It began with a boy, a boat and a trip to Summer Bay in February 2015 when I was on a three-week holiday in Sydney with one of my best friends, Lindsay. The grey, looming skies of London where I had lived – and worked – for half a decade felt like a world away from our views of Sydney’s sparkling harbour and the languorous afternoons we were spending on the beach.
It was on the ferry ride back from Manly beach – my skin sandy, buttery from sunblock and salty from the sea – that I met a brown-eyed Kiwi whose thighs were covered with tattoos that crept under the hem of his shorts. We got chatting, and soon after the ferry docked in Circular Quay, swapped numbers, but given I was flying to Melbourne three days later to see some friends from London, I didn’t think very much of it.
Then came the text, which was followed by a date watching the sun set over the city’s sparkling harbour. The following day it was clear that my planned trip to Melbourne was no longer going to happen. I sent my boss a vague email about extending my trip for a few days; an apologetic text to my friends in Melbourne; and swiftly booked a new flight home, stretching the trip by a week. And so, with seven days to play with, I found myself spending the final leg of my trip falling in love with a man and a city that would soon become my new home.
It was during this week, on a trip to Palm beach – immortalised as Summer Bay in Home & Away to most Brits – that I knew I had fallen for him. In hindsight, when a holiday fling is painted on the canvas of an intoxicating summer in Sydney in all its sun-soaked splendour, it would have been near-on impossible not to.
Bereft when he drove me to the airport and even more so landing back in London, we stayed in touch, and six months later I did what any self-respecting romantic would have done, and gave up everything to move across the world for the man I spent six days with that perfect summer in Sydney.
It didn’t work out; of course it didn’t. As soon as he picked me up on the day I arrived, it became very clear I had made a mistake; that our dwindling contact in the months I was back in London – something I had chalked up to distance and work commitments – was in fact a sign of what was to come, and that my hopes that life was be a continuation of the six days we spent together was naive at best, reckless at worst.
The heartbreak subsided; of course it did, as did the humiliation of moving across the world for a man I barely knew. And while I couldn’t have known it at the time, while the man wasn’t right for me, moving across the world would, in time, turn out to be the best mistake I ever made.
A lot has happened over the course of the seven and a half years I’ve lived in Australia. More heartaches and more ill-fated relationships, though I’ve now been with my boyfriend for just over a year, and he is caring, honest, kind and funny in ways that others weren’t. My opposite in every way imaginable, but a man who feels like home nonetheless. He moved in two months after we met on the street in Bondi – proving, I suppose, that when it comes to romance and spontaneity, old habits die hard.
Sydney has shown me some of the best times of my life, and some of the most brutal. Now, looking back – with the benefit of distance and hindsight – I’m grateful for each heartbreak, each time I turned left instead of right; each crooked line and how they shaped me. I would not have missed this experience for anything.
I’m now thankful for the girl I was at 29, who took a chance on love with a man she barely knew. Who was unaware that on the other side of heartache and shame there would be a love affair with a city that would last well beyond the time spent mourning the ill-fated fling with that steady-eyed stranger from the ferry.
There is no doubt that moving to Australia taught me a great many things. That loss is often the consequence of love; that my want for a happy ending runs deep within the fabric of my being; that instead of fearing failure, I have learned to be terrified of regret. That I am thankful for not knowing better at the time, because if I had done things differently, I wouldn’t be where I am right now. And that, were I given the chance, I wouldn’t have done it any other way.
Lucy Pearson is a freelance writer, book blogger and host of the Bondi Literary Salon
