Our hope and threat the future, its silk tent
filled with all our powerless promises, waiting to billow
away to itself in the smallest wind.
– ‘On Time’ by Petra White
The sun hangs low, hovering just above the sails of the Opera House as I drive over the Harbour Bridge one Sunday morning. I’m heading to the northern beaches for a swim, specifically Manly, specifically the Cole Classic.
I’d signed up months earlier but, in the rush of life, had done little training to prepare. I’d told colleagues about it as a way to make myself accountable and some had responded with ‘easy!’ while others were quick to tell me they ‘could never do that.’
The sun is shining and it’s going to be a hot day but the warmth of the morning is still bearable. I complete the first part of the challenge – finding a park – and head to the beach where the scent of sunscreen is heavy and strong in the thick, salty air. The guy giving me my event kit asks if I know what I’m doing.
‘Not really,’ I admit.
‘Well you’re going for a swim this morning, that’s the main thing.’
I get my race number written on my arm, ask a stranger to apply sunscreen on my back, and then walk around the coastal path to Shelly Beach. Some swimmers have already completed their race and are now walking back to meet their friends. Locals mooch down to Fairy Bower for a dip in the pool or a coffee by its side. There are others, like me, walking barefoot across the rough footpath, nervous and excited about what’s to come.
The water is cool at first and adrenaline pushes me forward. I take regular breaths but never feel like I’ve quite taken in enough air. The swim is more thrilling than I expected. Harder too. I’m not used to swimming this far out and being rocked and rolled side by side by the waves. I’m nearly dumped by a wave while swimming the final stretch towards the beach. It’s hard to run up the sand and over the finish line when you’ve already used up all your energy in the swim.
But there are smiling faces at the end, a tannoy shouting congratulations, and trays of fresh summer fruit. I grab a peach and my commemorative towel before heading back to the promenade.
I drive myself home, taking a winding, circuitous route over many bridges, and realise that a year ago the thought of this here, now, driving myself to and from an ocean swim, would have been unimaginable. Each part of it is so far from what I was capable of doing then. That’s what I’m most proud of.
So much can happen in a year.
In an attempt to get to know our neighbourhood better, a friend and I go for a swim one Saturday afternoon, but it’s warm and everyone else has had the same idea. The place is packed with young families with small children testing out crustacean-shaped floaties and their Christmas-new snorkels.
We chat by the side before going in search of a sweet snack.
‘Breathe into the present – however you may find it,’ instructs my yoga teacher.
The sun sets outside the studio. Cockatoos screech overhead. There’s the rumble of nearby traffic.
All this longing – for things to be easier, or different – is not helping.
A friend says I’ll get along with her friend. We’re both in Sydney, so we agree to meet up. We hit it off immediately, swapping our life stories back and forth in a way that maybe only women can, with words tumbling over each other in a bid to get out.
This helps. I’m not alone. We’re not alone. The day-to-day feels sturdier knowing there are others similarly swept up in the narrative of it all.
‘Rejection is redirection,’ she wisely reminds me. Some things are not meant to be. Better things are around the corner. I need to trust it. We both need to trust it.
A torrential storm surges through Sydney and takes with it most of my terrible mood. I’d been feeling overwhelmed and overtired, my mind whirring with fears and possibilities and new directions and endless wondering. Every recent decision has felt life-altering. As if I’m on the precipice of something but I don’t know what it is. I don’t know where I’ll be living at the end of the year, or what the shape of the months to come will look like. The weight of uncertainty – again, again.
But as the storm rolls out to sea, Sydney begins to glisten in the early evening light. Blue skies peek out from behind clouds and bottlebrush plants drip raindrops from their long, thin leaves. It’s as if some of the tense electric energy in the air has cleared. The heavy, humid swamp of feelings has been shaken with the cracks of thunder. The weight of it all has shifted. Everything’s lifted.
I drive to the airport to collect friends from London, fresh from their New Zealand honeymoon. We’re wearing matching hats, embroidered with the name of one of our favourite poets, and we rush into each other’s arms. They’re here, we’re here together.
Frangipani and crepe myrtle trees are in bloom across the city, each with a mix of creamy white and luscious pink flowers. The humidity is thick and heavy and walking feels like wading through a cloudy stupor.
Taylor Swift-mania has taken over Australia. There’s an upbeat festival feel. People walk through the city dressed head-to-toe in pink or sequins. There are cowboy boots and hats everywhere. Friendship bracelets cover arms. It’s a similar feeling to the Matildas and Barbie fever that gripped Australia last winter. A positive buzz of women supporting women and bonding together, joyously enjoying something wholeheartedly and without apology. It’s nice to be swept up in the vibe of it all. It’s infectious. It’s fun.
We swim as the sun rises. We search for fish and rays but mostly see seaweed. Still, it feels good, this. This swimming together. This sun and saltwater on our skin, first thing in the morning. This being together on the other side of the world from where we met.
Beneath the swims and the friends and the good times is a month spent in what feels like survival mode. Everything’s busy. A rush without reprieve. Multiple plans and time-rushed errands and getting paperwork in order and meeting deadlines and working on presentations and a fridge dying and then a second fridge dying and then the loan of a third and all of this stress creates layers of overwhelm and I struggle to focus on anything or to read or write much and it’s so quick to forget all this luck, all this life. Until we see the news.
I am safe, I am well. That’s what matters.
How lucky I am to have friends visiting. To have a roof over my head. To have food in my belly even if it’s from a tin. To have neighbourhood friends to call at late notice and ask if they’re free for dinner at the pub at the end of a busy week. For them to say – yes, of course – and pull me into a ginormous hug.
Grey skies hang over the city and there are spots of drizzle but we persevere and head to the beach anyway. The ocean pool is mostly empty, with two swimmers slowly gliding through the saltwater.
We put our legs in, wait a while, and then lower the rest of our bodies into the water.
We take it in turns to look at what else is swimming with us. Small fish darting, bigger fish hanging out near clumps of seaweed. Suddenly, a cormorant dives in. My friend’s partner pulls his head out in shock, asking if we saw it too. I wonder if the seabird feels more comfortable to dive in and catch fish without the usual summer crowds. We swim and swap goggles and describe what we see in the sea. Magic, this.
A friend of a London friend throws a house party. We joke about how tenuous our connection sounds, compared to how solid it feels. It’s so nourishing to have these tendrils of my London life winding their way gradually, steadily, reassuringly into my Sydney one.
We talk about the friendliness of fellow travellers and how living abroad makes you aware of the loneliness of calling a new city home, especially when it doesn’t quite feel like it yet.
We vow to go for a drive and get fish and chips together in the coming weeks, to work hard to keep the feeling of being a tourist in Sydney last for as long as it can.
It can take visitors being here to remember how good this city is. How lucky I am to be here. How hard I’ve worked to make this city feel like home. When the stress and life-ness of it all gets too much, it’s so easy to lose sight of that.
There’s a night when multiple wrong turns mean being stuck in traffic in a torrential downpour and rogue ‘scenic’ routes through nothing-special parts of town.
Even then, it feels like the right place at the right time.
The right people make it so.
What a perfect reminder.