Month: October 2025

From Zurich to the Bush Capital

When I jump into the deep end of a pool, I can always dog paddle until I find my stroke. This is what life has taught me. I always get to the other side. I may not be a great swimmer but I am buoyant. Knowing this has served me well.

In 2008 I spent a year in Switzerland with my family. It was a crazy opportunity that came out of nowhere and I was willing to take the chance. Arriving in Zurich was like jumping off a diving board. The first week felt like a massive belly flop and I wondered whether I had made the right decision, not only for myself but for my family.  

It didn’t take us long to learn some of the idiosyncrasies of our new home. School starts before 8 a.m., shops close for lunch, trains and buses run on time. There were other quite annoying things such as having to do your washing on a Friday (everyone has a designated day), no flushing toilets after 10 p.m. (house rules) and no paracetamol available except at chemists which are closed on Sundays.

I was quite cocky before we left. Why would I have trouble understanding the Swiss, when I understand Swabian and Austrian dialects?  What could be so difficult? Well, maybe vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation as a start! It took me much longer than I expected to follow simple conversations. Nor did I expect the Swiss to frown upon my high German. After all, it is meant to be the official language in the German cantons.

As we became increasingly familiar with how things operated, we began to appreciate the small things of life. Wherever we were in the countryside, we’d find a cat in a field, ears pricked up, ready to pounce. We could even spot them from the train! Why do Swiss cats do this and not other cats? It remained a charming mystery.

If land didn’t have a dwelling on it, there were cows grazing there, kept in place by movable electric fences. Behind our nearest bus shelter were three cows and behind them were rows of multi-storey flats. If it wasn’t cows grazing, it was goats. These animals could be found in any of the suburbs of large towns. I grew to love this proximity to farm animals. It made for a slower and much calmer pace.

In 2024, I jumped off the diving board once more, this time to move to Canberra. It wasn’t anywhere near as disorientating as moving to Switzerland but it did feel much more permanent. I had bought a townhouse, changed jobs and began the process of acclimatising. At least I can speak the language here and know how society operates but it still takes time to adjust.

At first, I was confused by the wide streets and wanted to turn into the oncoming traffic not realising that the lanes were one way. Then there were all the roundabouts and roads that go around in circles. I have been caught out more than once with the all-day 40 km school zones with no flashing lights. In fact, I have never had as many fines as I have since moving here. The rules can be quite perplexing!

In Canberra, I can buy a bottle of wine at the supermarket, just as I could in Switzerland. However, when I go to work across the border, this is no longer possible. Lately, I have begun to see other similarities with where we lived in Switzerland. Every morning I drive past ducks that may waddle across the street, only 100 m from a main arterial road. Near the first roundabout as you enter Canberra coming from Sydney, there is a small herd of Angus cows grazing in a paddock that will eventually be turned into medium density housing. I had to laugh when I first saw them.

My drive to work takes me along a stretch of a freeway that has paddocks on both sides. There are agisted horses, cows and small farms all within a ten-minute drive from the centre of the city. I hope this doesn’t change in my lifetime. Next to one of these farms there is a small ‘shop’ that works on an honesty system. Here, I can buy eggs, cheese and honey on my way home. It reminds me of a place in Switzerland which was a ten-minute walk up the hill from our place. We could buy seasonal fruit from the farmer who had a wooden box on the side of the road where we would leave money. Honesty boxes could be found all over Switzerland including deep in forests where 2 Franks could be exchanged for a swig of Absinthe!

Canberra has retained the feel of a large country town with plenty of green space. No wonder it prides itself on being the Bush Capital. Maybe I recognised some of its similarities to Switzerland which I grew to love. I think about this more often as I approach my second anniversary living in Canberra. The longer I spend here, the more I appreciate its beauty, surrounded by farms, nature reserves and the stunning Brindabellas in the distance. I’ve found my rhythm once more; steady, buoyant and much more at home.

Telstra Tower and Other Small Miracles

The other day I listened to Dr Ellen Langer speak about mindfulness as a way of being rather than a practice. She described the art of seeing the ordinary with fresh eyes, of really looking, really noticing. It struck me how easily the rhythm of daily life can lull us into living on autopilot.

Her talk reminded me of the Buddhist Monk, Thich Nhat Hanh’s definition of mindfulness, doing the ordinary things in life with a sense of purpose and attention, whether that be opening a door or turning on a tap. Each of these little acts can be done either mindlessly or mindfully. Doing it one way we are absent from our life while doing it mindfully we become alive to the present moment. And the present moment, as we know, is the only moment. Whatever happened 5 minutes ago is in past and whatever is coming is in the future. Life can only be lived in the small moments of now.

I have known this for many years but I am not very good at being grounded. My mind takes me hither and dither and I can be quite the scatterbrain. Where’s my phone? My wallet? Did I turn off the lights? Did I just lock myself out? These are daily micro-moments of panic I experience on repeat. My daughter just laughs and says she never gets past counting to 17 before my problem-of-the-moment is resolved!

