The Return to Oz

A couple of weeks before the flying kangaroo decided it wasn’t suited to flying, being a two legged marsupial and all, a Qantas A380 transported me from yesterday back to the future. Can there be any better welcome than a sparkling sunny Sydney Sunday morning to remind you what a great place this is? The sunshine continued down to Canberra, though after a few weeks in the Pacific Northwest it was noticeable how grey the green of the eucalypts appeared. Greener was the garden, which occupied my time and provided access to endless Vitamin D in the first week back, alongside a spot of reading, biking, walking, shopping, eating, and drinking.

While my return was somewhat eclipsed by the Queen being in town as well, it was great to catch up with friends, drink good coffee and avoid tall racist Greek princes bumbling through flower beds. After so long away I was particularly keen, despite its grey tinge, to go bush. The time of year especially appealing as winter turns to summer and life lurches forward at a tumultuous pace. Life which includes snakes and echidnas, all observed from a safe distance on a classic country bush ramble around Googong Dam one very warm morning.

In a now fully serviced yet still with dodgy exhaust car, the second weekend back heralded a return to Sydney and opportunity to glow by the sea, feel inadequate amongst the lean, fit, stylish people around me, and take solace in wonderful brunches and sand in the toes. With leisurely time on my hands I took the long way round, detouring via Kangaroo Valley and embarking on a thoroughly enjoyable amble amongst wildflowers to view verdant valleys and sandstone castles of rock. Ticking off one archetypal Aussie landscape, it wasn’t too long before another was in view, and the saturated blues, greens and yellows of the south coast provided welcome background to coffee and cake at Kiama.

Sydney itself provided that wonderful feeling of milling around on a beach with a coffee while still enjoying temporary retirement. The surprising thing is that there seem to be lots of people on temporary retirement or, more likely along the Eastern Suburbs, copiously wealthy to be able to potter around and watch investment returns pile up while the other 99% sleep in tents. Many of these people seem to partake in exercise as a means of filling their days, the multiple steps from Coogee to Clovelly providing a beautiful arena for their aerobic excessiveness. Others simply get someone to tell them to run up to a tree and back several times, oblige willingly, and pay them handsomely. For my part, I took the middle ground – a free walk with moderate briskness.

This exercise just about justified sharing a pizza and chips with a beer and chit chat in Bondi later in the day, and a non-American but equally impressive burger even later in the day. By the next morning, the revisit to Globe for breakfast probably tipped the food v exercise scales deeply out of my favour, so once more some time to walk it off around the sweeping sand of Cronulla and the northern bushland and sandstone cliffs of Royal National Park.

While there was some murk, a choppy ride across the Hacking River, and an unfortunate stumble to a lookout with views violated by a nude bloke with sagging appendages tanning his plums, the return journey to Cronulla was significantly plainer sailing and sunshine returned for what was a blissful hour on the fully clothed beach. How I have missed those Australian beaches, they really are the world’s best.

The remainder of the weekend embraced more in the way of eating and a little less in the way of exercise, though my final breakfast by the beach was followed by 217 steps uphill and back to the car for the return trip to Canberra. By now I was getting dangerously close to embarking on permanent retirement, but with some business related income on the horizon, the trip back started to feel a little like the end of another holiday. Still, there was significant diversion to stretch it out, quite literally diverting to the Wollongong freeway and a fine vista from the escarpment before the long haul home. And, back there, one final event which officially signified the return to Oz. Steak on the barbie maaaaate.