My Australia Chapter: The End

My time in Australia is coming to an end. What I thought was a journey to a place became a journey to a place and back, as I am returning to live in the US. While I write this post, my head is violently filling up with pictures of tawny frogmouths and rainbow lorikeets, low blue sky or countless stars on a black night sky, red dirt and immaculate white sand, friendly reef fish, and blooming gum trees and grevilleas. My heart feels like an ocean of emotions. I see ourselves wading in a stream in the MacDonnell Ranges when the brown snake comes to meet us. I see my husband and daughter chasing the shingleback lizards in the Flinders Ranges and playing with tens of small jewel spiders in Western Australia. I see the biggest orb and orb spider spread like an umbrella over our heads in Northern Territory. We swim in the water hole to which the crocs didn’t make it yet, but where flying foxes flock in the tall gum trees. I hear the waves of the Indian Ocean breaking onto Penguin Island while dolphins grab the fish at an arm’s length from the boat. I taste the rose Turkish delight, Greek rose jam, Cherryripe and honeycomb chocolates, passion fruit and honey, tens of kinds of mangoes, and of course, the scrumptious burger with beetroot. Kangaroos hop and bearded dragons bask on the roads I travelled seated in front of the Land Rover Defender. Green ants, bull ants, cicadas, huntsmen spiders, locusts and katydids follow me in the insect memories I will never want to forget. My friends, my neighbors and my peers, ah, I will miss all of you so much! Australia is beautiful. I’m just kidding: this is not the end. I will come back.