5th Gear

Not Last Night but a few nights before we liberated the fridge of a sad little bottle of Moet that had become conspicuous by its lonely occupation of the bottom shelf, totally without neighbours, for the chicken had gone, in order to celebrate a fairly big milestone in our journey Down Under. Both Lindsay and I had just sat – and passed – the Australian Citizenship Test. Nothing particularly remarkable as an examination due to the simplicity and style of questions but nevertheless notable as the penultimate step for us to feel a proper part of Australia. Twenty multiple choice questions (so you have all the right answers in front of you) composed of aspects about the country, its people’s beliefs and rights and the good old parliament and government. Most Australians I speak to freely admit they’d struggle to get half of these questions right and the pass-mark is 75%. However it’s all very easy once you’ve read the booklet with all the answers and there’s not a single mention of Don Bradman and his test cricket score. At least there isn’t any more.

Both of us were so eager to get it all over and done that all twenty questions were buzzed through in about 3 minutes flat, with all answers clicked correct. We’ve received confirmation from the Department Of Immigration that we’ve been approved and all they have to do now is interview our 17 year old daughter – I suppose 17 is considered too young to sit a test(!) and too old to be allowed in sans questions – to make sure she fits the bill and at least understands what she’s letting herself in for. After all, it’s a good age to be causing a fair bit of mayhem anyway. All a lot of expensive bureaucratic bulldust in my opinion but these are precisely the reasons for becoming a citizen; I’m fed up being treated by a visitor by the System at least.

Our toast was justified anyway and the bottle had to go sometime! The final piece is the swearing in part where we all appear before the dignitaries in power and pledge our oath to Australia and its people. I’m looking forward to that bit because I think it really will change the way I feel about being here and after all I’m not a citizen of anywhere else except Britain. I won’t have any trouble with the swearing part but I might keep my fingers crossed behind my back!

Meantime we soldier on and if anyone’s been keeping up with earlier pieces of our journey where we’ve shifted through 1st to 4th gear you’ll realise why we’re now slipping into 5th. Along the way we’ve ticked off quite a few boxes, although that’s never been the intention or reason for coming here, just the way things have happened.

We’ve bought and sold a few cars, first on the list. We’ve also bought, renovated and sold our first house, buying another with the proceeds, although it never really works out how you plan it. Done the boat owner thing, got licensed, experienced NSW’s waterways and some of its idiotic patrons, sold that. And we’re ‘been there – done that’ campers having narrowly survived multiple injuries from pieces of camper trailer trying to maim me and acute exhaustion from the effort involved in putting up a tent the size of a small village church. Although I’m not sewing any badges onto my cub scouts hat yet. Still haven’t seen the Outback, slept under the stars, chewed on red dust, driven across the Nullabor or been the only humans for thousands of miles around in any one spot. Still to come on that I think.

The sporting boxes have been well ticked though, especially by our kids getting into soccer, tennis, surf life saving, with others of us kayaking, fishing, diving and a brief dabble at watersporting while we had the boat. Again, I’m not done yet on those counts as I’ve still been nowhere near the Barrier Reef or the Coral Sea in flippers and goggles, plus my fishing exploits have so far amounted to nothing more than lots of tangled lines, plenty of swearing and scary looking prawns frozen in packets that stare out of the freezer every time I go for ice cream. And they’re not ones I’ve caught!

We’ve both moved well through the Australian workplace from coordinator to regional manager and designer planner to project manager, as well as our eldest children being able to get and hold down regular part-time jobs themselves. An opportunity they may not have come across as easily elsewhere. In fact I know that’s true because the eldest is stuck in a dead-end place where getting jobs is like finding hen’s teeth. But that will change I’m sure.

Through circumstance not choice I’ve sampled the Australian healthcare services, doctors and hospitals and although pricey due to the non-existence of Blighty’s unique NHS, they’ve fixed me up well enough after severing a tendon in a finger and snapping an Achilles. They’re also chock full of top quality doctors and nurses from – of all places the UK.

But as with everywhere else in this modern world time, days and months move at hyper fast speeds, with just a couple of hours spent in front of the telly seeming to suddenly be the passing of an entire week. Monday morning crashes into our lives almost every day and that “oh no! it’s tomorrow already” feeling is all too familiar. Surely time can’t really be moving so fast? Faster than a second at a time? It must be how and what you fill it with. Deadlines, agendas, timetables, schedules, run rates, fixtures, meetings and appointments all seem to join each other end to end, sucking us along into the machine. Getting off or even slowing down for just a few moments feels like the impossible task, the 99th push-up that just can’t be done. Or the 9th push-up in my case…

In a little less than five years I feel I have achieved an awful lot, from arriving here on the strength of a six month contract with my beautiful family trustingly following on behind, to securing our permanent residency, to finally becoming citizens. Settling the Tribe into schools and throwing ourselves headlong into Sydney’s hustling, bustling metropolitan lifestyle. And that’s the double-edged sword because the hustle and bustle is another word for rat-race, hum-drum and it doesn’t’ matter which way you mash it, rat-race is what we’ve been trying to get away from…

So, it’s for that reason that I feel 5th gear isn’t top gear. As with many modern (German) automobiles that have six and seven and even eight speeds I feel we’ll be shifting again.