There's No Place Like Home

Where in the world is KH?

KH is at home. In Australia.

SURPRISE!

I know, I know. I apologise for fooling you. There was only a handful of people in on it and had I made it public to... the public... that would have ruined the big heart-palpitating surprise I had organised for my clueless parents. They had no idea, until I was standing at the front door at 9:30pm last night.

I am not sick or ill or unhappy. In fact, it's quite the opposite. It sounds unbelievable, but I actually reached a point where I felt ready to come home. You can't blame a girl. After 15 months of living out of a suitcase (or three) I started to miss certain things - my fancy summer dresses, my high heels, my books. And you know, my friends and family.

The realisation that maybe I didn't want to move to Vancouver came to me about half way through the summer. I came to realise that if I moved to Vancouver, I would have to set up a life for myself all over again. Find a job, make enough money to support my addictions (to clothes), find a house (preferably where I didn't have to share a room, again), find friends, find hobbies, find a local watering hole. I would have to set up my life all over again, put myself out there, be the fearless ball-buster. And I thought, I could be a fearless ball-buster in Vancouver. Or I could move home to Australia, set up my life again and be a fearless ball-buster in Sydney instead.

And for the first time, the idea of going home didn't rise bile in my throat. It actually sounded, kinda nice. Seeing my friends and family, moving back to Sydney, drinking good coffee, going running on my running track - all the things I loved about living there. But also, implementing all the things I want for myself now, like satisfying this parching thirst I have for making art and music.

So I made one of the biggest decisions I've ever made. I rebooked my flight for September. I came up with a detailed plan for arrival, wherein my best friend was going to pick me up on the Sunday I arrived and then her parents would drive me the two hours home to surprise my parents.

The week leading up to my departure was tough enough - all those ghastly goodbyes I had to make - but by the time I got to Vancouver airport, I felt like I was ready. All I had to do was get on the plane.

Then the plane sprouted a fuel leak.

I was stranded at Vancouver airport until 1am (five hours after my flight was scheduled to leave) when they finally decided that despite the plane no longer leaking fuel, it was not safe to fly (yah think?) and the flight was cancelled. They had organised buses to take us to a hotel, but having a plane-full of people all trying to do the same thing is like being stuck in a perpetual line for a Disneyland ride. By 4:30am I finally climbed into my hotel bed only to wake up at 9am the next morning, feeling like I was suffering the world's worst hangover, and be told that the flight was rescheduled for noon on SUNDAY.

So there I was, stuck in a Vancouver hotel, wobbling between insanity and reality as I tried to work out if this was all a cosmic road sign that I was supposed to stay in Vancouver and not return to Sydney.

But my flight eventually took off, with me in it and after another night's stay in Auckland, I touched down in Brisbane on Thursday morning and into the welcome arms of one of my best friends. I hung out with her for the day and then she put me on a train bound for my home town.

Half way there, the train broke down. They put us on a bus.

Half way home on the bus, a rock flys up from the road and smashes the driver's side window.

They put us on another bus.

I finally make it home where my friend's mum picks me up and we make it to my house without anything going wrong. With more excitement in my stomach than I knew what to do with, I knock on the front door. My dad answers, acknowledges me with a bemused face and next thing my mum is coming down the passageway wailing like a banshee. I'm pretty sure they both thought I was a figment of their imaginations. They're still waiting for me to disappear in a puff of smoke.

But it's not a dream. I am home and my journey, this beautiful adventure that has been the last 15 months of my life is over. It doesn't feel like it though. I feel like this is just another port on my travels and tomorrow, I will pack up all my belongings and head off again.

But this is for real and it's for good, for now at least. I thought I would be scared and bitter about coming home, back to a life which I fled from 15 months ago. But what I have come to realise is that my tale might be over, but it's not the end of the book altogether. This journey was just another short story in my life's collection. Tomorrow, a new adventure will begin.

I don't think I'll ever understand how everything came together like it did. How I ended up at Appel Farm; how I started working as a musician in Banff; how I travelled for 15 months without running out of money, losing my posessions or getting bed bugs. The person I was 15 months ago pinned all her hopes and sanity on this trip. She was looking for something she didn't yet understand. And she returned having found it.

Ciao for now. xo

The Goodbye Girl

Last year, my summer at Appel Farm passed by so slowly I could count the hours. This year, it was a zip line I flew down in a delirious rush. Nine weeks may as well have been nine days. It felt as if I arrived at camp one day, pale-skinned and buzzing with anticipation, only to leave the next day with a tan and the weary look of an old woman who has been living in a bunk surrounded by 16-year olds for the last nine weeks.

How another summer has so quickly come and gone is beyond me. As I type this from the seat of a plane soaring over the dirty landscape of New Mexico, I feel slightly bemused by the thought that camp is over. Nine weeks of classes and counselling and telling the campers not to squirt ketchup straight into their mouths is over. It feels like it was just a figment of my imagination which, for one beautiful moment, became something tangible. Then it disappeared like all figments do, back into the abyss.  And I carry on forward.

It would be lovely to fool myself into believing I will be back at the farm next year, but I know it wouldn't be true. I have sucked the place dry of everything it had to offer me and I have offered it two very willing summers of my life in return. I've come to realise that I'm ready for new adventures, which means no more escaping back to the USA each June. As I drove away in the rain on Sunday, I turned around and took one last look at the place where this whole rollercoaster first started in 2010. I remember that day now like a bunch of images flashing from an old film roll– catching the yellow school bus from New York, pulling into the Appel Farm parking lot, the first time I stepped into the bunk, the first time I even spoke to the people whose arms I cried into when I left.

