We arrived quite late on Wednesday night in Sydney, but Craig’s middle school friend, who went to university in Sydney and then stayed because he fell in love with an Indonesian-Australian, gamely picked us up at the airport at 10:00pm. Jon and Mel have a 2-year-old son, Liam, so this was an extra topping of nice, considering what life is like for them. They live out in a suburb of Sydney called Hornsby, about an hour by train from the city center, but with a spare bedroom that they generously offered to us for the three weeks that we would be staying in Australia.
On the ride north from the airport, we stopped for a drink at Opera Bar, so-named because of its view of the Sydney Opera House.
“So do you have any ideas about what you’re going to do while you’re here?” Jon asked over beers and a (surprisingly good) hard seltzer.
“Well…” we said, shrugging. “Not really.”
After 17 months of not having our own home and traveling all over the globe, Craig and I are officially tired. Road weary. Travel fatigued. We’re over it!
In fact, our time in Australia was meant to be a sort of respite from traveling because it would be in an English-speaking country, staying with friends. As we pack our bags for our flight back to the US the day after next, I have been pondering our time down under. It has been quite a lot busier than we had anticipated, which has been surprising. Aside from the obvious socializing with Jon and Mel, we were lucky enough to have four other meet-ups with other friends, old and new.
Our first was during a four-night stay in Melbourne. Besides the four-hour flight delay to get there due to thunder and lightning storms and the switch from train to coach bus for the first four hours of our train home, Melbourne was actually a really fun city. We both loved the tram network, which is the largest urban tram network in the world (oh, if only they had kept Seattle’s… what would it have been like?!), and the city itself was really diverse and fun. On our second night, we took the tram up to Richmond neighborhood and had dinner with Cecilia, one-half of an Australian brother and sister duo that we met randomly in a bahn mi restaurant in Hoi An (it was one of the rare times that I tried to be sociable).
Ceci and Louis were the children of Hong Kong immigrants to Australia, and although they were a bit younger than us, they were really funny and nice and when we finished our enormous bahn mis, we exchanged contact information so that we could try and see each other again when we made it to Australia. Funnily enough, we decided to eat Vietnamese food with Ceci, in honor of our first meeting, and we had a great time talking about the Asian-immigrant family experience in Australia vs. United States as well as being introduced to the “Most Generous Interpretation,” a concept originating from Brené Brown that has been coopted as mindfulness and parenting aids.
After such a delightful time with Ceci and then exploring Melbourne and recognizing so many streets and neighborhoods from my many readings of the excellent Phryne Fisher novels, we returned to Sydney. But the very next day, we had a lunch date with two Asian-Australian families that we met in Da Nang, the friends of Peter who helped us obtain our Australian ETAs and with whom we shared dinner twice (once in Da Nang, and another time in Nha Trang). We assembled with Ann and Mark, Ness and Leon, and their kids in Chatswood, a heavily-Asian neighborhood, and had delicious Malaysian food. We learned a little bit more about Sydney and how it’s been diversifying more in the last few decades, but that before that, minorities often stuck to themselves in enclave-like neighborhoods. Cabramatta was primarily Vietnamese, Merrylands Persian, etc. etc. I’ve noticed, however, that Sydney in general (Melbourne, too) are heavy on the Asians. It’s noticeable not just in the local people, but also in the restaurants (yummy yummy Asian food, how I wish you were easier to obtain in Seattle).
Our weekend was packed, because after stuffing our faces, we got up the next morning to take the train to Chatswood again, where we were picked up by Louis (brother of Ceci) and taken to the coast to do a walk from Manly Beach to Spit Bridge. Despite an age gap of 12 years between Louis and I, we all had a great time chatting about work, relationships, family, and life in general. He also thought being Asian in Australia wasn’t as big of a deal to identity and intersectionality as it was in the U.S. We wondered about this and Craig posited that because White Australia ended in the 70s, most immigrants just haven’t had to fight racism over multiple generations as they have in the U.S. It also made me wonder about the experience of Asian-Americans who grew up in enclave-like cities like my cousins in Alhambra, California versus my own experience out in conservative, majority-White Riverside, California.
“Wow, you guys really have some interesting questions,” Louis said at one point.
“Well, we’ve had almost a year and a half to just think about these things!” replied Craig. (Not working is really conducive to deep thoughts.)
