David Gans
Those of you who suffer this column on a regular basis might have noticed that, once every couple of years, I end up delivering an installment from Melbourne, Australia—the city that I called home until the age of twenty-three, and where my parents and sister still live. These visits usually take place in July, when the summer vacation enables me to drag my American kids away for long enough to justify the considerable investment required to transport four people to the exact opposite side of the planet. As time goes by, for me it becomes increasingly important to stay connected with my Australian family and friends, and to ensure that my kids know and feel comfortable in this place, so I suppose we’ve made the trip nine or ten times over the past twenty-five years. Enough times that, when we are in Melbourne, we’ve fallen into a ritualistic pattern of behavior involving the places we go, the people we see, and the things we do. On my part, the trips also tend to involve a certain amount of sentimental reminiscing that no amount of time spent living away seems likely to erase.
Every expat knows the feeling. No matter how long you’ve lived away, and no matter how comfortable you’ve become in your adopted home, when you grow up in a place there are certain sights, sounds, tastes, turns of phrase, and songs that become embedded in your psyche and, when they bubble up later in life, still exert a peculiar power that no foreigner can ever quite understand. As an immigrant to Louisiana, even one with a twenty-five-year track record on the ground, there will always be cultural cues that won’t resonate with me the same way they do with my Louisiana-born wife. Many’s the time when some reference to an ‘eighties advertising jingle will slingshot Ashley and her American friends of similar vintage back to their childhoods in a way in which I cannot possibly participate. For the most part I am left unmoved by American candy, while Ashley’s normally ironclad willpower can be undone in an instant by a thirty-year-old advertising jingle for a Baby Ruth chocolate bar. But drop me in an Australian milk bar—as convenience stores here are called—and I’ll fall upon the Cherry Ripes, Wagon Wheels, and Violet Crumbles like Augustus Gloop locked in a chocolate factory.
And then there’s the music. Really, is there any stronger trigger for memory and sentiment than the songs you grew up with? American pop culture being what it is, lots of the chart-topping hits of the late seventies and early eighties made it big on Australian shores too. So when in some American bar, “Keep On Lovin’ You” or “Little Red Corvette” comes on and everyone throws their arms around one another’s shoulders and sings along, it’s not entirely a weird experience for me. But since the stars of the Australian music scene didn’t tend to shine so bright on foreign shores, many of the songs that formed the soundtrack of my early teens remain a complete mystery to my wife. Just how much of a mystery became clear last weekend, when my sister produced tickets to see the band Mental as Anything playing a reunion gig at a club nearby. A pop rock party band from Sydney that is kind of Australia’s answer to the B52s, Mental as Anything’s songs were huge in the eighties—the kind that were played at every party you went to as a pimply teenager, that get stuck in your head and you find yourself humming while cleaning out the toolshed, and that you still hear wailing away on golden oldies radio stations while you’re trundling a trolley around the supermarket. On Australian radio their songs are as ubiquitous as The Eagles’, their lyrics as well-known as “Hotel California’s,” and, when combined with enough beer, their power to make a roomful of middle-aged Australians behave like sentimental fifteen-year-olds is nothing short of astonishing. My Louisiana wife loves many things about Australia, but the surreal experience of finding herself surrounded by several hundred drunken late-forties Aussies in the grip of a collective flashback to their early teens, dancing badly and singing at the top of their lungs—without a single point of cultural reference to cling onto—was a bridge too far. She only managed five or six songs before disappearing from the dance floor. I found her at a table in the back, clutching a glass of Chardonnay and feeling very far from home. Indeed, if the band hadn’t played a cover of “Folsom Prison Blues” I think she might have fled into the night.
Ah well, such is life for the cross-cultural couple. And indeed, such is the power of travel to make us appreciate the things about “home” that otherwise, we tend to take for granted. I hope you enjoy this issue of Country Roads, and that among its stories you find a few more reminders of what makes this place special for you—either now, or when you look back later on. Thanks for reading.
