It’s been just over two months now. It’s time to talk about life in Brisbane.

Months ago, when I wrote my reflections on New York and leaving it, I intended to also publish my thoughts about moving to Brisbane. I’m glad I didn’t. I want to say that my expectations for Brisbane were wrong, but that’s a simplification and doesn’t do the city justice.

As I assume y’all know, I’m A’murrricun. My husband is ‘Strayan.
We moved to Australia and specifically, to Brisbane for a number of reasons. Immigration hurdles, a fantastic career opportunity for him, weather and allergy issues, access to affordable/FREE healthcare, a desire to change the pace of our lives for a moment all mixed with myriad other issues and led us to where we stand.

We’ve had many people Australian and American alike ask, Why Brisbane?
For those of you not familiar with the cultural geography of Australia, Brisbane is largely regarded as not a city but a big country town. In many ways, calling it that is a gross insult. Brisbane is home to millions, has an impressive and beautiful inner-city skyline, mass transit, and a world class Contemporary Art institution. The Queensland Performing Arts Center is currently hosting a production I read rave reviews for in New York just a couple months ago.
In some ways though, the reputation is earned. There isn’t much in terms of non-state sponsored culture here, my guess, because the infrastructure doesn’t exist. There IS mass transit, but it’s very expensive, has an incredibly complex and confusing fare/zone system, and is pretty much completely aimed at shuttling commuters from the deep burbs into the city core and not at all for moving city dwellers between it’s own neighborhoods. Rent is expensive (Brisbane monthly rent savings over NYC:$14) and there aren’t a lot of the types of businesses that attract creative culture.
The city itself appears to me as pretty progressive, healthy, and economically robust, but many of the nearby small towns and suburbs are plagued with severe poverty, drug use and racism.

To get back to answering the question, our choice of Brisbane boiled down to a job.
The Mister was offered the opportunity to work on a year-long project that culminates in an amazing event. It’s something he’s incredibly excited to work on and it brings together two of his seemingly disparate passions.
There was no way we would say no to this project if that meant a year in Brisbane, Detroit, or even Timbuktu. It’s that important.

Life here is and yet isn’t what I expected. Nobody knows what living in a new city is going to be like, and many random factors contribute to your level of contentedness in a place.
The Mister and I chose our home and neighborhood here in Brisbane with our Williamsburg, Brooklyn lifestyle in mind. We wanted good coffee, friendly neighborhood bars, sidewalk cafes, and green grocers. We wanted well-stocked newsstands and a place to buy really fresh seafood. We wanted to be close enough to everything that our lack of a vehicle wouldn’t feel like a deprivation.
We got all of those things, but rapidly discovered that many of our Brooklyn requirements were unnecessary in Brisbane. Life here is different, and our so are our needs.

The existence we’ve put together here has given us many unexpected rewards. I can’t say that I’m having any problem adjusting to the weather. Shorts and flipflops in January is a welcome departure from the black slush with mixed garbage reality of New York winter.
I suppose it’s no surprise to most that food in Queensland is incredible. Our proximity to farmland and the sea is reflected nightly in our dinners, 90% of which we cook at home.
The air here is clean and smells like frangipani and mangoes. We wake up to the sound of the ravens arguing and mynas singing instead of the impatient honking of traffic-snarled drivers on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway.
I’ve started using the library again and I make the bed every day not because I’m forcing myself to do it, but because I just do.
Although we’re technically poorer here than we ever were living in New York, we are richer in so many ways.

These days, I don’t know where home is.
I can see that Brisbane, despite it’s beauty is not it. A tiny three bedroom apartment is waiting for our arrival back in New York, but perhaps the west coast of the US with it’s proximity to my family would be better.
Maybe it’s foolish to leave a country with universal medicine and an easy way of life, perhaps Sydney or Melbourne would fill our needs.
It could be that our future is somewhere else completely. Europe is an option as I had the foresight to pick a man with EU citizenship, but both of us having tasted the difficulty of adjusting to another English-speaking culture have no veil of illusion about the glamour of living in Germany or France. It could be awesome, but it would definitely be difficult as we’re both monolingual.

This story is not fully written. We’ve only been here a short time, and I know that my view will change greatly when I find employment and make a couple more friends.
Those things take time but luckily, I have patience.