Australia

My grandparents' old house

Justine Jorgensen

My mother was born in a region of the southwestern Pacific Ocean, in a country called Papua New Guinea. Whereas I spent my early childhood buried in the December snow and running through the June grass, she spent hers in the perpetual equatorial heat. After six years, she moved south to Australia. Now, I’ve lived in Alberta my whole life and the province has its beauty: the sunsets over the never ending expanse of the prairies, the jagged reflection of evergreens on a lake, the overwhelming presence of the snow-capped mountains. But to me, Australia is especially beautiful – it is a different kind of beauty.


I’ve been three times to my grandparent’s home on the Sunshine Coast, one hour north of Brisbane, Queensland. Their old house sits on 17 acres of land, the driveway lined with avocado trees and the backdrop a palette of green. The building is two floors – the living space on the top and the garage on the bottom. In the mornings, we woke to the smell of the sausages my grandfather cooked every day. Occasionally, we glimpsed a wallaby or two in the yard. The upstairs was the place to relax, but it was downstairs that my sister and I spent much of our time. Connected to the garage was a separate room used for storage as well as our play room; it was there my sister and I tried catching skinks (small lizards that would sometimes lose their tails if they felt threatened enough) and where my uncle kept the two small turtles he caught in a creek. On both sides of the room were large French doors that usually stayed open. Unfortunately, this lead to the time when my sister ran downstairs and almost stepped on the green and brown tail of an eight-foot long python that had slinked its way inside. Outside in the backyard was a clothesline where kookaburras perched; my grandfather threw circles of sausage and the birds slung the pieces to the ground to rip them apart, as if the sausages were snakes. Other days, he loaded us kids into a wagon behind his tractor, pulling us into the forest out back. The next couple hours were spent in pleasant companionship, taking in the lushness of the surrounding flora and listening to the calls of the birds.

That house was not the only one I lived in while in Australia. The last time I was in Queensland, my mum, brother, sister and I housesat for a man who also lived in the country, outside of a town called Nambour. He was the father of my mother’s close friend and owned two small, fat dogs with under bites. We cared for them as our own in the week or two that we stayed. One significant fact about this house was that the good doctor left all his windows open. This is perhaps not as significant as one would think until it is taken into account that we were in Australia – that week or two saw us all crammed into the only room that boasted a screen on its window. The rest of the rooms boasted spiders. Huntsmen spiders do not build webs; to catch their prey they jump. Top that off with long, thick legs and a hairy body the size of my hand and that is one package none of us wanted to discover in our beds. Salad bowls became very useful over the next week or so – even the vacuum cleaner was used to snag an escaping arachnid (we had the privilege of watching it jump around furiously in the clear, dust-filled chamber).

There were many cringe-worthy moments in the time spent there, but the unpleasant experiences were far outweighed by the good. Whenever we visited my grandparents, my family would go the beach – we were in Australia, after all. Long white stretches of sand and the constant crash of waves greeted us when we stepped out of the car – so different from the amber plains and evergreen-coated mountains back home. The sun was stronger than back home, steadily heating our blood, browning our skin. The drumming of the waves was irresistible; my siblings and I tried riding the curls, even though we were constantly pounded into the surf face first. I remember digging my hands into the wet sand and finding a small crab once. I think it was orange, but I’ll never know as I managed only a short glimpse before flinging it into the ocean with a shriek. To a Canadian girl from the mountains, the beach was amazing. There were days when we walked along the water’s edge, discovering the clear, gelatinous bodies of jelly fish in the sand, and crabs as large as dinner plates among the rocks.

Visiting Australia gave me the chance to get to know my family from my mother’s side. My “Bubu” is a sassy woman with a gold tooth and a propensity for laughter. My “Poppy” often demonstrated how to use the word ‘bloody’ when describing mundane items such as a cup of tea. Uncle Billy was always ready for a laugh: I enjoyed observing his pranks on my grandmother, like the time he threw plastic skinks onto her breakfast plate (her instinctual reaction was to seize the toy and whip it at the wall). Another joy was that we were able to watch my younger brother and my first cousin bond; both were around five-years old at the time and it never failed to amuse us to watch the redheaded, white skinned boy running around with his dark skinned, black haired cousin – both naked, of course. They would sit on the back porch steps basking in warmth as the thick heat curled their hair and the air rang with their laughter. Many days found us kids picking mandarins or finding tree frogs and small snakes in the bush. It was all a new world.

I live in Canada; the prick of snowflakes on my tongue, the crisp air of the Rocky Mountains, and the warm chinooks of the prairies are what I’ve grown up knowing. I love the hot summers spent swimming in creeks (devoid of crocodiles), hiking through mountainous forests, and riding horses. I love visiting the national park near my home, where I can walk through a red rock canyon, hopping from stone to stone through glacial water clear as glass. I love spending winter days skiing down a mountain or curled up in front of the fire with a cup of hot chocolate. However, there is a possibility that my family could be moving across the world after I graduate, to return to the Sunshine Coast where my mother grew up. In total, I’ve spent five months in Australia. The country is a part of who I am: where I lost my first tooth, met the ocean, and realized that the world is actually quite big. Being there has sparked a desire to travel, a desire to experience different places, languages and food. It was the view from the plane flying along the coast from Sydney to Brisbane, of crystalline ocean and miles of white sand, that instigated my dream to one day become a pilot. My time in Australia gave me memories and great stories to cherish, and also a possibility. A possibility of a place to live and go to university, to meet new people and have new adventures.

This is the place where the spiders eat birds instead of insects. Where the ocean shimmers along the horizon and any temperature under fifteen decrees Celsius is considered cold. Where the thundering of the waves on the beach is music to the ears. The land down under.