What did I know about the land we call Oz? For most of my life, it was the distant land to which many Cypriots, whether refugees of the 1974 war or not, migrated – my own relatives included. It was where the majority of my first and second cousins were raised, even born. Perth and Melbourne were where people I called aunts and uncles lived their relaxed Cypriot-adjacent lifestyles in even more spacious homes. Sydney was where someone running from the police hurled a brick of marijuana into the bakery my aunt ran with her husband, causing them to panic in migrant and hide it for months out of fear of repercussions. (It was also where the same aunt was once greeted by a door-to-door flasher in her apartment block.) Australia was the land to which my dad tried, unsuccessfully on three attempts, to travel as a sailor before some twist of fate intervened (part of me still suspects he must have been blacklisted for some reason, but I have no evidence to support this theory).
Despite my connections to the country, I never went. Aside from a love of The Rescuers Down Under, a temporary adolescent obsession with Home and Away, a brief flirtation with Kath and Kim and my well-worn DVD of Christina Aguilera’s Back to Basics: Live and Down Under tour, all I ever saw of Australia were the images presented to the world by travel agents or online fearmongers: Aboriginal boomerangs, kangaroos, arid plains, giant spiders, deadly snakes. And all I’d heard about it was less appealing: white supremacy, conservative social attitudes, criminal history. They even called Greeks and Cypriots “w*gs”. It didn’t matter how many friendly Ozzies I’d encountered irl – I had zero desire to visit the land they had obviously escaped from, the brave lonely souls.
So I was more surprised than anyone when I found myself finally visiting. To celebrate my 40th birthday in February, my initial plan was to go back to Cyprus, to mark this significant moment in my homeland. But then my husband and I made the financially fatal error of browsing Disney Cruise Line itineraries (yes, they have ships), and I spotted what seemed perfect for me: a trip to Oahu, via New Caledonia, Fiji, American Samoa and Kauai. Sailing over my 40th birthday. A seaman’s son from a Mediterranean island, I’d missed being at sea – costs be damned, I was going! But the catch was, it sailed from Sydney. Meaning I’d have to spend money on flying to a place that was lower on my to-do list than a MAGA rally.
Thankfully, my bizarre stance changed as the months wore on and our flight approached. We’d got into Bluey, and started to be charmed by Ozzie accents. We also found ourselves engrossed in the Australian editions of Lego Masters (resulting in a crush on its presenter, Hamish Blake) and Masterchef. Could it be that Australians were actually funny and creative and compassionate? Was Ozzie cuisine inventive and exciting? Where did I get my prejudices that the very opposite was true? I then came across pictures of Sydney by a mutual on Bluesky. Was the city in fact… pretty? By the time we booked our accommodation – an adorable annexe in the garden of a cute house, in a quaint neighbourhood we could never afford to live in – I was even looking forward to landing in Oz.
Inevitably, and yet to my complete shock, we had a great time. From what we saw of it in our four days before the cruise, Sydney was a dream city: beautiful, clean, multicultural, well-connected, full of greenery and great food, with the sea nearby… “Do I… want to live here?” I asked my husband, and myself, aloud. And yet every Sydneysider we spoke to said we should've gone to Melbourne.
Despite our jet lag, which manifested in barely managing four hours’ sleep every night in our adorable annexe as Ozzy mozzies whined around any exposed flesh, we got up in high spirits every morning for breakfast at a nearby cafe, thankfully open at 6am. We took buses into the centre or traversed huge chunks of it on foot, with me marvelling at the uncanny fusion of what comprised the best parts of British and Cypriot ways of life, set in the lushness of Asian cities we loved, decorated with the early-20th century American architecture I find so pleasing.
We took in the stunning Victoria Building; to date, the only shopping centre we’ve gone to willingly. We ate cheap and delicious sushi while gazing out at Darling Harbour, and excellent sandwiches in a small square populated by ibises who strutted curiously or hungrily towards us. We tried Black Star Pastry’s very Instagrammable strawberry-watermelon cake recommended by a local pal, and brunched with said local pal and his lovely family on the rooftop of a building that housed a restaurant, cafe, shop and independent cinema. We saw First Nations art and the Sydney Opera House; ambled on a picturesque coastal path to take a ferry back to the centre; photographed the thrillingly old-school Luna Park and took in the view of Sydney Harbour Bridge from Wendy Whiteley’s Secret Garden. And we bought our groceries from Coles, the very obvious sponsors of Masterchef.
