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| Country/Girl - loving life at the Chinchilla Melon Festival |
Well, well, well what do we have here?
ANOTHER anniversary to blog about? Well what do you know?
One year ago (tomorrow… details, details),
I moved to Dalby, Queensland, Australia. In the scheme of things, it wasn’t so
large a move. My friend Amy, for example, moved to the UK last October. I mean,
way to show me up, there, friend, sheesh. But still, it certainly was a pretty
giant change of lifestyle. I left a city of more than 2 million people, full of
my friends, family, job and familiar *everything* to come to a town I knew
almost nothing about, and which has less people in it than the suburb of New
Farm, where I used to live.
Before I left people either wanted to tell
me I was crazy and that I shouldn’t do it, or that everything would be magical
in the country because “gosh darn the people are so friendly”. So how do I feel,
after a year of actually living here? You’re damn right I’m gonna write a list!
· Well gosh darn, yes, the people
are pretty friendly. But not because of an antiquated, simple attitude, or
because of some idealised city-person imagining where all the farmers lean on
posts and tell you to have a nice day, missy. People are friendly here because
they identify as belonging to Dalby. They are filled with pride, a sense of
belonging and camaraderie that you simply won’t find in a city. They want to
better their town, they want people to like it, they want you to feel welcome
so that you become a part of it too.
Also. It pays to be nice when there’s not that many people around. You don’t want to piss off too many people in a place where everyone knows everyone.
· And yeah, that’s not a myth. A lot of people know a lot of people here. People define themselves by their connections with others. Everywhere, I mean, all people do that. But the boundary of where those people are is smaller, and the likelihood of an overlap is significantly increased when you live in a small town.
· Perspective changes. Dalby is not actually that small. When I lived in Brisbane I could not conceive of somewhere tinier than Dalby. The first time I went to Newcastle, the 7th largest city in Australia, I thought it was amusingly small. And now, well, I recently drove through somewhere called Macalister. That’s what happened, I drove through it, in about 45 seconds. Whoosh.
· Similarly, Dalby is not even a little bit remote, like I used to think it was. In reality, three hours from Brisbane and one from Toowoomba is not remote at all. And we live in town, too. Drive 10, 15 minutes out of town and you start to see real country. There’s a 24-hour Maccas here, this is a metropolis.
· I thought I knew how to drive. But now I *know*, you know? Driving in the city poses its own kinds of challenges, but you have to be ruthless here. If I hadn’t learned to be ruthless, I’d still be waiting to cross the highway at the intersection. Right of way has a different meaning when you’re dealing with roadtrains.
· Some of the things I thought would be hard, like getting a job, were easy.
· Most of the things that have been actually hard have been things I never even thought about. Like what do you eat on a Sunday when all the shops are closed and you haven’t got anything in the house? And how do you deal with cravings for Japanese or Thai food when the nearest restaurant is more than an hour away? Actually most of the hardest things have been food related.
· Worse than food cravings, have been people cravings. I’m not so sure that this has anything to do with living in Dalby, and a lot to do with not living in Brisbane, but I do get kind of lonely here. I miss a lot of specific people, but mostly I miss being amongst people who’ve known me a long time. I miss being comfortable with friends. The strangest thing about this is that a lot of my friends have left Brisbane in the last year, anyway, and I really feel like moving back would not solve this problem. When we see one another, it’s brilliant, but we have all moved on, in some ways, and most importantly, we must continue to move forward.
· Shaking up my life has been the best thing I’ve ever done. I was stagnating in Brisbane, on a career path I wasn’t happy with, doing the same thing all the time without any goals. I have experienced more new things in the last year than I have in my entire adult life. I’ve learnt so much about myself, and what I’m really like, when given the space and time to sort that out. Moving to Dalby was a change that turned me upside-down and shook me. I’ve been going through the stuff that fell out of my metaphorical pockets and working out what I want to keep ever since.
· I’ve learnt so much about Boyfriend, my partner in crime this year too. I’ve seen how strong he is under pressure, how clever and brave he is. I think we’ve seen each other at our best and worst this year, and it’s set our future together in stone, and onto a really exciting path.
· Moving somewhere, anywhere, I think, gives you a real sense of empowerment. But moving somewhere so different and scary, somewhere with a different culture, in many regards, and a different way of life, has made Boyfriend and I both feel like we could do anything, we could move anywhere, and be ok.
