JANUARY 31, 2022 – Heavy hearted, I boarded the Qantas 747 to Brisbane. Ahead lay unmeasured time filled with untold adventures, but I couldn’t imagine how they’d compete with the experiences behind me. For a month I’d been ensconced in Treasure Island[s], and it was hard to let go. Yet, this was the rhythm of life: one chapter yielded inexorably to another. On the climb out of “Oakland”—as “Auckland” sings from a Kiwi’s mouth—I looked ahead.
If the two main islands of NZ aren’t small, the cartographer’s habit of presenting them with their outsized neighbor shrinks them and trains the spotlight on Australia. Yet, the latter—nearly the size of the continental U.S.—is a “planet within our planet,” rendered remote by its hostile climate, except along thin, verdant fringes.
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The wayfarer’s biggest traps are generalizations based on inaccurate observations and non-representative encounters. Moreover, over time, conditions change. What might’ve been valid portrayals in one era prove wrong in another.
With that caveat, I write cautiously about my impressions of Australia—and elsewhere—in 1981, though six months later in Revolutionary Poland and subsequently in Russia, accurate generalizations based on specific encounters would be inescapable.
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If nearly every adult New Zealander I encountered had traveled to Europe/UK, I met many Australians who’d never left home. Likewise, while Kiwis were conversant in world affairs—including the distant rumblings in Poland—Aussies couldn’t be bothered. Repeatedly, I heard the phrase, “No worries, mate; she’ll be right” . . . issued with carefree confidence.
Judging by tabloid headlines (serious papers were hard to find), Australians were obsessed with “Australian Rules” rugby and sensational, domestic crimes—in a relatively crime-free land. The world beyond Aussie shores was too remote to be of interest—an irony to us outsiders who considered Australia “remote.”
Based upon my interactions with sunny Australians, I viewed them as warm and welcoming and in general sentiment, much more like us Americans than even our close Canadian neighbors with far lighter accents.
But I’m ahead of myself.
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Somewhere above the open sea between NZ and Australia, the pilot spoke over the intercom. “For those on the left side of the aircraft,” he said, “shortly you’ll have a good look at Lord Howe Island.”
Months prior, to prepare for the bar exam, I’d repaired alone to our old family cabin. Before each daily monotony session, over breakfast I’d peruse ancient National Geographics stored next to the vintage piano. One morning I encountered a whole article about . . . Lord Howe Island. It was a place so idyllic back in the 1930s, monthly visits by a physician from “the Big Smoke” were deemed unnecessary. Known for their export of decorative kentia palms, the islanders—British descendants, mostly—never fell ill, rarely injured themselves, and lived anxiety free. They’d found paradise.
And there it was—a speck in the sea. Again, no photo; only a fleeting image for my memory, as I pressed my nose to the window on the way to the . . . “Remote Planet.”
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© 2022 by Eric Nilsson
