We arrived the day before ANZAC Day. I hadn’t a clue what an ANZAC was, nevermind why he/she/it/they had a day. All I knew was that when I managed to wander my way down to the closest grocery store to the faceless suburb into which we had landed was that it was closed up tight.

Two years later I’m not quite as lost. Inexplicably I’ve still got Dr. O’C. I’ve got a two-and-a-half year old budding fascist dictator in Boy Z and his rapidly growing lieutenant, Not Max. I know my away around my adopted city like I’m a native. I’ve got a job that I love a car that Dr. O’C keeps bashing up and a place to lay my head with a sea view when I wake up. I even know where to buy a carton of milk on ANZAC Day.

More importantly, I’ve come to feel at home in my home. I don’t feel Australian, but I feel comfortable among the Australians. I feel a part of Australia, that I can participate in things Australian. I feel a part of, something that I haven’t in the six and a half years since I left the country of my birth.

And I can tell you about ANZAC day. It’s a day of remembrance for the Australian and (less importantly) New Zealand Army Corps that fought at Gallipoli in World War I. The Battle of Gallipoli involved allied British and French troops landing in Turkey in a futile attempt to take Constantinople from the Turks. It involved a significant Australian presence and something like 8,000 Australian casualties. They tell us on ANZAC Day, that Gallipoli helped to established Australian national identity. I find it a bit odd that a thrashing at the hands of the Turks marks the beginning of Australian national consciousness, but it’s one of those idiosyncrasies that make Australians such a winsome people.

So the groceries stores are closed and there are dawn services around the country and in Gallipoli. And we have biscuits. And football. And I’ve learned, on this my third ANZAC Day and the second anniversary of my arrival in this enchanting corner of the world, that if you get out of the way and let it, life keeps getting better from one year to the next.

April 2008

April 2009

April 2010

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A lot of people pay out old Rolf Harris and I think it’s a shame. He’s a national treasure, an Australian troubadour, he’s painted the Queen, he’s a Commander of the British Empire, for the love of god! And there can’t be much more Australian on ANZAC Day than dancing around the living room to “Waltzing Matilda” with the ANZAC Day Clash on in the background. Seriously, buy “The Best of Rolf Harris” from .

I certainly wouldn’t have mentioned Adelaide, Australia as a possible future home. Like most of my fellow countrymen, I had little or no interest in the world beyond our national borders. After eight years of Reagan administration propaganda, I was fully convinced that the only thing available abroad was danger and communism and filth. I lived happily that way for the next decade or so. When I went back to school in the mid-90’s and to grad school a few years later, I began to socialize with foreigners. I found them interesting, and a nice addition to a potluck dinner, but still had no real interest in traveling abroad for any period of time. I even met a few Australians – a jovial race, hard-drinking, loud and comical. I knew a bit more about Australia than what I had garnered from the two Crocodiles – Dundee and the Hunter – but no overwhelming desire to visit the place, nevermind live there.

Then, one frigid February night in mid-Missouri, I met a stunning Irish-Australian post-doc at a party.

Nothing has been the same since.

Within a very short period of time after meeting Dr. O’C – roughly two hours (that penchant for fantasy didn’t go away at 17) – I had formulated a life in Australia in my head. It took a little longer – about eight years – but today I have a remarkably accurate reflection of that fantasy life. Who says an overactive imagination is a bad thing?

We’re a year in Australia today. We walked off the plane into the balmy Adelaide sunshine on April 24, 2008. I was jet lagged and exhausted beyond what I thought was possible and thrown into a huddle of effusive Irish relations of the good doctor. The luggage, Boy Z (then Baby Z) and Dr. O’C were whisked efficiently away. I was shepherded into a waiting Jeep-ish thing and driven down to our new ‘home’.

If I’m being 100% honest, as we drove down through Glenelg I was wondering just what the hell I had done.

In fact, I spent the first couple of months wondering just that. Everything was complicated – finding my way around, finding a job, getting the dog here, getting our earthly belongings here, sorting out an internet connection. There was more than one day that I found myself ready to give up, to chuck it in and go back. Where?