Experiencing the coast of Sydney seems to be something Australians are all very insistent on. During our lunch with Ann and co., as the ten of us valiantly made our way through the seemingly impenetrable feast, she mentioned that we were welcome to use a holiday beach house that they had in Wallabi Point, about 3 hours north. Were we interested?
“Oh, umm! I’m not sure,” I hedged, thinking that we had already trespassed on their generosity too much by having them come all the way out to Chatswood to meet (this was before I learned that they paid for our lunch!).
Undeterred, Ann gave me the address and told us to think about it. “There’s nobody there! It’s just sitting empty, so you’re welcome to go up and stay.”
After giving it some thought and verifying that getting a rental car for two days wouldn’t break the bank, we were all set for a road trip. Wallabi Point was really just a few streets with about 100 houses and one cafe (the nearby town of Old Bar to the north had a grocery store, liquor store, and a couple of restaurants). It was peaceful and windy and beachy and although Craig and I didn’t actually go in the water, we at least went paddle-boarding at a nearby lagoon and had a couple of atmospheric beach walks. I’m not sure I’d ever want to live on a tropical-ish beach, what with the salty air and all the bugs, but it was really fun to visit. It was hard to believe that our little road trip vacation happened because Peter saw on our Instagram that we were in Vietnam, messaged us to meet up in Da Nang, and Ann and her family were in Da Nang at the same time and Peter brought us all together. What do people call this? Kismet?
We returned from Wallabi Point and were cooking dinner once again for Jon and Mel when they returned home from work on Friday. “You guys can stay as long as you like!” they joked. By this time, we had gotten an idea of how difficult it was to raise a 2-year-old while working full time. Poor Liam has suffered through hand, foot, and mouth disease, as well as another cold while we’ve been in Sydney, so the trials and tribulations of a young family were very apparent.
“Wow, you’ve really made us rethink our decision to not have kids!” we said in jest one night when the two had collapsed on the couch after finally getting Liam to bed successfully.
“You’re welcome to take Liam back to the States with you!” they replied in kind. The exhaustion in their eyes was very real… and very scary! If anything, Liam, as cute as he is, has only helped cement our decision to remain childless. Thanks Liam!
So it was kind of funny to meet up with another family with young kids a couple of days later. This time, it was Vik and Linda and their two daughters. We first met Vik and Linda in Colombia in 2014; they were part of a really fun group of backpackers in Medellin at one of our favorite hostels of the trip. Vik is of Indian descent and Linda is of Vietnamese, and they’re both the children of immigrants as well. Craig and I thought it was very interesting that everybody we met up with from Australia were the children of Asian immigrants–how did that happen?
Anyway, we journeyed out to Cabramatta, the Vietnamese and Chinese enclave neighborhood two trains away. Linda actually grew up in Cabramatta (which is also where Ann and her family live!), and she was able to point out all the things that had changed and led us to a delicious crispy chicken noodle lunch. Even after all this time, we clicked well and Craig and I remembered why we had liked them so much when we first met them. Their daughters were five and seven, so they weren’t quite as exhausted as Jon and Mel (there’s light at the end of the tunnel, guys!). Jasmine, the eldest, even voluntarily held my hand as we crossed a street, which surprised me and somewhat touched my heart (although I also had the immediate thought that I had to use hand-sanitizer as soon as possible). After eating lots of yummy food and having a wander, we hugged goodbye and Craig and I went to nom on some delicious che (Vietnamese dessert).
All of these interactions have been so fun but also improbable. Our Aussie swing has turned into a “Meet up with lots of people” swing, and it’s been wonderful. Craig had already been to Australia once before, but this has been my first time, and I have to say that it’s been a really great experience. I would love to transport all of the restaurants in Cabramatta to Seattle and I would also love to see as much unproblematic diversity in the States. In some ways, Australia has seemed like a much more vibrant, young country than the U.S., probably because of all the immigrants (30% of the population!).
Someday, we’ll come back and skip over to Tasmania and New Zealand. But for now, it has been a treat to see old and new faces and bask in all of the Aussie generosity and hospitality. Next stop: Home!
The Wongenbergs 
so glad it was a great trip! I love seeing Jon and his family. He doesn’t like like the young boy I remember.