3 cities in 3 days

From 3 windows; the strange life of the tourist being thus that sometimes a grabbed memory is all you will have, so grab it you do.

First, Brisbane.

Pig City, Brisvegas, capital Q, the big city with a small town feel. I love Brisbane, always have, that beautiful meandering river, the shiny new freeways and overpasses, the sensible city layout. And I'm always learning more about the place. New horizons: Brighton, the bayside suburb my sister moved to with Californian bungalows and kids playing in the street (and in the background, humming freeway). We have thought of moving North ourselves recently and I took it upon myself to learn all the train lines, suburbs and real estate boundaries: ramshackle Brisbane spilling over the hillocks and copses, swallowing up villages and towns in its expansion, hungrily eyeing the Gold Coast, Ipswich and Noosa. New Brisbane, Noughties Brisbane, naughty Brisbane with its page 3 girls and barely-concealed explosive pub culture.

We drive to Brisbane in the morning, stopping at the Goldy on the way for bad chicken. Reading and talking, we miss the exit for the Gateway freeway and take a trip through the centre of the city and up towards the Northern sprawl. It has rained since we were here last, and things are chipper, grass, flowers, I even see someone washing their car. To Brighton and expansion has arrived - the scrub behind my sister's place has been dug up for flats in a battleaxe development. Poor Brisbane, do they know what they are doing? Every square metre filling up with houses full of people, people with all their things. Melissa's Mum leaves in tears, she can't bear to say goodbye the long way, but we get it loud and clear. After coffee and a chat, a trip over to the city. there is (as usual) new building happening everywhere. Is every construction worker in Australia currently employed here? "There's plenty of work here," my sister says, "the only people out of work are the ones who don't want to work".

Evening in Brisbane by now: the best time of day, when the heat takes a slight step backwards and the tin roofs start to creak their relief. It rains a little, and our friends don't mention it. Last visit it would have caused a sensation! But the garden has returned, the summer hasn't been too bad, and the cars are clean and that makes everyone happier. The three of us heading overseas are very jumpy, checking bags one more time, feeling uncomfortable in new walking shoes. Lots of great conversations all day today - taking it all in, memorising faces and laughs, we'll be gone a long time. Tonight we watch the entire Sorry speech and the Opposition's response. It feels amazing. This is happening? In Australia? Today? We are leaving home a country changed for the better, shining and new, when just a year ago it was dire, like a superannuated pushcart stuck in a muddy rut with a broken wheel and the bottom rusted out.

To sleep late, too late, (but who could sleep after that and before this?) and awake at 5. Paul takes us to the airport and on the way I take this photo out the back window:

Brisbane cityscape from the ICB

Doesn't do the place credit, but there it is, Brisbane, receding into the distance. Our first stop, the city of our return to Australia, and our city in the future...?

Seoul, South Korea from the glass-enshrouded lift in our ritzy hotel

This is only the airport district of Seoul. The city proper is in the far distance on the left, and in the distance near the middle, can you see a massive bridge? Seoul also sprawls, across a western peninsula facing into mainland China. I have never desired to go here, or to Asia for that matter, but as we crept closer and the inflight movie screen regularly showed our positon over the Coral, the Phillipine, and finally the Yellow Sea I thought lots about Australia's position in the world, and the incredible history of these seas of islands, and the looming mass of China/Russia/India. A trip to Asia deserves a re-think.

But perhaps not to South Korea. A fairly disciplined, clean and essentially sterile place it seems. Attractive to foreigners, many languages are spoken, and the food served on the airline and at the hotel is respectfully varied, but it all lacks originality, feels imposed, like they would really rather be somewhere else. I would have liked to have seen the suburbs, and how the Koreans live. We are very well looked after anyway, although strangely they don't have any Australian power transformers at the hotel - strange because they have a local Australian TV channel and plenty of imported shows. We love the soft beds and five-star buffet breakfast, things won't be that good for us for a long time, probably until we return here on our way home.

And next, on the third day, Rome.

Rome deserves a post all its own, and that will come soon. For now, just enjoy this gorgeous view from out of our B & B window and up the Via Viminale towards the station and the Piazza della Repubblica. We did.

Opera district, Rome

Non mi prende in giro!

Last minute phonecalls, update email list, return things, not return too-hard things, bid farewell to family and friends, manage bank accounts, credit cards, storage, home and car arrangements...pack. The packing has started - none too soon as we are leaving in three days. So many conversations, and promises to stay in contact, some conversations never happened at all.

Living at Jenny & Lui's and getting prepared to go these past few weeks: what an experience. Every day seems to last a long time, longer than just a day, and we tumble into bed buggered, and arise, buggered. Its so beautiful here - I'm looking out at the lights of Ballina and the easterly has just picked up. Frogs, crickets and other silence sounds.

And when we drive out to Brisbane, to stay the night, to check in at the airport next morning, to leave? Everything from there on in is new.

Hope everything here doesn't change too much.

This North Coast

Been driving all around lately, taking it in. They say that when we're away we'll realise how great life is here, and how its as good as any place in the world &c. And this is true: home isn't called home by mistake, and of course you're going to miss it, of course you're going to compare and enumerate the reasons why home is so good and worth returning to.

But the best place in the world? I hope not, or why go at all? And if there's a place that we like better perhaps we'll stay there, and call it home, and start the process again. And if we don't find anywhere better, going won't have been a waste of time - and returning will be triumphant. We aren't looking for somewhere better anyway.

We're looking for something different.

Damn Plans

Someone said tonight that we are "moving to southern Italy". Sounds good, but that's not exactly the plan.

The plan: travel to Rome and then south to Calabria, where we will stay in Piminoro village, not far from Reggio Calabria in the deep south. Our home will be a small house belonging to Melissa's cousin. So far, that Someone was almost right.

Live for a short while in Piminoro, then travel back up through Italy to Santa Caterina, near Venice.

Just buzzing from the news tonight that we have been offerd another house in eastern Sicily, near Taormina, a town called Francavilla or Francavilla di Sicilia. So next we want to travel there and see lots of Sicily, and when my Mum comes to meet us there we will also go to Malta and hopefully Greece, all four of us.

The rest is a bit hazy, but includes a stint of working in the UK, including travels of Scotland and Ireland, then trips to Sweden and parts of Eastern Europe. At some point we will return to Piminoro or even Francavilla for a rest and recoup.

So no long-term living in southern Italy, more's the pity. Too much here for us at home.We may not be home til late next year.

Christmas 2008 in Australia or Europe? Hmmmmmmm

Locked In

Lying in the pool today, looking up at the house through the palms and bushes, I wondered about the year to come. The rest of the world is, of course, fascinating. But don't let's get too far from here, and what I've achieved up until now. This view from the pool is someone elses's dream perhaps, yet real and comforting to me. No matter how far we go and what we find when we get there: this is home, the first step.