My Lucky Story
I had been in Europe doing my “overseas experience”, and now had returned to my native home of Auckland – where the job opportunity I’d been “promised” had evaporated in the dwindling economy.
For almost a year I remained unemployed and deeply in debt, applying for many jobs and being found “over-qualified”. Even the local bookshop didn’t want me, predicting I would “be off” as soon as I found a job in radio, for which I was trained. It was seeming impossible to pay back my mother what I owed her, and to move on with my life. The post-travel blues were hitting hard.
It was May 1999 when I got the phone call. A man in Canberra, offering me the chance to apply for a position at his radio station.
“What’s Canberra like?” I asked. “Is it similar to Melbourne?”
“Well yes,” came the reply, somewhat hesitantly, “… only smaller.” he added.
It turns out the radio station needed a copywriter with metro experience, which I had – but they’d been unable to attract anyone to move from Australia’s larger cities.
“Let’s look in New Zealand,” they decided. “Surely we’ll be able to lure someone over.”
My future manager had enquired with an associate in Wellington, who passed on my resume which I’d been firing off everywhere – A most fruitful example of being ‘kept on file.’
And so, I came to be living in Canberra. My arrival was buffered by my employers generously paying to relocate me. The culture was familiar, and the language naturally wasn’t a problem. It took maybe a year to conquer an initial loneliness, but adjust I did. I could appreciate how my new home offered horizons much larger than Auckland could. I felt eternally grateful to those Australian potential applicants who had not wanted to move to the nation’s capital!
After a couple of years, I was looking further afield. Like many transients around me, I was merely doing my time in Canberra. I needed more buzz and I was first looking at Sydney, until a long weekend trip to Melbourne planted a seed in my heart.
Another piece of luck passed my way. A Canberra-based friend who yearned to return to Victoria found an opportunity for us in his parents’ home town. Together, we purchased a tiny run-down cottage in Kyneton for the princely sum of $56,000, and so began the next phase of my life, in country Victoria. Victoria was kind to me, with the ease of finding employment in the early 2000s. I moved from data entry to a short-term public service contract, and back into radio, all without a break in income. We commuted into Melbourne by V-Line and worked on our cottage, selling it in 2004 for the nicely rounded increase of $156,000.
By this time, I had taken another step in cementing Australia as my home.
I wanted to belong properly, to feel fully immersed, and to participate in the voting process. I became an Australian citizen, being in the last wave (though I didn’t know it at the time) of New Zealanders who were able to do so with ease. The ceremony took place on a beautifully sunny day. I had joked with the applicant officer about my duties as a citizen, “that I must now barrack for Australian sports teams?” but it was a matter of extreme seriousness for the people of many nationalities surrounding me at the ceremony. I was greatly humbled, wondering how much more difficult their transition may have been, and what Australian citizenship may represent to them. I have since read many stories to enlighten me, and my respect goes out to all.
Although able to retain my Kiwi passport as a dual citizen, I was now obliged to leave and re-enter the country on my brand new Australian passport. As I returned from a Christmas visit to my parents, the customs officer at Melbourne airport gave me a beaming smile as he handed me my passport, and said ‘Welcome home.’ It brought a lump to my throat. Still does.
So that’s “my lucky story” of how I came to be here. Easy and without struggle, riding a wave of opportunities. Melbourne beckoning me closer, until I ended up where I truly feel settled, with a long term steady job and a small home in Footscray.