Navigating cross culture

We all understand intrinsically when you move there is adjustment to be done. But what of someone who has moved all her life, from country to country, city to city and now city to remote country. What does that do to a person? Is she able to thrive from another new experience or is this move adding further stress to one’s physical and emotional well-being.

The logical response should be the latter – but yet I felt a strange sense of “coming home” in Broome and to this vast, rugged beautiful country in the Kimberley.Broome is not just a town rich with Aborigines heritage but also of migrants from largely SE Asia. That naturally brings me comfort. The interracial marriages between Yawuru people with white and migrant populations reassures me that this may in fact be the perfect space for me to feel safe enough to process what it means to be married to a white male and the inevitable clash of cultures. In this diverse town, migrants who miss the “Asianess” back home and the many people here who are running away from family/in law pressures can reinvent themselves.

Then there is Broome residents itself. Yes, I often yearn for conversations that is beyond fishing, childrearing and sports. But this is also a town where a large sizeable population is not transient and is very much active in ensuring that local planning, decisions around the sustainability of this town is important and thus many are busy engaging on very important issues.

A year after moving to Broome, and owners of a house, a few people in our lives we can regard as firm friends, involved in enough activities that we are familiar faces, I am not only convinced we made the right decision to take this risk to relocate to Broom but have discovered that my partner and I have grown as a couple. More importantly I am finally able to reconcile that Australia is now my home country and in the process of finally applying for citizenship.