GrubsAbout: A Bit about New Holland...

The Swan River with Perth City in background

In the early part of the 19^th century a short little man with black wavy hair and a moustache accidentally stumbled into the western part of Australia on his boat via the Swan River due to an unexpected gust of wind in the wrong direction. Actually, that’s not true. I made that bit up. I’ve no idea what Captain James Stirling looked like or if he suffered from wind, but nevertheless, there he found himself. The silly little man chuffed off back to England and told the Queen what he’d found – a great land full of beautiful natural attractions. What? Was he blind aswell?

Before him the French and Dutch had passed by, named the place New Holland just to stamp their authority, snubbed their noses, and called out Au Revoir with a click of their clogs to a land they declared ‘sterile, forbidding and inhospitable’! It should have been left at that. The aboriginal tribes would have continued to live peacefully and in harmony with their land (well, not everybody loves green grass and rolling hills and non-murderous insects and reptiles, do they?).

But no. The Brits went and brought out shiploads of criminals that they didn’t have room for and set up camp and colony along the Swan River. And that’s where it all began. I’m inclined to agree with the Dutch and the French. But let’s just imagine us as New Holland for a bit. Riding around on bikes with bells and baskets, wearing clogs and berets, eating croissants for breakfast and painting pictures of it all while sipping on espresso alfresco style, in one of the many hundreds of cafes selling ‘pain au chocolat’ and chocolate brownies which aren’t really chocolate brownies, saying ‘Bonjour Ca Va? instead of ‘G’day mate’ and not a barby’ to be seen!

Anyway, I digress from the topic which was meant to be ‘jet lag’. Have you ever experienced jet lag with two young children after crossing an 8 hour time difference? I highly recommend it not! As I said, we arrived home in the early evening and in an attempt to align ourselves to local time, went to bed as usual. Two in the morning we were up, bright as buttons, hungry for dinner. A very eerie feeling: being up and about as if it’s the middle of the day, when the rest of the neighbourhood is fast asleep. By 6am we were back in bed, sleeping, till 2 in the afternoon. This went on for about three days, about the amount of time it took for mine and Maciek’s body clocks to adjust while the kids’ did not. And we were exhausted and desperate for normalcy. So we gave the kids some drugs. Don’t judge us. It’s travel sickness medication, and the problem was related to travel, was it not? With the added bonus of ‘may cause drowsiness’. Sshhh! But it didn’t work. In fact it had the opposite effect and caused hyperactivity. The only solution was to ride it out. Which took a full week. Just around the time we were about to check ourselves into a mental asylum!

Same again, complete with black swans

That first week was a culture shock. We enjoyed novelties like being able to get any manner of take-away food, from KFC, to fish n chips, to Chinese, which we did, nearly every day for that first week. Disgusting to think of it now! It was brilliant to be in the shops and understand everyone, and have conversation with strangers without having to explain that you can’t understand them. The amount of choice in the supermarket and just the amount of ‘stuff’ in general in the shopping centres was overwhelming, as well as the number of cars, and bizarre people wearing bare feet and pyjamas out in public! We were surrounded by concrete. And shops. And people. And to be honest it was all a bit frightening! It was like George of the Jungle. It felt like we’d been living in a bubble in the forest for so long we’d forgotten what civilization felt like. We ached for the mountains, and the country-side, and space, and as much as we enjoyed seeing our family and friends again and being surrounded by familiarity, we wanted to run away back to Austria.

But we had a giggle one evening while watching a comedy festival on T.V (yes! T.V! We could watch T.V!). An American comedian called Arj Barker, very popular here, was discussing the not so popular tourism campaign Australia came up with a few years ago, which featured a bikini clad Lara Bingle frolicking around on a paradise beach, before pouting into the camera and saying in a perfect Aussie accent “Where the bloody hell are ya?” It didn’t go down so well. So Arj Barker had come up with some of his own possible jingles. Obviously aimed at an American audience, the best one he said he could think of was this:

‘Come to Australia! Twice as far as Europe - without all that pesky culture!’

And so it was, that clogs were replaced with flip flops, and croissants with the humble sausage sizzle outside Bunnings on Sundays.

(But, you don't go to Europe for the beaches!)