Photos

This morning I had to go through the photos. Not all of them, I was looking for a particular one, but quite a few. All out of chronological order, so I saw myself grow fat, grow younger, grow geeky, grow long hair, grow happy, grow tired.

The ones that struck me most were the photos of buildings that you can only find in Australia. There was a photo of my place in Brisbane which was in a gigantic old Grand Colonial Queenslander on Dornoch Terrace in West End. There was a photo of the pub in Forbes, NSW, where I stayed with my friend Jeffrey and Wanda the weekend of my very first week in Australia when we did a big drive out bush - all Victorian lacy wrought iron on the balconies and the red tin roof. There was the big hotel in Cairns were I stayed with the boyfriend before S.

The thing that made me sad is that no one I meet here will be able to share those experiences. I won't be able to turn to them and say, "You know Queenslanders, right, with the vertical joins and the big verandahs?"

I remember feeling a similar thing when I moved to Australia in the first place, mostly about childhood experiences. No one watched the same Saturday morning cartoons as me, no one would have heard the Oscar Meyer Weiner song on the ad, because the ad didn't show there.

This is a similar experience, but this time it is my fault. I chose to do this. I did this on purpose. I made the break with people there rather than continue the history and build upon and within the shared experience. I have no one to blame but myself.

But then, I did get to see a palm tree, a mango tree and a Hills Hoist (!) via web cam today, so maybe it's not all that far away after all...