Each time I jumped one of the little hurdles that my new home had erected in my path, I felt a little bit stronger and more comfortable. A little more at home. A year later, most everything has fallen into place. A year later,  I’m as happy as I can ever recall being. I’m not entirely at home in Australia yet, but I don’t really know what that means anyway.

So maybe I am.

There are a lot of things that I don’t care for about Australia. A lot of the politics. The utter lack of environmental responsibility despite being one of the most ecologically fragile places on earth. Holden utes. Boy racers. Pies. The ubiquitous anti-Americanism (though this isn’t an Australian phenomena). The distance from Australia to anywhere else in the world. Some days it’s harder than others to be 10,000 miles away from my parents and extended family. The accent.

But there are more things that I do like. The people. I was right about the people – they’re jovial, hard-drinking, loud and friendly. They’re certainly more welcoming than the Brits. In fact, a year in I can go through most days without that alien feeling that I carried around with me in England. The beaches. The empty spaces. Medicare. Sushi. Good Italian food. ANZAC biscuits. Golden Gaytimes. 

But most of all – these people (and animal):

I know that they could be around me anywhere in the world. But they’re here. And that’s what it all  comes down to. And as we make room for an addition, it is these people that are going to make wherever we are feel like home. 

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Grey Anne is Portland-based singer-songwriter Amy Adams. She released her debut LP “facts and figurines” back in November on Greyday Records. This track is about a girl named Adelaide, not my new home, but it’s gotten into irretriavably into my head this morning. “facts and figurines” feature stripped-down, whimsical folk-pop. A little bit cryptic, but utterly charming. Buy it from .

A fellow American in Adelaide who stumbled onto my site wrote a post the other day that got me thinking about immigration. Her point is that most expats (and other people for that matter) relish and toss around the word ‘expatriate’ but ‘cringe’ at the word immigrant. ‘Expatriate’ carries with it images of glamour, worldliness, champagne on the Seine and first class round the world flights. ’Immigrant’ conjures images of huddled masses in steerage, midnight dashes over the Rio Grande and closed doors.

I prefer the word ‘expatriate’ myself but the Australian government, probably rightly, would use the word ’immigrant’ to describe me. Maybe it’s time I started to use that word as well. Both Dr. O’C and I come from a long line of immigrants and maybe it was natural that we followed in their footsteps. Dr. O’C’s family emigrated from Ireland to Australia when she and her sister were quite young in the hopes of making a better life for their family. My great-grandparents emigrated from Europe to Canada in the early part of the 20th century to escape a continent that seemed to be in a state of endless war. My parents moved from Canada to the U.S. in the late 60’s to ride the tail end of the post-war boom. And I emigrated from the U.S. through Europe to Australia in the early part of the 21st century in search of a life that I didn’t think was available to me in the U.S.

I suspect that all of the immigrants in our bloodlines had the same goal when they picked up and left their  home – a better life for our families. All of them achieved that goal - they succeeded beyond what they thought possible in the Old Country. Now, with the unemployment rate in the Free Man household reaching 0%* we’re well on the way to that better life that brought us Down Under.

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* We’re going to give Baby Z a few years before including him in employment statistics. 12 or 13 maybe?

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Led Zeppelin’s III is available from .

-Barenaked Ladies – “Never Is Enough”

If just one more person gives me a skeptical, condescending or pitying look when I tell them that we’re moving to Australia without a car or a job or a house (or a clue) in place I’m going to go ballistic on them. These people clearly don’t understand that if we had anything sorted then there would be no real adventure.

Since my attack dog is currently doing time in Melbourne dog nick, maybe I can get Dr. O’C’s nephew Ollie (aka The Destructicon) to take on the bulk of the ass kicking.

On a less pugilistic note – check out A Free Man’s interview with Swedish indie-popper Matthias Stromberg of The Bell. Matthias is also a Daddy, and we had a little chat about one of my favorite parenting issues – kids and music. Check out the interview and some of The Bell’s tunes here.