Had anyone told me this is how it would all turn out two years after first deciding to apply for a summer camp, I never would have believed them.  That I would have a great time, yes. But that I would be so in love with Elmer, New Jersey that I would return for another year? That I would find a crazy kind of salvation? That having to say goodbye to those friends is like no heartbreak I’ve ever known? I don’t think that hopeful yet naive version of myself would have believed that.

There was much that happened between leaving Appel Farm on Sunday and boarding my plane to San Diego this morning, but the only part of it that I can remember is crying. And when I wasn’t crying, I was blinking back tears through bloodshot eyes and sniffling like a crack addict. The last 24 hours has just been one big blur of ‘lasts’. I looked into my best friends’ faces for the last time and I cried into their collar bones as we held each other for the last time. And in the glow of the Philadelphia lights, I had to ignore the unspoken fear that maybe these are summer flings, just like any other. Maybe our love will suffer in the lonvegity. Maybe we will become lazy with writing emails or making dates to call each other despite the time difference. Maybe the overwhelming sense of friendship which consumes me now will be reduced just to photos and anecdotes shared at the family dinner table. As untrue as I know that will be, the thought of it makes me want to vomit.

But as my eyes well up all over again, I feel no relief in the unsatisfying consolation that my friendships with these beautiful people are not in fact ending. Being best friends but in different countries is not enough. iPhone apps and email and Skype don’t create the same memoires. Seeing someone’s face on a computer screen is not the same as walking to the coffee shop with them. A letter in the mail is not the same as a conversation in person. The friends I left in Australia would vouch for this, which makes me the constant in this equation. I am the foolish masochist who continues to knowingly put oceans between herself and the people she loves.

And I know that I should be grateful that we found each other at all – kindred spirits are not easily stumbled across. But I can’t be a member of the Pollyanna Club on this one. I am handing back my badge and just being plain old down in the dumps.  

Think I’ll go cry some more now.

Ciao for now. xo

I Come From The Land Down Under

Ever since leaving home, there has been one celebration I have looked forward to with great expectation.

I considered my birthday, Halloween, Christmas and New Years Eve combined to be nothing in comparison to celebrating the one day a year when Australians are allowed to do what we do best - eat vegemite and meat pies, sizzle sausages, wear wife-beaters, reap the sunny rewards of our hole in the ozone layer and drink beer. Lots and lots of beer.

Usually, I would do all this in a bikini on the shoreline of my favourite Australian beach.

This year, I did it on the snowy plateau of Sunshine Village.

In Banff, Australia Day is regarded by Canadian locals and non-Australian internationals as the only acceptable day to stay as far away from the ski hill as humanly possible. For Australians, it's regarded as the one day when we can drink, eat, wear and behave like the rowdy bogans we all know we are, while standing in -15 weather.

Dressed in as much Australian paraphernalia as I could don - Australian flag shirt, Australian flag tattoos, Australian flag banadana and... an Australian flag, I made my way to the top of hill by 11am. Unlike many of the other Aussies celebrating in Banff, I did not stay up until the crack of dawn to see in Triple J's Hottest 100 song. Bright-eyed, bushy tailed and  flag-bearing, I snowboarded my favourite runs and then headed to Trappers

where an organised staff party was being held complete with VB and Toohey's Extra Dry bottles, 'Aussie' burgers with a beef pattie, fried egg, beetroot, pineapple, tomato and lettuce, home-made meat pies and a hundred of my closest, drunkest, rowdiest Australian 'mates'.

After I'd drank a few too many Toohey's - affectionately referred to as Teddy's and of which I wouldn't ever otherwise drink if it weren't for the sake of national pride - and initiated a few too many Jager shots, it was fair to say I was in a pretty good mood. I went snowboarding, which at the time seemed like the smartest idea, but in retrospect was probably the wintery equivalent of drinking and driving and where I would have certainly lost my license had snow patrol been bearing breathelizers. Being alcoholically-fueled however, proved a great source of confidence on the slopes and I probably fell over less than if I was stone-cold sober as well as just plain stone-cold.

I may have been tipsy from the alcohol, but what made me all the more drunk was the pure happiness of simply being from Australia and celebrating my home-country like I had never celebrated if before. Sure, there was the occassional pang for home as I thought about how I would have spent the day lying at Tamara Beach with Sister Dearest, but surrounded by Aussies shouting 'Oi Oi Oi' and my neighbours attempting to toboggan down Strawberry run on a blowup Australian thong, I certainly felt more Australian than all the Australia Days I'd spent at home.

And while I may be losing my Australian accent more and more and consider watching ice hockey more thrilling than cricket, I still try to walk down the left hand side of the pathway.

I haven't converted just yet.

Ciao for now. xo

Home Is Where The Water Is

When I left Australia for the great unknown, I was sent off by my family and friends with the well wishes of health and safety. It never occured to me to wish it back to them.

But as the majority of Queensland, not to mention my two home towns of Gympie and Brisbane, continue to be battered by Mother Nature's unrelenting hand, I can only hope that my wishes of health and safety to my friends and family haven't come to late.

I may be thousands of kilometres from home, but my thoughts go out to not only those I hold dear, but every family and furry friend who has been affected by the torrential flooding that has hit Queensland in the last month. 40 days and 40 nights of wet and wild weather has seen lives lost and and whole towns washed away, not to mention billions of dollars damage to homes, farm land and our agricultural livelihood. The Sydney Morning Herald has described it as being like 'an inland tsunami' with enough power to wash away cars, water tanks and refridgerators. With Gympie also swamped by the influx of water, I appreciate the concern many of you have shown for my parents. Thankfully, our home is not in a position to be affected by the flooding and both my parents and our house are safe and sound.

With Brisbane next to suffer the wrath of the floods that have already destroyed so much, I pray that my friends stay safe and dry and the city that I love can hold its breathe in the face of Queensland's most devastating natural disaster.

My thoughts go out to all of you.

Ciao for now. xo