In 2010, the company my husband worked for transferred us from United States to Australia.

We were living in Atlanta, Georgia, the Southern, American city where we met and where our then 15 month baby Felix was born. I knew changing continents would require some adaptation but Australia, and its images of beautiful modern cities, pristine coastlines, amazing animals and lovely wines was exciting and we looked forward to our new country. My husband Keith moved first, as the company required that he start his new position in July. I was left to finish wrapping up odds and ends in America and complete the details of packing up our house. Felix and I joined Keith (and our 75 kg Great Dane) arriving to Melbourne on September 1st of 2010.

Our rented house was a charming, old craftsman house, with a lovely garden in the sleepy seaside village of Sandringham, 16 kilometres east of the centre of Melbourne. The sun was shining and we were happy to be together again in this great country.

The first week or so was wonderful, as Keith showed us around our new city.

My mother had traveled with us from the States to help us settle in with the baby. Keith and I were able to amble around the CBD and enjoy the lively cafes and lane ways. We took our son to the Botanical Gardens and imagined spending the rest of our lives in this spectacular city.

Then Keith had to go to Hong-Kong and begin the frenzy of interminable travel that his job would be for the next couple of years. The sky went from clear blue to pewter and then the rains began. My furniture languished somewhere between a container ship in the Pacific and a Melbourne dock. It wasn’t warm and lovely. It was cold, rainy and lonely. I was scared to drive the new Toyota that had been delivered to our house. I had a young child and I was to drive on the side of the road opposite to the side I had always driven. Keith came home on a Thursday evening and left again on Sunday. It rained more. Queensland was flooding. Bananas were $13.00 a kg! It was November and still cold. I went to Mums groups, nobody was rude but they weren’t particularly interested in a Colombian-American woman with a red-haired baby.

Somebody asked if I was Felix’s nanny.

I’m olive skinned with dark brown hair and eyes. My son is fair skinned like Keith who was born in the north of England. I speak Spanish to our son because I want him to be bilingual. People asked me in the park if we were speaking in Italian. I really missed my friends. I wanted to go home. I hired a driving instructor so that I could overcome my fear of driving in Melbourne. After a few long-winded lessons (they were supposed to last one hour but the wonderful, generous driving instructor from India that came to my door didn’t really watch the clock) I lost my phobias and took to exploring the city on my own while Mum stayed home with Felix.

I joined Mums Meet-ups. Felix, my mother and I diligently went to outings, trying to meet people in zoos, cafes, parks, museums and galleries. We had pleasant conversations and many very good coffees. Felix was still a little toddler waddling about and had fun anywhere we went. I did yoga, meditation, and tried to find a book club. A woman in the gym I had joined said I should come to her book club. They were reading Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy. We exchanged numbers and she said she’d call me before the end of the month to tell me where they were meeting because they met in rotating private homes once a month. I bought all three books the same day and read them fairly quickly as they were very intriguing and fun to read. Three weeks later it was almost the end of the month and the woman hadn’t called me so I called her. She brushed me off quickly saying that she wasn’t going to the upcoming session due to work obligations and that really you needed to be introduced by a member on your first time because it was held in private homes. She said she was sorry and that she would call me for the next session. I never heard from her again and she avoided me at the gym thereafter. I wondered if I had broken an unwritten rule by calling her instead of waiting for her to call me. Maybe I had seemed too eager.

I thought about going back to work.

I am trained as a nurse and had spent the last ten years (until Felix was born) recovering heart surgery patients in an intensive care unit in a teaching hospital in Atlanta. But my mother was now due to return to the United States in a couple of months and then where would Felix go? The idea of putting him in daycare made me shudder. So I tried another meet-up instead. This time it was one called Hypno-Writing. A hypnotherapist from South Africa had thought of a writing workshop that would begin with a group hypnosis session and then progress to writing from a new found state of creativity and truth tapped into during a state of deep relaxation. I was curious so I went. The sessions were whimsical and entertaining. They made me want to really get disciplined about my writing (again) but the greatest gain of all was meeting and becoming friends with the facilitator and creator of hypnowriting: Caryl Blomkamp. She was beautiful, elegant and articulate but mostly warm and engaging. She was my first friend in Melbourne. We have shared a lot of things in the past three years. Mainly laughs. But meeting and loving Caryl taught me to fall in love with Melbourne and ultimately, with Australia. Caryl also came to Australia from another country where she had family, friends and many other things she loved. But Australia promised her a better future for her children and she left her beloved South Africa and never looked back. This country has given her and her children a new life of adventures and opportunities. After I met Caryl, the rain stopped. The price of bananas went down to a more reasonable $4.00 a kg. The sun came out again and I started to understand how one friend leads to another and each person has an amazing new perspective.

Felix now goes to Montessori School and I have made friends with other school Mums. My husband left the group he worked for to start a new business with a partner which gives him the opportunity to work from home. In the last six months since he stopped traveling we have bonded more as a family and feel so much more free and happy. We have also recently been approved as permanent residents of Australia.

Last Saturday night I lay in bed with my son after story time as he was trying to fall asleep.

I had spent all day in a group exercise workshop so they had gone out on their own. I asked him, “What was your favourite part of the day?” He had picnicked in the Botanical Gardens with Keith and taken our Great Dane for a run on the beach. “This is it, Mummy, being here with you.” I know he’s right. The best moment is now and the best place? Here in Melbourne with the people I love the most and all of our new friends!