Two and a half weeks in
Who would have guessed it would really happen. I’m in Perth and in the last 2 and a half weeks I have travelled to the other side of the world, stayed in my first hostel, stayed in my second hostel, lowered myself to drinking Australian wine, and actually come to terms with being as far away from home as I think it’s possible to be.
Let’s deal with this in order.
The flight to Australia is not actually as long as everyone thinks, it is, in fact, much much much longer. The tearful (is weepfull a word?) goodbye left me mostly distracted for the first leg of the journey, and the airport pint took me the rest of the way. I had my first ever gin and tonic that didn’t actually have any room for tonic, a new experience that I am not at all against and didn’t expect to get on a plane but there you go. By the second flight the ease of the journey so far had left me feeling so calm and ready that you can imagine the shock when I immediately got travel sick, a feeling which proved to be inescapable over the next 11 hours on a plane. As a result, it’s fair to say that the excitement of arriving in Australia most definitely took a back seat to the sheer relief of not being in a moving vehicle. This relief was incredibly quickly taken away as we inevitably jumped straight into a taxi…
The first night I could not have been more tired and also more scared of seeing a spider/snake/insert other scary Australian animal I had spent the last year being warned about. The main win of the week was managing to evade the dreaded jet lag, for which I was very proud of myself. The main loss of the week was being so incredibly scared and homesick. All I wanted at times was to leave and I genuinely considered calling it a holiday and heading home after a few weeks. It’s not the first time I’ve been away from my parents or in an unfamiliar place with no clue what I’m supposed to be doing but that doesn’t make it any less scary. I still miss home and I will always miss home when I’m not there no matter how far away I am but the fear and homesickness is so worth it for the experiences I’m having and am going to have. That being said, I know there is no chance that I would ever be able to do this on my own. So thank you Cam, for being such a rock for me and being so incredibly deserving of the title of partner.
My first ever hostel experience got off to a suitably terrible start: no wifi, no mirror, no lamp, no air con, practically no window, and sharing a bunk bed with my fiancée as a 24-year-old. I know not all of these things are that bad but believe me when I tell you that in that moment there was nothing that anyone could have done that would make me feel worse. Which means that it could only get better! So I decided to put to the test what turned out to be one of the truest pieces of wisdom ever known: being a little bit tipsy makes everything better. It really, really did. I settled into the hostel eventually and genuinely surprised myself with how unbothered I was with it. I regularly caught myself thinking that I think my mum would genuinely be horrified if she were asked to do some of the things I’m somehow already very comfortable with.
On to the next hostel and, let me tell you, a double bed and wifi have never felt like such a luxury. Although this hostel was mostly filled with French people (I know, I don’t know how I put up with it either) I ended up loving it and, with the help of my old friend Pinot Grigio, I would even go as far as saying I was the life and soul of the party on the last night. That is, of course, according to my memory of it which is more than a little hazy but I’m sure it’s at least 90% accurate.
I have now somehow found myself at a point where I have a room and a beautiful house to call my own for an unspecified number of months, a potential job, and a feeling of excitement for new adventures that is as genuine as it is unexpected. All it took was to acknowledge my fear, but not let it control me, which is as easy as it sounds. I realised that, even on the other side of the world, there was a place for me. I followed my intuition, which will never lead me in the wrong direction, and it took me to Scarborough (not to be confused with the original and incomparable Scarborough in my homeland of Yorkshire).
And that’s where I am now, somehow already feeling so comfortable in this amazing country that is not at all as scary as I managed to convince myself.
Cam and Lib With Us 