This morning, a rising tide of corella voices lifted against the dawn as a I cycled past the golf club, my garage-sale bicycle granting me greater freedom to explore the river park. Cockatoos, corellas, and ibises swept past overhead like fleets of transports in an avian Star Wars movie. I passed Vilis inline skating across the Bowen Road bridge and thought about how good this time is for us, this sabbatical from our regular lives of teaching, committee, volunteer, and home commitments. Here, Vilis can devote himself completely to research, his first love as a zoologist, and here I can pursue my writing and outdoor interests with minimal domestic responsibilities. In leaving so much behind, including our two sons, Vilis and I created a slim window in time to rejuvenate ourselves, reacquaint each of us more deeply with the other, and discover aspects of our personalities we never knew existed. This will happen. Australia will do this for us.

In early evening, we joined Chris Johnson and his family for supper. Robyn and Chris’s son Lachlan serenaded us with two classical cello pieces before the meal, the teen’s touch light and sure, bringing forth rich, throbbing notes that caressed the air and tore at it.

The evening meal was delicious – chicken cooked with balsamic vinegar, olives, and mushrooms, braised sweet potato, couscous with sliced almonds and strawberries, and a salad of baby spinach and al dente green beans. Later, we paired up hot drinks with Robyn’s rum- and brandy-soaked fruitcake, a Christmas tradition she baked as a huge fruit- and nut-filled slab. While we ate, flying foxes squabbled and thrashed about in the trees beyond the open dining room windows – their voices loud and churlish in the darkness – and the radio news informed us that Canadian folk singer Kate McGarrigle had died, which led to a discussion of  what one hears about home when living in a foreign country.

In our case, we’d heard this latest news, as well as an interview with Leonard Cohen about his hit song “Hallelujah,” and Margaret Atwood reading her contributions to The Massey Lectures. No politics. Every day here, we hear an update on American policies and what Barack Obama’s latest speech entails, but there has been no mention of Canadian politics and Stephen Harper. Neither Chris nor Robyn could name Canada’s current prime minister, although Chris did recall both Brian Mulroney and Pierre Trudeau. Vilis provided an interesting perspective when he said, “When we’re here in Australia, we hear all about what the Americans are doing, and when we were living in New Zealand, we heard all about what the Australians were doing. So, it’s like Australia is to New Zealand what the U.S. is to Australia.”