Angela Mollard: My love letter to my adopted homeland Australia

There’s a lot to love about Australia, writes Angela Mollard. It’s good-natured and pragmatic, a place where decency persists and optimism prevails.

There’s a lot to love about Australia, Angela Mollard writes.

The brightness. That’s what I recall when I stepped off the plane from London 23 years ago this week. I’d forgotten that autumn in the Antipodes delivers these haze-free days, turning the trees emerald and the sky cerulean.

As I write, a strand of scarlet bougainvillea is sneaking through the fence, muscling into its rightful position in nature’s paintbox. Yellow knows that I like it less.

God, I love this country. And as if to underscore my continuing gratitude for my adopted land, two envelopes pop into the letterbox on the very day that marks our arrival here in the first year of the new millennium.

One from the vet. The other from the police.

The latter prompts panic. I’m not a good driver and Easter was marked with double demerits. I expect the vet is sending a bill after euthanising our beloved 18-year-old cat Toffee. But it’s a condolence card.

“We know how much you must be missing your special boy,” writes Kay, who was so kind when my younger daughter had to oversee Toffee’s departure because I was away. Every staff member had signed the card.

Angela Mollard is celebrating 23 years living in her adopted homeland. Picture: iStock

As for the police, the letter came from Scott, the crime co-ordinator. I know our Prime Minister has recently softened on the repatriation of New Zealanders who have form, but nevertheless I was crapping myself.

Turns out I had filled up at a petrol station and driven away without paying. I owed them $104 and, as Scott tactfully suggested, “if this was accidental, it would be prudent for the driver at the time or yourself to return and pay”.

The police, he continued, understand that mistakes can happen.

What a good-natured and pragmatic country we live in.

Yes, problems abound, cost of living is crippling, and the cancel carousel seems to spin ever faster on some tricked-up axis of moral rectitude.

But decency persists and optimism prevails.

By the end of this year, I’ll have lived in this country longer than anywhere else.

There were nine years in London following the 23 in NZ, and while I still itch for another, yet uncovered, experience — Portugal perhaps — Australia is home.

Angela Mollard with her beloved 18-year-old cat Toffee.

My first daughter was born three months after we arrived, and when the public hospital mustered an obstetrician on a Saturday night, it marked the beginning of an unwavering appreciation for our health system.

Another baby, tonsils and colonoscopies have followed. Medicare, though flawed, is a radical kindness.

Dentistry, conversely, is extortionate, but I’m OK with losing a tooth (too costly to crown) if a kid in need gets to keep theirs. We are not Scandinavian socialists; some things we must pay for.

After England’s benign robins, I’ve learned to appreciate our noisy birds, notably the kookaburra who plonks himself on my fence.

I love our pounding beaches, not gentle ponds like the Med, and while I refuse to say “thongs” — flip-flops being more elegant — I’m sure happiness is intrinsically linked to bare feet.

Last week when a British newspaper offered a tired comparison between Sydney and Melbourne, it seemed so binary and basic. Any informed visitor knows you come for Tassie, Uluru, Katherine and Lord Howe or Adelaide’s fabulous festivals.

But what I love most about this country is that we keep trying.

Politics attracts both loons and egos, but most still want to do good. We have royal commissions to reveal where we need to do better and referendums to decide what we want.

Ponder a day in Ukraine or Sudan — or a lifetime in North Korea —— and you realise how privileged we are to be considering whether to include the Voice in our Constitution.

As much as anything, it’s an invitation to become informed. Having spent a lifetime being justifiably proud of my birth nation’s Treaty of Waitangi, I’m reading my way to an understanding of Indigenous issues here.

Henry Reynolds’ Truth-Telling makes clear that the Uluru Statement is no “rhetorical flourish”, but shows, through history and law, a map for our future. Mark McKenna’s Return to Uluru and Cassandra Pybus’s Truganini are stories that belong alongside those by Bryce Courtenay, Colleen McCulloch, Jimmy Barnes and Midnight Oil.

As ever, these should not be forgotten years.

There’s stuff that worries me. Climate change, obviously, but I have an optimist’s belief that science, tech and our consciences will steer us clear.

It’s dispiriting that we must devote so much money to defence because parts of the world are still run by megalomaniacs.

Too many still take their own precious lives.

We tend to allow woke to win over common sense, and nuance is a language that’s fallen out of favour. Multiculturalism has taught us plurality enriches rather than depletes. It’s possible to enjoy Barry Humphries and Hannah Gadsby; to accept our historical dependence on mining but champion renewables; to be intrigued by the monarchy but also be a republican. Justifying his attendance at the coronation, Nick Cave captured it perfectly: it would be “spectacularly incurious” not to go. We are better for holding competing opinions.

When I arrived here 23 years ago, an editor returning to Britain told me she loved Australia, but it’s a shame it couldn’t be anchored off the Thames.

What nonsense.

This land I adore is exactly where it should be.

ANGELA LOVES

Modern men: Travelling on the ferry this week, I overheard two dads discussing how much they enjoyed doing canteen duty because their kids loved seeing them at school.

Sunscreen: So many have a white cast but I’ve discovered Coco & Eve’s daily water gel (SPF50) that glides on clear and is bolstered with hyaluronic acid and vitamin E.

Happy hour: In a COL crisis, it’s fab to drop into a bar between 5pm and 6pm and nab a glass of wine for $6. My local throws in pate and toast for another tenner.