A Sydney Sunrise

Just a few thoughts about this morning waking up in another hemisphere. I left the rain and the cold of England for the warmth of Australia on Wednesday. It’s my cousin’s 80th birthday on Christmas Day so we have come over to Sydney to help him celebrate.

So on Friday 13th, very much not an unlucky feeling day, I got up to see the dawn breaking over one of my favourite places. To be honest I had been up since before 3am, but 11 time zones and 21 hours of flying in less than a day will do that to you!

There were times when I wondered if I would ever see Australia again, having reluctantly left in 2005 after my Masters degree, despite having been offered a job. (Immigration rules put paid to that.) This morning I put it all to one side as I watched the city wake up, listened to the unfamiliar bird song and saw the early risers walking dogs and heading to the gym or to work.

There is something magical about the dawn of a new day in a new country. Not only your day, but your life seems to hold a number of possibilities that perhaps you lose sight of in the daily grind of job, responsibilities and doom scrolling. You see freshness and opportunities where you forgot they existed. You see your own life as having more potential, whatever stage you are in the ageing process and wherever you are in your career. The gift of that realisation cannot be overstated.

Some of you may regard these thoughts as the ‘false creation of the heat oppressed brain’ (!) and perhaps they are, but they are no less real and no less important for all that. For the first time in a long time I remembered that I am privileged to see the new day and I hope that I continue to remember that even after I have left ‘The lucky country’.