This morning has been a scattered start. I’m still in my PJs deciding on shower, getting dressed, making to do lists, going to the shop and walking the dog. It really shouldn’t be this hard. Just start with the first logical step (have a shower) and keep going. It hasn’t helped that I am unwell and brain fog has settled in for the day. That’s when I stopped and looked out the window. No, not just looked out the window but really looked out the window. I saw the usual scene before me with fresh eyes. Trees swaying in the wind, leaves like windchimes. Thousands of hushed, eucalypt windchimes trembling on trees only a few metres from the glass pane. I was mesmerised by the bounty of their beauty and then looked further afield towards the horizon.

Erupting in a belly-laugh, I couldn’t believe my eyes! I have lived here for 20 months and have never seen it. Yet there it was, clear as the day before me. The largest structure in Canberra, a 195metre telecommunications tower known as Telstra Tower and it can be seen from my window! How often have I mindlessly looked out and never seen it? How can I miss an obscenely large structure like this? I shook my head in disbelief and couldn’t help but laugh at my selective blindness. Sadly, this is nothing new, many people know this about me but it still catches me completely unawares.

I now have a new landmark to celebrate when I look out the window and I wonder what other delights await me as I learn to look once more with fresh eyes. It’s both humbling and heartening to realise that wonder was there all along. As Thich Nhat Hanh says, “We all have the ability to look at things with fresh eyes and see them as if seeing them for the first time. If we have lost our freshness, all we have to do is practice breathing in and out to restore it.” (From A Handful of Quiet, Happiness in Four Pebbles.)

And so I breathe in and out and learn an old lesson anew. I laugh at how life patiently keeps offering me reminders and I resolve to open my eyes and look deeply as if for the very first or very last time.

Six Days Horizontal

Getting sick is like sitting down on a chair that’s much lower than anticipated. You land hard and wonder why you didn’t see it coming. The signs were all there – lack of energy, headache, a bit of a cough but it didn’t seem that bad. Until it was. And then the crash landing.

Six days in bed felt like long drawn out weeks. There were nights where minutes felt like hours and hours stretched into infinity until dawn. Unable to breathe through my nose, I sat half upright, sipping endless glass after glass of water in a futile attempt to keep my lips moist. It was pretty grim by Wednesday night. Thoughts meandered irrationally in and out of my consciousness. At one point I was writing scripts for ‘Vera’; trains of clever dialogues rattled by without ever stopping at a station. At other times I was coming up with ideas for Podcasts. Perhaps that synapse of an idea will make this suffering worthwhile.

Being sick for a length of time gave me ample of opportunity to appraise my life. Existential dread arrived on cue between the hours of three and four a.m., no alarm necessary. Had I done enough with my one wild life? Clearly not. My shortcomings lay exposed, expectorating. I was condemned, guilty on all counts. My optimism fled at the first sign of the tempest raging in my head.

The week has been confronting. I turned into a creature I barely recognised. I could have walked out of the pages of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Any veneer of humour was chipped away, hope no longer resided in my soul. And my old friend, gratitude? She too deserted me and has only fleetingly reappeared in the past two days. A fair-weather friend on whom I thought I could rely. Faith too had deserted me.

Here I am on day eight and the fog is slowly lifting. I am now fully dressed and have even eaten a meal. I’ve stopped trying to wrestle with what I can’t control and settled into reluctant acceptance. My mood has steadied and the storm has eased. I am emerging, somewhat battered but essentially intact. I tell myself I’ll never take my health for granted again, and even as I think it, I know it’s probably horseshit.

It takes a village

My granddaughter was born two and a half months ago. She’s generally a ‘good baby’ (as if any baby could be bad), but she does struggle with sleep. In this regard, she reminds me of my daughter as a baby. She was a wakeful child, who would become overtired and then unable to sleep at all.

Now, of course, my daughter wishes she could sleep. Even a ten-minute nap is bliss, and she catches rest whenever she can. Her husband is a hands-on dad, which means both of them are running on empty. Nothing can prepare you for parenthood. It can only be understood through living it. I look at them and marvel at their resilience, but I also recognise that fine line between coping and breaking point.

One unfortunate inheritance I’ve passed on to my daughter is chronic migraines. She remembers me lying down with a bucket beside the bed, waiting for her father to come home and take over the evening routine. It probably happened once a week, certainly often enough to leave an imprint. Like me, she can only lie down, hope to sleep, or ride out the waves of pain. I know what she’s going through, but all I can really do is empathise, bring her medicine, prepare food, and care for the baby so she can rest.

Today she called me in desperation, asking where I was. After hours of trying to settle the baby with multi-day migraine, she had reached her limit. She did the wisest thing she could, put the baby down safely and walked away to her bedroom. I remember the guilt of those moments, when I too had to step back. Yet that distance, that breath of space, is what saves both mother and child. No-one can prepare you for motherhood and the contradictions it carries: joy and frustration, love and exhaustion, light and shadow.

She’s fortunate to have a close friend nearby who stepped in until I arrived. Together we cared for the baby, giving my daughter the reprieve she needed. Watching her, I thought about how difficult it can be raising a child in a nuclear family. How much gentler it might be if grandparents, aunts and uncles lived nearby, ready to lend a hand or a listening ear. There is much to be said for the extended family networks that are woven naturally into other cultures. As for us, we simply muddle through, doing our best, one tired, love-filled day at a time.