A swift passage and a smooth landing

Welcome, friends, to this, my first entry into the blogosphere. The Irish Rover will be updated irregularly and infrequently, but for those who may be interested, it will provide some kind of insight into my life down under. Not that this is intended to replace individual emails: I’m rather behind in my responses at the moment, but hopefully will get caught up at some stage.


For those who might be wondering at the url of this blog, it contains a nod to the celebrated Jail Journal written by the Irish patriot John Mitchel, who was transported to Van Diemann’s Land (present-day Tasmania) in the middle of the nineteenth century. My (voluntary) exile in no way resembles a penal sentence, of course: quite the reverse. Whether walking to work in short-sleeves, or enjoying a lazy dip in the warm Pacific waters, or looking at the lights of the city from the opera house terrace during the intervals, I feel like someone who has had his sentence of hard labour in the frozen North commuted at short notice. (I’ll try to make that the last of the unseemly gloating over those snow-bound or just suffering from SADness).

To complete the weather update, it’s extremely humid here, and on several occasions there have been almighty downpours. (One evening I got caught in the thick of it, but that’s a story for another post). Temperatures range from mid twenties (standard) to high thirties (exceptional). On my first day it touched 39C, meaning that over the month of January I experienced a temperature spread greater than 50 degrees celcius (we had -12C for sure and probably lower during a ski-trip over the New Year). Everyone assures me that the humidity (about which the locals grumble much as we Irish moan about the rain) will drop next month, and March to May should be lovely. However, I’m not complaining: with the aid of gallons of water and not budging from my air-conditioned office during daylight, I’m surviving manfully.

Three and a half weeks in, and in some ways I feel at home here already. Tomorrow promises to be another momentous step in the settling-in process: I finally move into my own apartment in Kirribilli, an area on the North shore just beyond the harbour bridge. The casual accommodation I’ve been renting in the interim is fine, although the cooking facilities leave a lot to be desired. Still, I take from these few weeks increased skill at cooking pasta in kettles, along with the fervent desire never to have to do so again.

Although my contract is with the University of Sydney, I’m actually based not on the main campus, but at the Conservatorium of Music (hereafter, I'll use the local dialect and refer to it as the 'Con'). Idyllic is hardly too strong a word for the location: right behind these converted nineteenth-century stables are the Botanic Gardens, with their fruit bats and summery fragrances, and the opera house is only about 10 minutes walk away. Thus far, life there has been student-free: just me figuring out what happens where, and which of my ever-patient colleagues I should bother with a seemingly endless series of queries. That will all change from 1 March, when I start my two new courses and a roster of supervising and tutorial activities.

Chief among the factors which have made my first few weeks so pleasant have been the people. My impressions of the Aussie character from the reconnaissance trip last June left me expecting conspicuous friendliness, and that has certainly been the case – in spades. Thanks to colleagues, friends, friends of friends, and so on to the third and fourth degrees of separation, my leisure time has been spent other than with DVD box-sets or in solitary walks. Beach excursions, concert/opera-going and the like have been infinitely more fun than they otherwise would have been. My least pleasant experience involved being told I look the image of Kevin Rudd, might in fact be his younger brother. Quite. Well, my address-to-be is apparently within a stone’s throw of the PM’s residence, so I may end up crashing some star-studded party yet. Or not. It will all depend on how much marking I’ve got piled up.

More soon. Would love to hear from you, so drop me a line.