My life will catch up with me tomorrow afternoon. Thirty-seven boxes will be loaded into our tiny lift and deposited in my flat. The ship arrived in Malta over two weeks ago but the processes of getting my past back into my present have been complicated. In general, the transfer of my meagre collection from Australia has been without drama. It seems, however, that the transfer of funds is not so simple and that is why my possessions have languished in a bonded store for over a week. I'm not sure how I will feel when I start unpacking.
Last year, I was back in Australia for six months and all of that time, I was preparing to leave. I had decided to come and live in Malta and my return to Australia was about making that happen. Decisions about the detail hadn't been made when my friend, Lou, met me at Brisbane airport with my little car that he had been looking after. It was good to be back.
The first decision that had to be made was about my beautiful house on the bank of a mangrove creek. I had lived there for almost 20 years and there was a lot of myself built into the extensions and renovations I had made. Yet it was easy to decide to sell - the creative work was finished, it was good and I was ready to start my next piece. The process of selling was also easy once I had negotiated the uncertainties of the current economic climate by having the house independently valued. When I put it on the market, it sold within three days. The Real Estate people have a special name for it which I've forgotten - something like a heart sale, meaning that the buyer falls in love with the house. I was glad I could reject the other offer from a guy who didn't understand my house at all.
After that, I spent an interesting few months camping out in the house as the sale processes went through. I sorted through all my possessions and put my life into piles. There were treasured things like my collection of framed community theatre posters and the scale model of Bluenose, the first Americas cup contender, that needed to go to particular people. That pile was fairly easy as I had already thought about that for when I die. There were things that particular friends could make use of such as my fridge, my chopping block on wheels and my car. There were all the things, particularly books and lifetime memories, that I couldn't bring myself to dump and that is what will arrive here this afternoon. And all the rest went into a garage sale when my cousins came down from Mt Tamborine to help me. The night before the sale, I invited all my friends and neighbours to come to a party and choose a memento of me from the books and ear-rings that hadn't made it into the pile for Malta. Then after the garage sale, everything that was left went to the charity shop. I felt almost euphoric during that whole process, but my last night in an empty house was strange and sad. My plan was to spend the last day before settlement in the house so that I could go through and clean it lovingly before handing her (does a house take on the gender of its owner?) on. But my choir was singing at a peace rally on that day so everything became a bit rushed and I couldn't linger as I had hoped. In the end, I was racing to load all my final bits into my car and get the keys to the Estate Agent so I couldn't indulge the tears that were pricking my eyes.
After the house was sold, I felt different about being in Australia. It was as though now I was really a visitor. I did all the practical things like settle on my flat in Malta and arrange a loan on a small rental unit in Redlandshire so I would still have a foot on the ground. In the last few months I was house-sitting for friends, rehearsing every week with my choir ready for our exciting trip to sing at the International choral festival in Cuba and making my farewells with friends and relatives. But in my heart I was already on the way. In my next post I'll tell the story of my journey from Australia to Malta via New Zealand and Cuba.
The photo that heads up this post is of the waves crashing over Sliema front near the Fortizza. We have had a lot of big winds in the past weeks and when it is from the North or East the waves break magnificently over the North/East facing side of the island. My flat looks out on the Grand Harbour entrance and the waves cascade over the breakwater.
