Because I may be wrong, but I’m pretty sure I just heard a click.
A soft subtle one that came in through the window on a breeze with a cool thread running through it.

This time last year it was winter in my life. February in New York City. A totally brutal month as the novelty of winter clothing and snow and staying home is gone and everyone wants it to just damn end so we can get on with our lives.
The seasons that followed unsurprisingly were spring, summer and autumn. But then we got on an airplane and suddenly it was summer again.

Now though?
I could easily be mistaken having no frame of reference for this part of the world, but as of today, I think it just might be autumn.

Better. It’s getting better.

Today I read a blog post written by an Australian recently moved to NYC.
She’s obviously having a difficult time. Stuggling with money, struggling with work, and scraping by in a city and culture so similar to her own yet so totally foreign in very subtle and surprising ways.

Oh yes, I know that story.

Reading her words, I felt for her.
I left her a comment with some suggestions from my experience, and hopefully she finds something in them.
But it’s not just about tips on how to find a decent job or what metrocard to buy, it’s about being new and feeling frustrated that everyone ELSE has it figured out and is making it work, why can’t I?
I felt for her because I’m living it too.
It was only this week that I figured out which mass-transit card to buy here.

I’m working now and it’s caused an enormous difference in my outlook.
I’m not sure if that’s due to my lessened availability of time with which to fret, or simply the comfort of a routine, but it’s working and I don’t really care why. Things are getting better for me and I’ll take it no questions asked.

The summer is peaking, exploding with color and life.
I’ve really only made one friend so far but she’s totally awesome and I’m lucky to know her.
I will never experience today again so for now, screw my train ticket. I don’t care that I bought the less-than-best option, because I figured it out, the world is alive in acid-bright color and things are getting better.

Feel free to laugh at me, but until recently I didn’t know that passion fruit was an actual fruit and not just a flavor.
Basically I always thought it was an invented fancy name for generic red.
This candy has PASSION! It must be valuable and exotic!

Turns out, whoops! it’s a real fruit! An incredibly delicious fruit that I will only consume in smoothie form because it’s edible guts resemble snot both in texture and color.

I found the one above growing on the fence next to our driveway.
My mind is blown that I live in a place where various tropical fruits grow as weeds in my yard.

Also, just as I wrote that last sentence, a huge flock of Sulphur-Crested Cockatoos flew by just to drive the point home.
Because, you know, the palm trees, mangoes, sunlight, and sweltering february didn’t get the job done.

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.

Yesterday my landlord arrived carrying some sort of archaic metal giant-plunger looking contraption. He then set up a patio chair in the grass and proceeded to sit and direct while his ancient wife hoisted the plunger thing into the foliage of my mango tree over and over to pick any fruits ripe enough to eat.

I know the international law of fruit trees is anything that hangs over a property line or fence is fair game. The trunk and bulk of this particular Mango tree is on the neighboring property, but it’s an enormous tree so the amount in our backyard is still very substantial.

Now technically, yes, he gained ownership of the mangos in our yard when he bought the property, but as a renter, I feel I have some usage rights and my own kind of claim to them as well.
True, it’s a mainly spiritual claim as I’m the mangoes primary emotional support.
But, Internet, seriously. Friendship has a real value. Just wait until you’re getting attacked by crows and see what you think about nobody coming to help you.

See? I’m an awesome friend.

Ownership and usage aside it seems very unsportsmanlike to do the following:

1. Use a tool to take the mangos from the top. Fine if you’re a farmer, but when you’re an 80 year old retired carpentry inspector you can afford to donate a couple to the bats in the name of natural harmony. Call it ecological retribution or maybe just call it being NICE.

2. Bossing your equally ancient wife “Those over there!” “You’re doing it wrong” “You missed the gold one!” loud enough for me to hear from the living room while she’s working her ass off.

3. Premeditating your laziness by bringing a folding chair from home. My landlord is no invalid folks, so stay off the “maybe he has a condition” train. He’ll come over and haul garbage cans and hedge trimmers around for HOURS. Usually it’s the hours before my alarm goes off but regardless, I’ve seen him do all sorts of stuff. He’s fine.

