colour me purple

this morning was another pound-the-streets-in-search-of-the-dream-flat-morning. we saw five; two are potentials. as always, we broke it up with coffees here, green tea there and even a spot of lunch. but it wasn’t the flats that got my attention today, it was the jacaranda trees.   

as this city edges through spring, the jacarandas are bloomin’.

there’s something spectacular about one of these trees in flower. their loud-in-your-face-purple yet delicate flowers spectacularly clash with the hard-sharp-gray urban landscape. even when you see them amongst other trees, they shine spectacularly making their green neighbours seem almost bland.   

i’m loving discovering sydney. it seems every season has something beautiful to offer. 

P and Riley St 

View from over Darlinghurst & Paddington from one of the flats we viewed

building blocks

when the first of my friends bought their own home in their early 20s, i was excited for them but i just didn’t get it. why would anyone want to buy a house and lock themselves down? life is to be lived! travel beckoned. adventures were to be had. my saturday mornings were to be spent nursing  hangovers not mowing a lawn.


ten(ish) years later, i do get it. a house is a physical representation of a life you’re building with someone. it’s a financial investment in your future. and frankly, it beats paying i-dare-not-even-contemplate-exactly-how-much-i’ve-shelled-out-in-my-lifetime rent.


so piero and i are on the market for a flat. we’re both quite aligned with what we want: central, good view and no lawn to mow. neither of us want art deco (or as it should be known: crap architecture that sydneysiders tell themselves that they love because it’s slightly less offensive than some of the other monstrosities sprinkled throughout this city). and as we associate the word ‘screwdriver’  with vodka and o-j; we defo need something easy to maintain. 


like so many who have walked this journey before us, our saturday morning are now filled with viewings. fortunately, we’re looking over a small geographical area so it’s easy to walk from property to property. 


last weekend, we found one that we really liked. it’s not perfect, but it ticks a lot of our boxes. perhaps soon, i too will be entering the world of grown-ups.

looking forward through the past

running through regent’s park i suddenly stopped. the bt tower towered in the background. it’s never been a monument that i liked, but right there, right then, it seemed suddenly beautiful. an almost tangible link with my past and a city that defined me. it seemed very london. 


the day before, we had arrived at heathrow. it had been ten-months since we had left the british capital and we were excited about our three-week european jolly.  


i visited old haunts, neighbourhoods i loved, new restaurants and places i never quite made it to. for three weeks, i ate and drank myself around the capital and threw in a couple of side trips to york (to watch laura and barry get married) and sardinia (to visit’s piero’s family and eat even more!).


the highlight, as always, was just spending time with old friends. some people made a massive effort and for that i am incredibly grateful. with many, you can pick up where you left off. there’s a feeling that those bonds – no matter how geographically stretched they become – will always be strong. 


we had some truly beautiful moments with friends – a moments glance over a glass of wine; the real excitement you both feel when seeing each other again; and that conversational moment when you hit something deep and realise once again that your exposing yourself, sharing truly something personal and significant with someone who you implicitly trust and who you know who gets why it’s important. 


but the truth is; friendship dynamics do change. some bonds become weaker, the relationship between couples is in a different place from when you last saw them and the energy between groups of friend shifts. at first this can jar, but you have to adjust. 


perhaps the biggest change i noticed was that there was a stronger vibe of ‘we’re in our (early) 30s, some life decisions need to be made soonish’. this is healthy, of course, because the thing with london is that it can fill your life with so much adventure, noise and excitement, that you have to make sure that life’s other gifts don’t slip you by unless you will it.  


leaving london this time, i was sad to think it would be a while before i would see some people again, but i was looking forward to returning to sydney. ahead of me, I saw: a summer of sunshine, time with friends and family, and the building of my life with piero. 


london will always be london: fabulous, exciting, evolving, challenging and the permanent owner of a little bit of my heart.  

(... more pics to come!)

a date with daytime tv

i didn’t work for six months. it was great. i went to the gym, i read the newspaper at my favourite cafes and i explored my new city.

it was also incredibly challenging.

i’m not sure when, but my identity has got mixed up in my employment. i found meeting new people difficult, almost like i had to apologies for not working. i found casual questions by sales assistants ‘do you have a day off?’ almost confronting. and I began to avoid emails and facebook messages from good friends who asked ‘are you working yet?’.

it’s an odd process to go through (even when it’s your choice). and I’d like to think it made me more sensitive to people who aren't working.

smelling the roses (and staring at the bridge)

piero lives in the present. i don’t.

i live in the tomorrow.

lots of ‘happiness’ gurus say living in the present is one of the best strategies to ensuring you are happy. and i think i agree.

living in the tomorrow has its advantages though. when you have 4 friends crashing at your place, you think about practical things like linen, towels and toilet paper. but even typing that sentence re-enforced the gurus theory: towels, linen and toilet paper don’t equal happiness.

at doyle’s fish and chips (watson bay), we had a magnificent view of sydney harbour,  the city skyline and the bridge. it was powerful. it was stunning. i was blessed to own it there and then. i could of sat and stared and it for ages but... part of me wanted to move on. to go and do the next thing. wanting to experience new things isn’t bad – it's a trait i rarely see in dull people – but not appreciating what you’ve got is.

fortunately, despite my internal discomfort of sitting and staring at the beauty for a long time, one of my dining companions asked to stay longer. they too enjoy experiencing the new, but they were wise enough to know the value of living in the present. 

it’s hammer(ilton island) time

a weekend on a tropical island.

it’s an emotive phrase. andrea from italy said it was a must on his to-do-in-australia list. dave from the uk said much the same thing.

for me... mmeeehhhh... not so much. you see, growing up in hot-and-sticky-brisbane, i dreamt of europe. i had a map of the world on my wall and i used to lie on my bed and stare at the old continent. i wondered what it looked like, what all those languages sounded like and i imagined all the battles that those countries had fought against each other over the centuries. it was completely foreign to me. it seemed so magically wonderful.

for my friends from italy and uk - and i guess most of the world’s population - however, it is the tropics that are foreign.

while andrea and his mother, maria pia, were in town, we spent four days on hamilton island – a resort island in the whitsundays off the coast of queensland.

without the urging of foreigners, i think i would have quite happily lived me life without going... but that would have been a mistake.

hamilton island is beautiful. absolutely stunningly beautiful. i won’t lie and say the resort was perfect (seriously – fix your food offering people), but it was a magical four days. 

where are the kangaroos?

our sydney friend jason promised us and our italian guests (maria pia and andrea) a tour of kangaroo valley, south of sydney. mentally i ticked the ‘show our foreign guests some wild kangaroos’ box.

it was then with some surprise i heard jason say: ‘oh, you wont see any kangaroos. cows. lots of cows. but not any kangaroos’. i felt like i had been missold.

i was wrong. kangaroo valley was magnificent! i was gobsmacked by just how beautiful this part of the country was. it was lush. it was green. it was beautiful in a way that reminded me of england.

having travelled to new places in australia since i’ve been back, i realised how much of my country i just don’t know. i think i just always assumed that australia looked like the south-east corner of queensland where i grew up.

come to think of it, i didn’t see many kangaroos growing up either.

the waterfalls

on the way to kangaroo valley