Tag / SA expats

by brandsa2018

After 12 years away, I chose to move back to SA – here’s why

In the winter of 2016, I started thinking a lot about moving back to Adelaide, the city where I’d been born and raised. I’d left in 2007 at the age of 21 and moved to Sydney, swapping my shared workers’ cottage that was spitting distance from the Adelaide Central Market for a two-storey terrace in Darlinghurst with walls so mouldy that they quickly consumed all the pictures I naively hung on the walls.

I wanted to work in the media, and Sydney was the place to do it. I lasted in the Darlinghurst sharehouse for another six months, and then lived on my own and loved it. At holidays, I’d come home, always visiting the same places: Amalfi, the Wheaty, Lucia’s, Coriole, Henley Beach. The city felt comfortable and safe, like an old friend who didn’t really change that much but it was okay, because they were always there for you.

Vanessa Keys, pictured in Milan, moved back to SA recently after more than a decade living away from home.

In 2012, I started plotting my next move: London, a city that my sister had moved to a year prior. I’d never been but that was okay, because everyone spoke English, right? Plus, I told myself, I’d be perfectly happy just working in a pub. (Reader, she was not perfectly happy working in a pub.) It was not love at first sight: I struggled to find a permanent job, a decent flat, functional flatmates. Simple tasks were a constant battle.

But with each year came better work, and with better work came better money, and with money came travel and restaurants and proper winter shoes and share houses with just one mouse instead of the whole measly family. Our friends were our family, and we all worked very hard but we played very hard too, and sometimes it felt like we’d tricked the system, like we’d found a way to be young and have fun forever. If someone had told me they’d invented a way to freeze time, I would have gladly cashed out my life savings.

I’d been spending Christmas in Adelaide since I’d moved but when I went back in 2015 the city felt different, or maybe I’d just been too in love with London to notice. Side streets I’d not known existed had born cosy bars and everywhere I looked there were new cafés and restaurants. I noticed First Fridays, innovation hubs, underground radio stations. I bumped into people I knew and didn’t hate it, and not one person asked me what school I went to. The wineries felt closer, the beaches sandier. How was wine this cheap?

Vanessa and her partner Aaron at The Bluff, Encounter Bay.

When I returned to London, missing the sun, I realised that what I’d come to love about London wasn’t the allure of the big city but the community of the small neighbourhood that I’d come to call home. Age changes what you need from a city, and as much as I would have loved to stay 30 and live in Hackney forever, I knew London had an expiry date. I thought briefly about returning to Sydney but the enormity of the city no longer appealed.

Over the next year, things started to fall into place: my friend and I decided to start a business together, and we decided that business would be in Adelaide, and I met my partner, who Googled ‘living in Adelaide’ many months before I asked how he felt about leaving the city that he’d been born and raised in. (He said yes.)

If I make it sound easy, it wasn’t. I was nervous about what a life in Adelaide would look like, and knew my partner would be homesick, just as I was. Working for yourself is hard, and even harder in a city where you don’t know anyone. I worried about being bored, about my partner being bored, and not being able to fly to Europe for a long weekend (I know, I know).

Vanessa, right, and her business partner Lizzie at Shaw and Smith in the Adelaide Hills.

We’ve been back for five months now, and what our life looks like is this: we pay half as much rent than we did in London for an apartment on the city fringe with views of the Adelaide Hills. The noises that I hear at night are not mice, and we don’t have to worry about our boiler breaking. Boredom hasn’t even crossed our minds. We enjoy Adelaide Fringe shows, new restaurants, wine bars, beaches, wineries and galleries. I still can’t believe it only takes 40 minutes to get to a sandy beach. Europe is no longer on our doorstep but that’s okay, because Hobart, New Zealand and Asia are.

Curiosity abounds: people want to know what we’re doing, why we’re here, how they can help. We’ve both fallen hard for the community that Adelaide fosters and the drive and energy that small business owners have. There’s so much pride that comes from living in a state that supports local trade. And, unlike London, you don’t need as much money to have a good life. Everything feels a little easier.

I’ll be forever grateful to everyone that stayed, to those people that banged on the table for change, and even more so to the people that made that change happen. I can’t wait to be a part of what happens next.

Read Vanessa’s Brand SA News stories here.

Hello from SA is the global community for South Australians living, working and learning interstate and abroad.

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by brandsa2018

New York tales of a South Australian expat

‘Producer’ on paper, but self-proclaimed “Jill of all trades”, South Australian expat Rebecca Gill lives, loves and learns in New York City… where hustling is a religion and apartments are smaller than most Adelaide kitchens.

