Fifty for Fifi

It’s a big thing to move country. New Zealanders have always been big on parochiality, and Australians were a big target. How they spoke sounded silly to us; I remember our cousins visiting asking if they could have a “bescuit”.

We could be very parochial within the country too. One famous photo depicted an eight year old holding a sign saying “I hate you Auckland”. He’d done some lovely colouring in too.

That being said, New Zealanders and going overseas go together like white on rice, as they say. Fi tells me New Zealanders are known for “coming over here and taking our jobs and women”.

I didn’t set out to do that. In fact, immigration would never have occurred to me. Until I came to visit Fi, I’d travelled overseas once on a family trip to Sydney when I was twelve. Being anywhere but in my country of birth wasn’t in my plan.

I’d like to claim it was just romance that changed that point of view, but it wasn’t. I’d achieved my major career goal a couple of years before I came here, and in the process of finding that wasn’t all it was cracked up to be, I lost a marriage. I had lots of friends in Auckland, but no real ties outside of my family. Coming across the Tasman in hopes of getting to know Fi better and maybe starting a family together was a gamble, but with a life suddenly unencumbered by other baggage I wasn’t risking much other than pride. Do I have to tell you it was worth the risk? It was.

Now any Kiwi parochialism is entirely gone. I’m a dual citizen as of last year, and honestly I love it here. Australians aren’t as different to New Zealanders as the more one-eyed think and while each landscape is beautiful in different ways, I don’t miss the Auckland weather.

I don’t know if today’s song made much of a splash in New Zealand. While I was starting to get into different musical genres, I was more aware of American acts like Faith No More and Suicidal Tendencies than I was of The Go-Betweens.

The Streets of Your Town is a gentle and reflective song that flies right through the centre of the guitar-led indie sound of the time. I don’t know if it would have stuck with me back in 1988 but having listened to it several times while writing tonight it’s quite a balm for this émigré who’s gone from the city of One Tree Hill to the city of the Go Between Bridge.