then it was off to our new home in the neighbouring state of Victoria!
With our visa only allowing us to work in regional (read: outside the major cities) areas, we have landed in a small town called Traralgon. On arrival we discovered that the locals have done away with that first ‘ra’ and its pronounced T’ralgon. Its technically in the state of Victoria, in the Gippsland region, in the Latrobe Valley. Traralgon makes up 1 of 5 local towns to form the Latrobe City Metro.
The challenges of relocation had us on the backfoot already but within a few weeks my wallet was stolen at the grocery store, I scraped a nice lady’s SUV and Jack crashed his bike into the neighbours car leaving a 20cm scratch on it.
There was a two week period when I hesitated before leaving the house lest I add a fourth incident to that list.
OK maybe there was one more. The setting… Ruth’s first day home from the hospital. In order to make room for Cath to have a nap I valiantly loaded baby into the pram and the boys onto their bikes and set off for an evening stroll to the nearby duck dam.
My first moment as Dad of 3!
However en route home Will high-sided and went face first into the pavement. The various wounds spouted a waterfall of blood, pooling in his mouth before draining down the front of his shirt. Some alarmed onlookers supplied us with absorbent materials and we made for home. We arrived looking like the victims of a zombie attack — Will in soggy red, wailing on my hip and Ruth fast disappearing under a pile of bloodied paper towel in the pram.
Growing up my family spent 3 good years in Queenstown (Eastern Cape, SA) when I was Jacks age (5) and the similarity to Traralgon has not been lost on me. Ours is a small town… really small… that is largely well looked after, with a decent retail offering, some agricultural support services, a renowned paper mill and a heaving coal-fired power station. There is some offshore mining on the coast and I suspect a fair number of locals are involved in it.
The average weekend includes an outing to a forest or beach in the area, or a low key bike ride along the town’s creek. The seaside is an hour away, and the region is littered with small towns, water falls and nature walks.
Bike rides are a daily event. The suburbs are strangely quiet and yet there is an evident building boom. The countryside north of the town is gradually being consumed by blocks of neatly packaged homes that if I’m honest all look pretty much the same.
Most locals spread their lives across the 5 small towns in our metro, with some combination of accommodation, work and schooling. It takes a bit of getting used to, but we are already discovering little gems in neighbouring towns like the Morwell Town Centre Park and Glengarry BMX track.
Finding a church was always going to present a challenge, having been heavily invested in church life back home. We had the luxury of moving within our network of churches when we did move town.
After a couple of visits we have settled at the local Baptist church and connected with a few young families and their weekly small group. Australia is a world apart from South Africa when it comes to the idea risk and national crisis that it will take some time to understand what it means to be a faithful Christian here. There’s a real risk of becoming too comfortable and losing touch with the difficult reality of communities back home and in other countries.
Cath is working at Latrobe Regional Hospital (LRH in local speak). It is actually one of the major employers in the area and there are plans to expand its operating capacity quite dramatically in the next few years. I’ve heard almost no positive feedback from locals about it, but our experience of Ruth’s birth was pretty positive!
Ruth is doing well! Gratefully she seems happy to lie on the ground and flail for extended periods of time while the boys run riot around her. Jack and Will have accepted her into the family but until she’s able to throw a ball or ride a bike I suspect they will remain a little ambivalent.
Ruth’s arrival cast us into the local health care scene, both before and after birth. Things run a little differently here and is has at times been frustrating dealing with the restrictive process of referrals, before you can access specialist opinion.
Jack and Will have settled into their new school. Will is currently a Wombat and Jack is in kindergarten, and will move to prep (Grade R) next year. The Aussies are in no rush to get their kids into school and kids born after April 30th are only eligible for the following year’s prescribed schooling. As a result both boys spend much less time at school, and much more time annoying their dad at home.
I won’t be working this year and so far its been a pleasant change of pace! When Cath heads back to work (part-time) after her maternity leave my situation will become more complex wrangling all three kids. Wherever there are gaps I intend on pursuing my many hobbies in this unique season. Come the new year I hope to secure gainful employment in a part time capacity.
Moving to a new country with the intent of staying long term comes with a heap of philosophical issues to process, particularly around identity. Having chosen to leave South Africa you feel like you’ve relinquished your claim to that heritage, and at the same time I think it is unlikely Cath and I will ever feel Australian. There is also a bizarre inclination to criticize your new surroundings, maybe in response to feeling a pang of unfaithfulness to the land of your birth. I had not anticipated these thoughts to be as acute as they have been but will muddle through them as we go.
I think its fair to say we‘re on our feet, albeit a little flustered. It remains for us to put down roots and build a new life here, the opportunities are certainly there for the taking.
A few more photos to end
