Homeward bound — Local Paddo

At the end of 2020, I packed up my London flat, boarded a flight for home, made an obligatory stopover in hotel quarantine and moved back to Paddington. I’d been away from Sydney for 10 years and spent the last eight months of those living in lockdown, where I'd had time to think.

I wondered what the future held for my adopted country, how I was going to brave the coming storm, and how the pandemic would change my idea of home.

I had spent much of my time in London writing about travel, which is a great teacher — a reminder to slow down, ask questions and realise that everyone we encounter has a life as nuanced as our own. Travel highlights the romance of the everyday.

On the road, a pastry eaten al fresco is an event. At home, while a similar feast may make us smile, it hardly seems worth talking about. Pondering my prior roaming from my strangely quiet corner of London, I considered how different things would be if, given the chance, I applied my wide-eyed, rose-tinted approach to travel to ordinary life — if I took the time to celebrate the little things.

So, finding myself lucky enough to be back in Paddington, I did my best to act on these lockdown musings, treating every day like a day on the road while reacquainting myself with a suburb that, for the first 22 years of my life, had been home.

I immediately noticed that everything felt very familiar. Yes, storefronts had evolved and new restaurants had emerged, but the essence of Paddington remained. There was still a sense of community and it was clear that people took pride in the suburb’s style, quirks, artistic heritage. The next thing I noticed was how quickly memories came flooding back.

Returning to Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, I was suddenly 18 again and seeing Bill Henson’s work for the first time, discovering that photography could be more ethereal than I’d ever thought possible.

Stopping for breakfast at Bills, I remembered the birthdays and milestones I’d celebrated with his ricotta hotcakes. I recalled the day Bill Granger brought his restaurant to London and I shed a tear of joy in Notting Hill as the man himself placed my bananary, buttery brunch before me. I'd never been more starstruck.

Back in London, when I struggled with writing or things felt a little much, I turned to the Thames, walking along the river in the rain, hail and shine, and thinking about all this mighty waterway had seen. In Paddington, I look to bookstores and galleries. Many of these names were here before I left — Ampersand, Berkelouw, Oscar & Friends — but it’s fabulous to see how many others have discovered their magic.

Stepping into Kitty Clark’s Saint Cloche or Kate Hopkinson-Pointer’s Project 90 galleries, I’m delighted. Not only because the works adorning these walls are divine, but because they capture such diverse visions of Australia and glorify the minute.

I can still pop to Italy, thanks to restaurants such as Barbetta and Vino e Cucina, to Mexico with Don Pedros, or dear Old Blighty with pubs such as the Royal and the Village Inn. And then there’s the Unicorn, which strikes me as being perfectly Sydney. I spent years striving to bedeck my rented London bedrooms with Unicorn-worthy Australiana.

Some of these gems thrived before my departure a decade ago, but I don’t think I took the time to drink in their charm — or, before 2020, to look back and acknowledge how much they meant to me.

I’ve always adored words with no English translation; poetic reminders that our most complex thoughts and emotions can be easily defined and that almost everything we feel is shared. There are terms that capture the way sunlight is filtered through leaves (the Japanese word komorebi) and how human kindness binds us together (the Zulu, ubuntu).

My favourite, though, is the Welsh word hiraeth, which describes our longing for a home we can never again visit — a place lost to the past, or perhaps one that never really existed, yet is steeped in nostalgia nonetheless.

During lockdown in London, hiraeth took on new meaning. Bittersweet and beautiful, I couldn't utter the word without picturing Paddington. It was like a fever dream; a place of elegance, history and glamour that felt impossibly far away.

I’m so thankful I can return to a suburb that’s lived up to the memories. Places change when you move away, and you change too, but that doesn't mean you can’t fall in love with home anew.

I adored my time in London — the buzz, the creative community, the sense that anything was possible. But in life, we can love more than one location.

I can’t tell you how wonderful it is to feel that there are two places I can call my own. One that is waiting and one that is here, now, cloaked in terraces and wisteria. A place where I can eat a pastry al fresco, and always take the time to talk about it.