Thanks Melbourne

Six weeks today we move to Toronto. Oakville, Ontario to be precise. The Takapuna-Devonport of Toronto. (I know, I know. I’ll discuss that in another post.)

We’re obviously very excited and are filled with the typical mixture of eager anticipation and uncertain trepidation. The former dominates.

As we move to one of the great Victorian cities of the New World that has grown into one the great twenty-first-century metropolises, I feel I owe my thanks to another.

Back in June 2012, Chris and I took the kids to Melbourne on a business/conference/family zoo outing combination holiday. Should you ever need to go overseas for work, I heartily recommend leaving the children at home, but we live and learn and got to see wombats and koalas. Yay.

I think it’s safe to say that whenever New Zealanders go to Melbourne they always have questions in the back of their minds about whether they could live there, or want to live there. Melbourne is after all the great city of this part of the world, and even the most diehard anti-Australian has to have some grudging respect for the place. And we had moving on our minds. Here we were finally getting on our feet financially in an Auckland that was really coming into its own, and we had itchy feet. Sure work opportunities for me were limited, but we had a brilliant extended family network and Auckland was great. We kept telling ourselves that, Auckland’s great. But something was afoot and we were restless. I kept joking to Chris that he would be offered a job over in Melbourne and we’d have to move to Australia. Heaven forbid.

Empty threats of Australian emigration aside, it was our first visit to Melbourne and its place in Australasian cultural consciousness meant we had high expectations. They were fulfilled. Fabulous city. Especially in June when it’s crisp and clear and not 40°C in the shade.

“I could definitely live here,” I said casually to Chris, as we wandered down Lygon Street from our hotel on our first exploratory tour of the city. But as we crossed Victoria Street I was quick to add, “Don’t the street cars remind you of Toronto.

I’d said it. Street cars. A lifetime in Auckland learning about how we’d been foolish enough to rip out our trams in the 1950s, but Melbourne—wondrous, tasteful, beautiful Melbourne—had had the presence of mind to keep their trams.

And I said street cars.

Chris didn’t blink, but came straight back with, “The Victorian buildings and wide streets too. I really miss Toronto.”

And we knew.