Words and Lines

An Imported Woman

(upon emigrating to Australia)

by Tris Kerslake

With a pristine visa in my book of Union Jack lacking rabies, I am quickly told to hold my breath as smiling men eradicate my European germs, replacing them with bugspray from a giant can.

I leave my flying days behind me for a while and take uncertain steps beneath the massive sky. The very tarmac holds a foreign tint, the taste of heat, of warmer hills, exotic on my breath.

I do not have the style of Belgian chocolate or even cuckoo-clocks, and so must infiltrate the land of Bondi with the cluttered bags and petty contraband of clinking duty-free.

I declare that I have nothing to declare, no home, no job, no bank account that ties me to a previous life. I do not even have my luggage which has, tradition-bound, settled in Hong Kong.

And ever so polite the smiling men in uniforms of custom lead me through a screeching zoo where mingled global accents carry me away to posters of the Parthenon and Fiat cars.

With just a bag of underwear and paperwork and stolen hotel pens, I exchange my allegiance for a cup of tea, trade my woolly climate for the silk of sun, allow my prudent feet to walk a southern path.

And with the Thailand sniffer-dogs and with the dreaded fruit-fly and the stowaways and gin, and with the missing rain and endless smiling men, I am bid a welcome to this recent land.