The Cross-Continental Connection in Australia
It’s not a night like that night when the full moon winked at me. No, tonight is without any clouds and the moon is now a crisp slither surrounded by a splattering of stars. The first thing I see is the swan song of Orion’s Belt. It’s always the same – my reference – even when I’m walking on the other side of the world. ‘That’s a good thing’, says Dane, and I wonder how it can be a good thing to always zoom in on the same constellations.
Today broke clear as this night. My alarm has yet to buzz but I lie awake, nestling into the warmth of the covers. It’s only been a day since I unpacked the duvet for another season, prematurely, perhaps. Doona, the Aussies call it. I ask Dane why and he makes all sorts of snuggly sounds. ‘Doona’ does sound more snuggly than ‘duvet’. Australian Magpie song makes it impossible to sleep. Three years ago, new to this land, their repeated melody did something to my insides that felt similar to those early feelings of being in love. Hopeful. Butterflies. I guess I was falling back in love with life.
Now I need to be mindful to hear that same melody. I’m up. I stand by the window as I wait for my coffee to drip through. I never used to drink much coffee, and now I don’t drink much tea. A kookaburra sits on top of the citronella burner staked into the corner of the veggie patch. Fat, feathered and big headed. No laughter at this time of day. I stand and stare and my mind turns to the rainbow lorikeets that densely cover the banksia tree at the backend of the garden – the type of birds that I’m more used to seeing in zoos or on TV shows about exotic wildlife. But this isn’t the UK. At the markets later that day I buy a hanging plant, macramé knots weighted with fat turquoise beads.
The glossy, sun yellow plant pot will cheer up my window frame and detract visitors’ eyes away from the weather scuffs on the sliding windowpanes. I’ve scrubbed those panes, and then scrubbed them some more. Living by the sea has left permanent milky patches that I only now see when visitors with a penchant for cleanliness pop by our house. We sit down to dinner at a Thai place down a little laneway at the beach end of town, the Eat Street of Byron Bay. Smells of lemon grass mix with the fish and chips of next door. 6.30pm and all but one of the tables that spill out of the restaurant frontage have people clustered around on wooden bench seats. I pull on a thin black cardigan and do up all of the buttons. How many people here are holidaymakers, I wonder, how many will return home to the other side of the world, my side of the world, and remember the markets and sounds and smells of Byron Bay, of sitting outside as wintertime fast approaches?
Back at home and with the colour of the day all but gone, the sky sparkle stretches a wide net over my head. Barely 9pm, the residential streets are still, save for the feint blue hum of television light escaping into the night. The moon sits high and Dane points out the Southern Cross to its south, some 8,800 light-years away from this earth. Back in ancient times my family would have been able to look up to the skies to see the same Southern Cross, but for now it’s just Dane and me and whoever else happens to be standing and staring alongside us at the great Australian night sky.
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