It’s a small price to pay when chasing your dream – and New York has “always been it” for Rebecca. Her journey began in 2010, when she left Adelaide to fulfil her dream of working and living abroad. Bali was the first stop on her one-way ticket, having accepted a position as media manager for an NGO that had set-up there, during a recent rabies outbreak on the island.

While worlds apart from her previous roles a journalist at The Advertiser, working for an NGO in Asia set her up for the string of non-profits she’d go on to manage in New York, including Unicef and the World Health Organisation (WHO).

Aside from her tiny Manhattan studio, Rebecca is “living the dream”, in every sense of the phrase. She runs a production company, ReAgency, with her BFF Jayde Lovell. Initially, the pair launched as a science-leaning PR agency but, given the administration’s anti-science agenda, they’ve unintentionally morphed into a late-night-style political talk-show, with a comedic undertone.

SA expat and NYC producer Rebecca Gill on set.

Rebecca creates branded content for universities and environmental organisations, and has just wrapped up post-production on her first documentary. She spends most of her time overseeing video production, rubbing shoulders with other content creators in Manhattan’s YouTube space.

“I feel like I’ve done a hundred different jobs and I’m a million years old. Even in New York City, I call myself a producer but I juggle lots of roles,” Rebecca laughs. The New York way, perhaps.

Adelaide remains a calm, grounding yearly refuge for a much-needed change of energy. Rebecca admits her perception of Adelaide being “mortgage, kids and bathroom renovations” has changed over the years.

“Adelaide isn’t just the suburbs,” she says. “It’s a cool city with a thriving arts scene and a great quality of life. There’s a bazillion other things going for it, too. I really just needed to look harder.

“You can live the creative life anywhere… you just have to find your people. I thought I had to get to a big city to try and be the person I wanted to be.”

Rebecca sees Adelaide as a diverse and bustling small city, similar to what her New York friends perceive it to be – “beaches, wine, cool little eateries, diverse people and the Adelaide Fringe, of course”.

As the years pass in New York, her affinity for simplicity grows – like hanging out with her folks in their backyard as relatives file through bringing different brands of sauvignon blanc. “A backyard is something I never get to enjoy in Manhattan,” Rebecca says.

Working out of NYC, Rebecca Gill rubs shoulders with other content creators in Manhattan’s YouTube space.

Regardless of how expensive it can be to fly home, Rebecca enjoys visiting home yearly. “It’s my physical release, coming home,” she says. “An undeniable surge of happiness, that goes something like, ‘oh God, thank you for this peace and space”.

Her family lives only a couple of streets (“blocks”, in Rebecca’s adopted language), from the city. Having attended Grange Primary School and Henley High School, the beach has always been symbolic of her childhood.

Rebecca says she is lucky enough to work with a tight group of Aussies.

“Jayde is constantly playing Crowded House, Matt Corby and Vance Joy, so that always triggers memories of the nearly 30 years I spent in Adelaide,” she says.

When posed the question that’s most common at family Christmas lunches for almost all SA expats, ‘will you ever return to Adelaide?’, she replies ‘hell, yeah!’ in true Aussie spirit.

Among her long list of reasons for one day returning home, a desire to raise future children in Australia is a big one.

“(In the US) Even those lucky enough to have insurance can get slapped with a $40,000 hospital bill, just for giving brith,” Rebecca says. “And who wants to raise a baby without their mum around?”

Home living space is another reason to one day make the journey home – she winces when thinking about what can get in Adelaide for the price of her monthly Manhattan rent.

“My toilet is basically on top of my kitchen,” Rebecca says. “One day, I’d love to live in those rambling old farmhouse-style homes in Adelaide, with a red brick exterior, giant old trees, a rosebush and hardwood floors.

“And of course, to be close to my parents. They’re both vegans, who kayak, cycle and are 7am joggers. And me? I’m a true New Yorker now. I eat out every night, my oven doubles as shoe storage, and ‘exercise’ is climbing subway stairs.”

The grass isn’t always greener. At least, not every season.

Today, though, Rebecca’s just enjoying the here and now… working on projects that ignite her. Like many others who leave Adelaide to embrace their opportunities, Rebecca has an important narrative to tell. Specifically, that life isn’t linear and more often than not, the real adventures are waiting for you in life’s zig-zags.

As part of Brand South Australia’s recently launched Hello From SA network, we’ll be sharing the stories of SA expats from around the world. Do you know a South Aussie living, working or learning abroad? Get in touch via the Hello From SA Facebook or LinkedIn pages.

Hello from SA is the global community for South Australians living, working and learning interstate and abroad.

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