When we emerged from the airport in Canberra, Australia’s political capital, I barely knew what planet I was on. We had shut the door on our little English cottage one Monday afternoon, laden down with suitcases containing our best guess at the basics you probably need to take with you when you move to the other side of the world.
Socks. Toiletries. Laptops and passports. The odd portable memento of lives lived up to now.
When we landed, it was around nine o’clock the following Wednesday morning, and we reeled through the airport arrival hall doors baffled and unwashed after a merciless three flights in 28 hours. I felt unrecognisable to myself in my tracksuit and the pair of Crocs I bought especially for the flight, breaking a years-long pledge to firmly avoid hitting my 30s and becoming “a Croc person”. I had never spent so long on a plane before. Never travelled so far from home. Never worn Crocs (but emigrating necessitates a lot of firsts).
After the almost inappropriately euphoric experience of kicking off the Crocs and finally being able to shower at our Airbnb, we decided to go out and explore the city in which we apparently now lived, despite neither of us ever having so much as visited Australia before. The crisp sun and blue sky of late winter were the first of several signs that we’re very much not at home any more, and we made our way down the street, half mad with adrenaline, tiredness and the specific brand of pacifying, low quality overfeeding that happens on flights to prevent economy passengers from mutinying.
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Now free, we were glad of cool air and the ability to finally move our heavy, puffy legs.
The streets in Canberra are wide, multi-lane affairs with sprawling pavements. This is a city built for cars and I’m reminded of the US in how languidly it takes up space (because there’s plenty of it to be had). This is so far from the close old streets of most of London or Dublin, that you feel right away that you’re in a place which operates on completely different sets of philosophical principles. People think differently, with a sort of pioneering, optimistic sense of the possible which makes more sense in a younger political endeavour and a harsher natural environment.
On this first day here, we didn’t hire the scooters that are immense fun and an efficient means of transport through the city’s wide thoroughfares. In part because we didn’t know where we were going, but I wasn’t untouched by the awareness that at home an adult scooting through the streets would not make it four seconds before being mercilessly harangued into returning the scooter for shame. We stood on the street, fresh off the plane, sleep deprived and without internet access, bickering gently about how to get into the city.
To our right stood a building site where they’re extending Canberra’s light rail – it’s like the Luas but before the lines were connected and every Dubliner swore blind that the work would never be finished. Just when we’d reached the whisper-shout stage of marital disagreement, a construction worker came out of the gate. Spotting him, my husband asked for directions.
This man was the first person we’d conversed with since arriving. The fact that he was Irish became clear within seconds. A part of me thought, “But of course he is. We really get around.” I’ve met Irish people everywhere I’ve travelled in the world so far. Another part – the jet-lagged part – wondered if I was imagining it. How could it be that I had travelled for almost two days – 11 hours into the future – only to land in another hemisphere and the first person I meet comes from the county next to the one I grew up in?
That’s the thing about Irish people. We have a magnetic appeal to one another outside Ireland
“Kerry?” I ask.
“I am, yeah,” he said, smiling as if he were the county itself, speaking in a strong Kerry accent whose vowels have been stretched by what he later said were seven years in Australia.
“You?” he asked.
“Limerick. I’m Limerick,” I reply, smiling back as though we wouldn’t simply walk right past one another on the street at home.
That’s the thing about Irish people. We have a magnetic appeal to one another outside Ireland and a dreadful habit of romanticising the country after we’ve left it, despite all the push factors that may have prompted us to go in the first place. Living in a rented house share when you’re 40. Being unable to afford a family if you want one. Feeling constrained by that postcolonial and post-Catholic inclination to small-c conservatism for all Ireland’s inclination toward liberalism.
Yet, Ireland is very hard to leave entirely behind, in part because you become more Irish after you leave – it is the first element of you that other people tend to notice, so you wear the coat however you find most comfortable, since it isn’t one you can take off until you go home.
When I recently answered some questions about emigrating on Instagram, the most common ones were about visas and finding other Irish people in Canberra. The thing is, I don’t intend to go looking for Irish people just yet.
For a while at least, emigrating is an exercise in unfamiliarity and discomfort.
I have a feeling that trying to mitigate that by seeking out the familiar will only make it harder to assimilate into a new culture and a new way of life. So yes, “I’m Limerick” wherever I go, but it won’t help to lean into it.
