It all started six years ago, near a pristine lake bathed by the warm February sunshine, surrounded by green hills and watched over by the majestic gaze of an impressive volcano crowned with the diamonds of the eternal snow of the Andes.

Two young souls met, two young souls that belonged far away and in different places to each other. At that time nobody imagined what destiny had prepared for them. Who could have known? That day they could only smile at each other, because he couldn’t say “hello” and she couldn’t ask “como estas?”. The story started like this.

The legend says that she was from a place that, for him, sounded so far away called Australia, and that she crossed the ocean to look for adventures in a remote country called Chile. A country that when you see it in the map looks like it is hanging from the Andes mountain range, however for them the adventure was just beginning. Like a popular expression that says; ‘there is not date that will not come and there is not deadline that will not meet’, she soon had to cross the ocean back to her land and he stood watching the giant bird that took away a big part of his heart. Things would never be the same for them. Like Plato once said; ‘no man is such a coward that love doesn’t make him brave and transform him in to a hero.’ Those two souls decided in their hearts, with no words to each other, to become heroes of their destiny.

Silently both souls, one from one side of the ocean and the other from the other side, began to build a bridge.

Silently working on it for months and months, there was born a reflection from that lake near to the Andean giant. Little by little a simple, deep and sincere love like the musical notes of silence you know is always there; every letter, every word, every bad quality poem, every sigh with flavour of distance began to unite these two hearts and those two worlds through the distance. So soon that bridge rose above the ocean and one day through the clouds she arrived to be with him again near the lake.

Together they were for a while marvelling at the eternal rains from that far away territory and feeling the breeze from the mountain. However she used talk to him stories about a beautiful garden with sublime gases at the other side of the ocean. He tried to imagine that, perhaps with not much success, because he belongs to a people who were not travellers so that he didn’t know too much about the world by experience. Just by books, he was an eater of them. He tried to imagine it better than he could. Until one day with a little bit of fear in his heart he began walking by that bridge through the clouds. He felt fear, because he didn’t know the world, every day he was used to seeing the sun come up by the mountains in the east and seeing the sun navigate to the infinite in the great ocean of the west. However they walked together in the way built by hope and illusions and that was how one day they arrived at that beautiful garden.

So was how he discovered that that garden was composed of marvellous aromatic flowers, from divers colours and shapes.

To that small being from the other side of the ocean the harmony of colours and scents in that garden made a big impression. Until today, he still misses the endless waterfalls of rain from the end of the world in his territory but he is amazed when he walks through that garden of aromatic flowers and harmony of colours. It’s like how he used to have some dreams of hope in the future, hope for humanity. Well, that garden is no other than a city called Melbourne. It is a garden, but not a common garden. It is an image of the garden of humanity represented in all its splendour. Because humanity is a garden, it is a marvellous garden where every culture is a different species of flower, where every cultural manifestation is the aroma from every different flower. Perhaps, these days it looks like this garden is drying little by little in different parts of the globe, because we have failed in watering this garden with the water of understanding, respect, justice and peace.

Even so, in this city that garden is blooming beautifully.

There is an image of hope in that: maybe one day, maybe like how two souls were able to build a bridge based in love and the illusion of a better future, maybe one day, maybe one good and shiny day there will be a bridge to bring everyone together with understanding. Maybe one day through this bridge it will be possible to bring the water of peace and harmony to those deserts where the broken bones of justice are spread until infinity.

Well, that is my story of how I arrived here. Maybe it sounds like a fairy story for children, but I really believe that we need more imagination to allow the flower of hope to rise in every one of us.