Rebuilding after repatriation. Thoughts on coming home.

I have been home in Australia for six months, after closing a chapter of three years in Denmark, and two years in Norway.

For those playing along at home, six months ago was a time when we still wore face masks, scanned QR codes and yes, it was well before iceberg lettuce skyrocketed to ten dollars a head. What a ride it has been.

Make no mistake, I had predicted entirely that the going-home part of my journey was going to be more difficult than the going-away part. The concept of home has always been a construct that I have been uneasy with. And it probably explains why so much of my adult life has been lived abroad.

It’s true, Australia is where I grew up. But it has never felt like home. Not in the sense of a white picket fence, meat-and-two-vegetable dinners, or the typical family barbecues that you see in the movies and read about in books. I didn’t have these anchors in my life. I wanted them, but they were never there.

But I do have a relationship with the land, with the geography of this place. I enjoy the way the sun gleams across the ocean at sunset, the kaleidoscope of fresh fruit and vegetables in the supermarket. I have daydreamed of the hole in the ozone layer that brings out the freckles on my cheeks, and I have yearned for the long stretches of straight road, between one place and another. The warm summer nights with the car windows down. The salty air and the sand between the toes.

I have daydreamed of the hole in the ozone layer that brings out the freckles on my cheeks, and I have yearned for the long stretches of straight road, between one place and another. The warm summer nights with the car windows down. The salty air and the sand between the toes.

These are the constructs that make Australia home for me. Space and place, more so than that of human connection, nostalgia or blood.

It has taken me a little while to analyse myself and figure it out. But I am, undoubtedly, the same person here that I was in Europe. I like the same things. I live largely the same life, with a few exceptions.

Being home is like sitting on a seesaw, watching endlessly from the other side as everyone else hops on and off, and the weight, the velocity changing with each sweeping movement.

On one hand, Australia feels so big, so bright, so opportunistic. Its sheer scale makes it easy to compare to the infinite abyss. Limitless and large. Choose your own adventure. Make something of yourself.

But on the other, this place has never felt quite so much like an island, in mentality as much as in geography.

But what caused the recession of our wonder, the surrender of the gaze across the horizon? Did our world get smaller because of the pandemic? Did two years of closed borders shrink our aspirations and make us more insular? Or has the increasingly adopted American way of life, to be a salaryman, to juxtapose our careers at the centre of our identities finally taken over? What happened to the international affairs section in the newspaper? And why doesn’t my local Spanish grocery store have fuet?

But what caused the recession of our wonder, the surrender of the gaze across the horizon? Did our world get smaller because of the pandemic? Did two years of closed borders shrink our aspirations and make us more insular?

Either it was always like this, and the Ben of six years ago was a different scholar of the earth. Or my paragraph above is indicative of a tragic decline in Australia’s fortunes. Surely, it must be the former. The author must take some responsibility of his own story here.

On paper, my life feels like a well-written script. I have a partner, a side-kick, somebody who stands by me. Last week, we bought a beach house by the water, and we have a big car that takes us to wherever we want to go.

But I have an expensive camera that rarely has its shutter clicked. I have friends that I rarely see. A thousand travel stories to write up. And above all, a constant longing for the adventurous, reckless and complex life that once was.

But I have an expensive camera that rarely has its shutter clicked. I have friends that I rarely see. A thousand travel stories to write up. And above all, a constant longing for the adventurous, reckless and complex life that once was.

Weekends in Valletta, Biarritz or San Sebastian have been replaced by predictable trips to local markets where the same vendors flog the same things. Conferences in Rome, exchanged for soulless boardrooms at Darling Harbour. Six hours of driving once took me to my favourite bakery in Poznan, or my hairdresser in Prague. Now, I’m lucky to get out of Victoria. And those long Norwegian summer nights, or the abruptly short winter days, stand out against Australia’s consistent timestamp of conventional sunrises and sunsets.

And then there’s the progressiveness of the Nordics. The intellectualism. The academic vigour and constant pursuit of new ideas. The push to be more sustainable, more purposeful, to live a more balanced life. Australia cannot compete. We were never set up to do this.

Since returning home I have landed a good job at an extraordinary company, but for a globalist, a nomad, a big-picture person, returning to the one-dimensional way in which Australia conducts business has its challenges and limitations. Australian businesses are reactive, rather than thought-leading. A narrow focus, rather than a confident broadening of the shoulders. Australian businesses should be inviting the world — or at least asia — to come and play with us. But more often than not, we are satisfied to do business with ourselves. Other countries are sleeping with each other, and Australia sits here masturbating.

Other countries are sleeping with each other, and Australia sits here masturbating.

Career wise, it is an adjustment to come from the great outside. To rapidly transition from an environment where you have been working at scale, only to return to a familiar territory, one where local knowledge, idioms, catch-phrases and ‘who you know’ reigns supreme. There is absolutely a home-ground-advantage, but you know, strategists need big problems to solve.

When things don’t go to plan, or when a bad day becomes two bad days, the head fills with a crashing symphony of failure. I should be further ahead in my career. I should have a bigger circle of friends. I should allow myself to be seen more — to take photographs, to write.

I conclude often that my greatest strength is also my greatest weakness. That is, my desire, and my appetite. I want the universe to give me all of these things, all at the same time. And rarely can the sun and the stars deliver on that promise.

This is a common problem for the perennial expat. We travel the world and piece together the parts we love the most. We idealise — at least in our heads — about a place that offers the best of the places we left behind. The pintxos from the Basque region, the sensibility of the Nordics, the spice of a Moroccan grill, and the sunshine from the south of Spain. We are well aware that this perfect metropolis doesn’t exist, but it doesn’t stop us from looking for it.

We travel the world and piece together the parts we love the most. We idealise — at least in our heads — about a place that offers the best of the places we left behind.

When I was living abroad and I went through periods where I was feeling ordinary or even outright miserable, it hit different.

But that’s because I was simultaneously having an adventure. And as it turns out, being unhappy while you’re buckled-up, enjoying a beautiful, breathtaking, rollercoaster of an adventure is much better than being unhappy at home.

And as it turns out, being unhappy while you’re buckled-up, enjoying a beautiful, breathtaking, rollercoaster of an adventure is much better than being unhappy at home.

Perhaps it’s because we guilt ourselves into thinking that in our own backyard, where things are written in our own langauge, where we have friends and family, it should be easy. While we all acknowledge the challenges that we are going to face when we go abroad, we don’t allow ourselves to properly suffer and go through the grieving process when we come home.

And life right now feels small, constrained and on occasion, insufferable. There are days where I feel like the walls are closing in, physically and metaphorically. And although I know that this feeling is not insurmountable, it is hard to see how and when these circumstances might turn back in my favour.

There are many things that are unique about the journey of an expat, which is why this journey has been well covered, both in literature and in social discourse. But the journey of a repatriate — the brave decision to come home — is rarely discussed. There is an assumption that returning to the nest is a relief, or a reward after the challenges of being abroad. But from my experience, that is rarely the case. Repatriates bring with them baggage, both good and bad. And this needs to be explored and unpacked to help them integrate back into society.

I have absolutely concluded that there is a need to find renewed purpose in my life. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it is clear that the perspective and vision I had for my life in this country six years ago, is no longer enough to manifest the compelling life that I dream of. I suspect I am not alone in this thinking and that many of us have returned home in a rather dismantled state, scrambling to put the pieces back together into something new.

I can't remember a time where I was such a work in progress. But it feels good to write it down, to admit it, and to strive for something better.

I hope these words are meaningful to anybody else who feels a little lost. Between places. Off the beam.

It’s important to keep repeating in your own head, what if it all goes right?