Don’t worry, it wasn’t all idyllic: we went on our obligatory critical walkthrough of local bookstore chain Dymocks, declaring it inferior to our Waterstones (it was still nice). And our last few hours in the city, intended to be a chill time before our ship’s departure, turned into a tense waiting-out of a torrential downpour in the spectacular Chinese Friendship Garden which began to feel more like the Sydney Hateship Prison.
On the weekend before that suspenseful morning, we hired a car. After coming all this way across the world, we wanted to explore what we could outside of Sydney. Not wishing to see local wildlife in a zoo (though we’ve been assured Taronga Zoo is a decent and ethical one), we drove to Port Macquarie’s Koala Hospital (then the nearby Breeding Centre) to see the almost cartoonish marsupials in a more natural environment – generally sleeping on eucalyptus trees. The next day, we took a trip in the opposite direction to Jervis Bay, where kangaroos bounce or lie around the beach. I balked as people brazenly touched the animals, especially the joeys. We took selfies with some of them at what we hoped was enough of a respectful distance.
Best – and arguably most touristy – of all, we went on the Sydney Bridge Climb. What I didn’t mention earlier was that I didn’t exactly leap at this holiday – perfect though the itinerary seemed, and comparitively cheap to other, shorter, less unusual cruises – I was wary of unnecessary expense. I could justify some things as a once-in-a-lifetime celebration cost, but the steep price to walk on the iconic iron curves of Sydney Harbour Bridge seemed an expense too far. But… what can I say? My husband is persuasive. We’d received Christmas and birthday money from our families, which could cover most of the price. He wanted to go, I didn’t want to be a spoilsport.
We arrived at the place, where we were suited up and harnessed and equipped with baseball caps, mics, ear pieces and hankies clipped onto us. We practised going up the short ladders we would be encountering on our journey and recited the golden rules we must remember when using them (I forget what these were). We audibly gasped when we saw that a previous visitor had been none other than Hamish Blake of Lego Masters — out of the way, Oprah. And then, we were off. Our entertaining guide, Helen – of Greek stock, I was disproportionately pleased to discover – regaled us with fascinating history and anecdotes of the bridge’s construction and the development of the area around it. At the top of the bridge, she took photos of us against the breathtaking harbour, skyline and coastline.
Up there in the calm sun, I breathed it all in and came to the realsiation: I’d got it all backwards. I had almost stopped myself from experiencing this because I was so concerned about the forthcoming gas bill back home, the rising cost of groceries. Undoubtedly, part of why I travel is to escape reality. All the while, I’m firmly rooted in day-to-day practicalities and stressors. It’s why even gifted money has become something to feed my bank account rather than my soul (for want of a better word). In that moment, I decided that a gift should be impractical, otherwise it’s a donation. I’m not rich but, in many ways, I am fortunate.
Helen, like other people – and many plaques – in Sydney’s cultural institutions made clear that the land we were on, and which was “developed” by Western colonists, was stolen from indigenous Australians, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. This mindful acknowledgment is a recurring motif in Sydney (and likely elsewhere in Australia). I’m sure that it, like British institutions’ recent attempts to highlight complicity in the Transatlantic slave trade, angers the right-wingers with victim mentality. But it made me feel comforted, while at the same time troubled: I’d had such prejudices about this country and its people, despite being well aware of how much is wrong with the country I was born in and the one I currently live in, yet still recognise the beauty in both. I never thought I’d connect with Australia, even like it, let alone feel that I could be one of the many Cypriots who came to call it home.
But I suppose that’s another reason I love to travel. It’s not only to experience something new, but to revise what you think you know about the world. To see what you never saw before, at any level, because the world is made of so much that we can’t possibly know it all.
