Australia Day
Koala at Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve, ACT, July 2015. Mouseover for more fur.
I really should have a whole gallery of Australiana here by now, as promised back in July, but still haven’t gotten round to sorting out half the photos. Partly that’s because I added more photos a few weeks later, when I had to go back unexpectedly for a couple more weeks. I haven’t written about that, either, but will eventually—probably after I’m back from my next trip. Which will be in a couple of weeks. Five years without getting home, and I’ll have gone back three times in eight months.
It occurs to me that this is an image of Australia in a special sense, because it isn’t an image of my Australia, it’s from the adopted Australia where I spent my twenties. Koalas aren’t native to Tasmania.
A year or two after I’d left the state I had lunch with a friend of mine on a visit to Tassie. His young step-daughter was with him. After listening patiently to the two of us blather on about old times (which really weren’t that old at that time), she asked me, “How do you like living in Australia?”
What’s that, I thought—she thinks I’m from overseas? Couldn’t she tell that her dad and I went to school together, here?
And then it dawned on me. How do I like living in Australia, as in the mainland. As opposed to Tasmania.
Australia is a collection of half a dozen different worlds.