I love being here in Australia - it's all so new and oftentimes odd....but in good ways, you understand.
It's not that I'm a stranger to the place having visited numerously over the last three decades and having travelled a bit of the vast red continent but there's a quantum difference between visiting and actually living in a country.
I've waxed ad-nauseam on the things I've encountered along the fringes of the eastern seaboard where most of my Aussie family are dispersed but, as fate would have it, Australian Immigration placed us in a State we'd never encountered before, viz: South Australia. In its capital city, Adelaide.
Why?
Well, good question and one we're asked frequently by locals.
"Why Adelaide?"
And it's as if they want you to say you lost the immigration lottery or that Sydney was full or Brisbane had banned Saffers or Melbourne was too expensive for us - like that. They're perplexed (some of them) when you say you've ended up there as a result of a state sponsored work visa that made up the balance of our immigration points shortfall and placed us in this region...
They nod, sagely. Ah, so it wasn't your decision then - that kind of a nod.
"But we love it here," we stress. They pause.
"Yes, we really do. We've been to New South Wales, Queensland, inland to Northern Territory, the desert, y'know - traveled around a bit and to be honest - this place is really amazing - maybe our favourite spot so far..."
It's like Australia's best kept secret - a lot off the beaten track, even by Australian standards. A small city - the twenty minute city - everywhere is kinda twenty minutes from you - the city, the beach, the hills, you name it. It's a low population growth area. It's great.
"Hell," we say, "we lived in the sticks to get away and out of Johannesburg. Adelaide is a nice size - it's manageable...and it's picturesque. It's a beautiful place."
Then they're really pleased that you love their city - they can tell your enthusiasm is authentic. You're not blowing smoke up their asses in the hope of employment, although the thought is never far from my mind right now, it has to be said.
In this enclave we arrived - no family around us, no friends that were known to us prior to our arrival, no jobs, nothing - stark reality biting hard - almost as hard as the exchange rate that eats up disposable cash better than pac man ever did. Eek...
And in sharp contrast to what we see on the wire about insane xenophobia back in South Africa (not that that represents the average South African mindset, we know), South Australians welcomed us with open arms. They're accommodating, they're helpful, they're friendly and they genuinely want the newbies to succeed and prosper here.
It's not that they're throwing jobs at us, no - everything comes at a price and you have to work at it and they are real sticklers for doing it right but hey, after the systematic erosion of standards in the industry in which I worked back in RSA, it's refreshing to have systems that cater for every little eventuality - sometimes, I curse it and hanker for the tacit anarchy of Seffrica, moan that Australia is leaning a bit too far in the other direction - why is everyone so darn well behaved all the time...?
And then I remember why I wanted to come here in the first place - I actually wanted some of that normalcy.
Then there are the quirks that perhaps escape some - like the wheelie bins on display throughout the suburbs. And I'm not talking about just on garbage day, no. There is no qualm whatever about having a well manicured garden fronting the street with your well-washed trifecta of wheelie bins proudly placed in some position of prominence almost as a feature of the facade, their shiny yellow, blue and green lids gleaming in the morning sunlight.
I personally am for having the things behind the gate and fence and only roll them out on the weekday in question to have the squealing, hissing, red-eyed monsters (hated by cats everywhere) embrace them with their precision hydraulic grasp and dump their contents into the confines of the beasts before they rumble up the hill back to their cave for another week. Garbos (no, not the Greta type - the dustbin variety) belong out of sight - erm, no, not really. Or maybe it's just here in Mitcham but I've noticed it elsewhere.
And the routine, the scheduling - it's great. I've become a suburban garbage aficionado - I'm out there with my box cutter on a Thursday evening (every second Thursday evening - they alternate between organic waste and recyclable from week to week) slicing the corrugated cardboard so I can get a little more into the receptacle and ensure no overflow between now and the next fortnight - I know - it's absolutely pathetic. But I love it. Shit works.
I'm a waste management consultant just like Tony Soprano was....not...
I even have two separate plastic bins for the glass bottles and, don't you love South Australia - they still give you back 10c on every bottle you take down to the recycling depot.
I rake the fallen bark and leaves, I whip-snip the grass and clover, I build the mulch pile and I leaf blow (I swore I would never own one of those ever.....) the leaves into manageable piles - all the things I've never had to worry about before.
From the self serve petrol stations to the handling your own credit cards in the check-out card machines in stores, you become a whole lot more independent very quickly and life becomes a well-oiled machine where nothing is taken for granted any longer.
Ironically, we had a power outage here in Blackwood just over a week ago and it did not make me in one iota nostalgic for ESKOM and its rolling national load shedding bullshit... Load shedding - a politically correct euphemism for "we're switching power off because we spent the money and didn't maintain or upgrade the power grid when we should have" I guess "load-shedding" is much shorter and has a less introspective or honest ring to it.
Difference was, I went online and found, instantly, what was going on and when power would be restored and it was. My wife who's been here for almost a year already hasn't experienced any anomalies in the power in all that time - still, I guess, shit happens.
Anyhoo...I'm sure that I shall land a job in the very near future with the correct degree of effort and dedication to that task at hand. We labour under no misapprehensions when it comes to that facet of being here too.
We have no silly expectations and are quite willing to do what it takes (without quite resorting to the Ned Kelly model of personal remuneration) to make that work.
All the while, I'm mesmerised by the flocks of exotic birds (that have not and are never likely to become a nuisance) all around me, the ponderous koalas, the possums, the fire warning klaxons and the general goodwill I always feel when I meet and greet Adelaidians.
We've got a very long way to go but I still feel as sparkly as a wheelie bin lid albeit hopefully not quite as full of shit as those magnificent receptacles might be.
And just for now (perhaps it will change when we become citizens) we shall keep our garbos out of sight until absolutely necessary.
