Boomerang Poms

Been very slack with the blogging this week, probably owing to the fact I've had actual friends to hang out with, and when I haven't been hanging out with them I've been indulging in full-time mothering and other such sculdudgery. This is the life.

Chopperdoc's been having an odd time at work. Almost four months into the job he was given a sort of interim appraisal which highlighted the fact he'd only been sent on ten missions since the end of July. Could he account for this, they asked. Some people have been called out on three times as many jobs, though as he pointed out to his superiors, it's sort of luck of the draw. You can't invent rescue jobs and car crashes and people dangling precariously from cliff-faces. They either happen or they don't and it seems people have been avoiding throwing themselves off scaffolding while Batman's on duty.

And then there's the rota. In the last eleven days he's worked seven D1 shifts, the D1 denoting first on call all day, which means first on call from the chopperdoc base during daylight hours. Prior to the beginning of the month, he'd only ever worked one of these shifts since July, and now these seven shifts, all been scheduled in a run. Planning's not much of a srong point at Chopperdoc HQ.

Of course, since the clocks went forward, daylight hours have been extended, so these D1 shifts now run from 7.30am until 7.30pm with roughly an hour commute each way. The upshot is that Batman's never at home, and when he does turn up, my hair's turned grey in patches from the stress of looking after Ella all day on my own. Just recently she's become even more demanding than usual and simply won't stop meithering; asking constant questions, refusing to co-operate, that sort of thing. And this evening he rang to say he'd be five or six hours late home from work; don't cook him any dinner, in fact, don't even bother waiting up. He'd been sent to Coff's Harbour just before the end of his shift. A ridiculous situation, especially when they're not paying overtime.

Still, a child-free day yesterday, what bliss. I collected Kath and Net from their hotel in the city and drove over to Paddington in the morning, where we had eggs benedict for brekkie and hit the saturday markets. I'm pleased to report the eggs benedict was a huge success, neither of them having tried it before (Micky's Cafe, Oxford Street, Eggs Benedict 8/10; needed more hollandaise sauce).

After the markets we drove to the botanical gardens for a stroll around the shore and a look at the flying foxes suspended from the trees, swinging in the wind like Christmas baubles. The foxes aren't high on the tourist agenda (and I'm not sure they're even in the guide books; you just sort of stumble across them if you happen to walk down the right paths) but Kath and Net were chuffed to bits at having seen them, well, either that or they were humouring me because the stress of coping with Ella is beginning to show on my face, but whichever way I was happy.

I left them heading back to Circular Quay and drove myself to Clovelly, where Darren and Ella were enjoying a barbeque on the cliffside with some of his work colleagues. And then I was introduced to John, a British doctor who took Darren's job at the hospital when he resigned to go and work for the chopperdocs. John and his wife have come to Sydney for six months with their daughter, who's almost two; the six months Darren had left in the job. I asked him about his experience.

"Well it's okay for me" he said. "I've got work, it gets me out of the house. Though I never realised how hard it would be financially. The pay in that job is appalling, we can barely survive on what I'm bringing home"

"They don't pay you for two weeks in every six" I replied. "It's a shocker"

"And Amy's not working, so she's had some real low times with Abigail. If you ask her about it, she says it's been the best and worst experience of her life all rolled into one - intensely good sometimes, intensely bad at other times. There's been a lot of tears. She misses the support we get from her family"

"I know what you mean" I replied. "The only time anyone has interacted with Ella since January is when we've been paying them. I wish someone would play with her because they want to, not because we're paying them. I have friends here from England and they've been playing with her - one of them read her a bedtime story. There's no substitute for that"

"No. Or for family"

"Well my mum often has Ella for the whole day on a Sunday, sometimes she'll bath her and give her some dinner. It makes a huge difference to us when Darren's working long weekends and it's great for Ella as well because she's close to her Nana like I was close to mine. These kids who's parents have emigrated for good just never get that"

"Well that's why we'd never consider moving here" he continued. "All the people I've met who've wanted to emigrate have done so because they were unhappy with their lives at home. We're not"

"I've noticed that too" I said. "Though the doctor who did the job before Darren, well he's back home in Britain now, getting ready to leave for good. They're emigrating back here next July, they can't wait. I think they had a different experience of Sydney than we did. It seemed easier for them somehow. They had a barbeque when they left and there were all these people there. I thought, God, how did they make so many friends so quickly?"

"Oh I don't think it's that simple", he replied. "They had an agenda. They'd already decided it was what they wanted and so they worked really hard at networking and making friends and Ged worked really hard at the hospital, said all the right things to all the right people. And anyway, it depends what you mean by making friends. I mean, how can you make loads of really close friends in six to twelve months?

Nah, I've been in touch with them by e-mail, I don't think the way they protray it is very accurate to be honest, I think they put a lot of spin on it"

I felt so much better after I'd talked to John. He and his wife have found the Sydney experience just as hard as we have. And all this time I thought there was something wrong with us because we hadn't made oodles and oodles of friends and we've both thought back to Ged's barbeque and thought, you know, if we had a leaving barbeque, there'd be hardly anyone there to see us off, which is a bit sad.

All of the doctors at the barbeque yesterday were British. All the couples with children want to go home, like Boomerang poms, even the ones who've been here for five or six years. They feel they've done the Sydney thing now. It's not the same once you have kids.

nb. Boomerang Poms, n, A term referring to ten-pound poms who emigrated to Australia only to return to Britain (Australian, collq.)