4. Who needs that many mangoes? These fruits are HUGE. Like the size of my hand huge. A single mango will supply both The Mister and I with enough natural sugar and deliciousness for an entire day. What in the hell is he going to do with twenty?

Poor, barely ripening mango, your time is limited. I cannot protect you from the dastardly landlord

We had a massive rainstorm today right in the middle of the afternoon.
I had big ideas of walking around job hunting today, but the torrential downpour made for a change of plans which included having my husband trim my hair, eating falafel and taking photos of all the plants dripping from the quick but strong shower.

Many people have asked me if Brisbane measures up next to New York.
I respond that there is no comparison but not that New York is beyond compare, it’s simply a matter of radical difference. Apples and oranges if you don’t mind the cliche.

Life here is slower. We cook our own dinners, we dry our laundry on the line in the yard, we get up early not because we have somewhere to be, but because the sun is shining and it just happens. We go for walks simply for the sake of walking.

Brisbane is beautiful and still incredibly novel to me. I suppose as time passes, I may get used to bounty of produce, the strength of the coffee and the quality of the light. I don’t think so. I think that for me, Brisbane will always remain at least somewhat otherworldly.

A person born and raised in the rain can never fully grasp the reality of a year of sunlight and mangoes.

The mister and I have finally moved into our own apartment here in Brisbane, but before I delve into that I want to show you around OldSpace, an artist studio warehouse space that was HQ for our first month in Australia.

OldSpace is located in the inner-city neighborhood of Bowen Hills. It’s an ex-print press facility that has been taken over by artists and the space is honestly amazing.
The entry corridor of small office spaces opens up to a massive open-air workspace in the rear of the building edged by a two-story tall wall of windows facing the backyard and the trains that rumble by every couple of minutes.
I would love to show you wide shots of the space in it’s glory, but out of respect for the artists and their works in progress, we’ll have to stick to just the little details for now.

My favorite part, the backyard.

I wish I could say that we’re settling in, but that part hasn’t really even begun yet, at least for me.
We’ve secured an apartment but aren’t moving in until next weekend, and I’m filling up my days working on writing and web projects at the library. I’ve started looking around for work, but I’m afraid of false starts, of setting myself up for less than what’s possible by choosing the wrong thing.

I’ll be honest, it still feels like a vacation or some sort of mini-move. Three months and we’ll be back in New York! but I know that’s not true.
Despite not knowing if we’ll be here past this next year, we’re still here for the full year, and internet, despite how it flies by these days, a year is actually a pretty long time.

I need to settle in, find a job and most importantly get used to the rhythm of the city and country.
I’m still running at New York pace but I can only see it in contrast to other people. The mister has admonished me to relax! slow down! more times than I care to admit.

I know that there will be plenty of work opportunities for me here. I know that eventually we’ll have a home life where I can feel comfortable cooking, working on projects or just puttering around.
I know that with time, I will build a network of friends and inhabit daily routines, but for now it’s new and I’m trying to relish it.

Mother and child possum* on the back deck of the state library were wondering if perhaps I could spare some snacks.
* please note Possums are Australian and cute, O’Possums are American and vile.

It’s been a week since our arrival in Australia. In many ways, it seems unreal.
The light is clear and white and the sky is blue forever. I’m certain this will seem an unfair sentiment for friends from New York to hear, but it’s swinging into summer here and there is never a need for a coat or long sleeves.

We’re staying in an artist collective warehouse space where the mister will be setting up his practice. It’s incredibly kind of the other members of the community to let us crash there while we search for a home, and the space is incredible in regards to my New York-based expectations of what constitutes a loft. If this is slumming it, sign me up.

After a shockingly quick jetlag recovery, we’ve spent our days viewing apartments, taking care of all of those administrative chores life brings, and trying to explore the city.
Although the mister lived in Brisbane for well over a decade, his history with the city is based around one general area containing three or four neighborhoods close together..
The location of the space we’re staying in, the library where I access the internet, and the area where we’re looking to set up a home are in vastly different parts of the city from his former life here and as such, he’s experiencing the city anew right alongside me.

Brisbane is beautiful and I’m hopeful and excited to see what unfolds for us here.