One Year Downunder

On the first anniversary of Tracy and Dan’s permanent move to Australia, I find myself thinking about the immigrant experience. Today I took the bus up to the very end of the peninsula north of Sydney, called the Northern Beaches, to the lovely little village of Palm Beach. Yes, lots of palms! While waiting for the return bus, I struck up a conversation with a spritely 86-year-old woman and two very polite 20-somethings. It turns out the woman, impeccably turned out in a black pantsuit and jewel-tone blouse, was born in Istanbul and came to Australia with her parents when she was six years old. She speaks old Turkish, and was telling the girls how important it is to learn more than one language. They were speaking a language not familiar to me, but in halting learners’ English, said they were from Czech Republic. “Ah,” said our companion, “you are speaking Czechish. Don’t ever forget your mother tongue, even though Australia is the most wonderful country in the world!” Her brother lives on the central coast and once a month he travels by bus and ferry to meet her in Palm Beach for lunch. They are able to speak in Old Turkish so they don’t forget their heritage. Our young Czechs are studying English and hope to be able to immigrate to Australia as well. Traveling around by bus, I’ve heard many different languages I can’t identity, although no Spanish yet. I’ve been thinking of my great-grandparents’ experiences as immigrants to the US; it must have been similar in many ways. As we boarded the bus and moved south again, I noticed the lady was pensive, her bright violet eyes seeing past the palms of the roadside to a distant yesterday.

My most favorite recent immigrants, the Ries tribe, have settled into their new lives and a new house in Newport, a five minute walk from a dandy little beach and the village shops. The bus line is also a five-minute walk and Dan takes the bus to his work in central Sydney. Tracy faces the insane traffic for her 20-minute drive to the lab where she works three days a week. Jack and Abby are in the last couple of weeks of their school, Sacred Heart of Mona Vale. With my arrival, they’ve been able to take the city bus, which operates as a school bus in the mornings, by themselves into school rather than driving with Tracy or going on the bus with Dan. Backpacks on their backs, bus tickets firmly in hand, they pop on the bus for the 10-minute ride to school. They like to sit up front, as there are noisy teens in the back. Scary for seven and nine year olds.

And speaking of noisy, I’m delighted to report that my feathered alarm clock still calls to me in the mornings: our resident kookaburra begins yelling around 530am. We have flocks of lorikeets and cockatoos screeching their way around the neighborhood, as well as some doves, minahs, and as-yet-unidentified little brown cheepers. Our delightful human neighbors are waging a losing battle between the lorikeets and a the gorgeous flowering yellow gum tree in their back garden. The lorikeets love the blossoms, which they savage as they aim for the tasty bits deep inside the bloom. Phillip and Pam have tried netting (the lorikeets get under the netting and can’t get out, making a whale of a racket) and hanging flashy CDs on strings, to no avail. Phillip was last seen brandishing a broom and charging at pesky birds but he’d have to spend his entire day out there to keep them away.


Our garden is lovely, though neglected for a couple of years. I’m having a wonderful time revamping and cleaning. Abby, Jack and I have got a worm bin going, called a Can O Worms, of course, and we’re feeding 1000 red wigglers kitchen scraps till they get big enough to get going on garden trimmings too. We’ve planted seeds (beets, carrots, lettuce, alyssum, nigelia, poppies, sunflowers & flower mix) and planted out sturdy seedlings (tomatoes, watermelon, basil, sage, petunias, lobelia, strawberries) and most everything is doing well. We did have some little casualties when a band of marauding snails rampaged through the sunflower seedlings leaving only pathetic tiny stalks in their wake. So off to Flower Power this morning for iron chelate, which is an ok snail bait. I also put coffee grounds around the seedlings as Australian snails apparently don’t care for that either.

Insect life is astounding as ever. A cockroach sighted in the house resulted in mass hysteria with bug sprays, fly swatters and yelling. It wasn’t that big, but it’s likely the critter was well-fed: something has been eating the peanut butter off the mouse traps without springing the traps. And truly disgusting were the eight cockroaches found swimming in the bottom of a wine glass, left outside, with about an inch of wine left. Even after an all-night orgy, some of them were still alive in the morning. Ugh.

The kids swim in the Newport

Nippers Club on the beach on Sunday mornings. It is wonderful! Last Sunday, about 250 nippers, ages 6-14, and about 200 parents swarmed to the beach for a couple of hours of organized chaos. The kids are learning great skills in surf safety and having fun at the same time. Parent volunteers work diligently with the kids with games and races. Lovely mayhem!

I’ve found a Rotary Club and am already signed up to volunteer at the Carols In The Park event this weekend. Seems odd to be singing about snowmen when it’s 85F and the cicadas are humming their own tune! Shops are full of Christmasy stuff and tinsel and lights are everywhere. We’ve got a little tree, fake of course, but valiantly sporting ornaments.

We had a Duck party for The Civil War Game, which we had to tape in order to watch it at a decent hour. We hooped and hollered like all Good Ducks everywhere. Go Ducks!

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