There’s the Land of the Rising Sun, the Land of the Long White Cloud, the Land of the Giants, even the Land of the Free. But what about the Land of the Three-Week Visit?
I have a theory. Anyone who visits us here in Australia generally stays for three weeks, which got me wondering why that is.
We recently met up with friends of the family from ‘way back’. They were here to spend Christmas in Sydney and Melbourne, and arrived for a three-week stay. This week we’ve been ‘hanging out’ with my wife’s English relatives who are here for a little over three weeks and who we helped find some Sydney Vacation Rentals. My own parents have visited Australia twice now. And, each time, for approximately three weeks.
In the land of perpetual sunshine and skimmed milk lattes to die for, it seems that three weeks is a timeframe of choice for holidaymakers and family members on a trip to the land down under.
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| Photo credit: Tim Beach / FreeDigitalPhotos.net |
After travelling to the other side of the world, you’d be a fool to only allow a week or two to vacation here (the infamous jet lag alone will take a week to recover from, then there’s the necessary heat acclimatisation, followed by the required time for traversing some of this vast landmass).
The same applies in reverse. I wouldn’t dream of jet setting 17,000km to the UK unless I’d planned a lengthy stay there. In other words, no less than three weeks.
Ensuring a decent amount of time with loved ones is therefore the other reason for the Three-Week Visit.
For those of us who live in Australia and for family and/or friends arriving in Australia, three weeks is a satisfying chunk of time to spend together. It’s long enough, but not overly lengthy. It is ample time to re-connect and repulse (if needs must). It allows for places of interest to be visited, sightseeing boxes to be ticked, and lashings of sun to be soaked up. Three weeks also happens to be a good marker for experiencing every known emotion to man.
Week One goes something like this.
The overwhelming anticipation of seeing familiar faces after more than twelve months of separation reaches its emotional climax at the airport’s arrival lounge. Sheer joy is accompanied by dire uncertainty and worry. Did they make the arduous journey in one piece? Will they be permanently scarred by the effects of 24 hours in transit? Is the house going to be clean enough? Did I mow the lawn to those high English standards? And please don’t let a cockroach crawl across their cotton bedsheets in the night.
Positive words abound, from the quality of cooking skills, to the choice of bathroom towels, and of course how wonderful the local environment is. All parties try to bond in record speed. Although it’s really not unlike a room full of strangers, each carrying a bag full of secrets, with the carry handles about to break and spew forth the bag’s contents.
Familiarity takes hold as life confined under one small roof gets cozier. Old jokes are remembered and childhood memories are shared. Life seems to be getting back to the way it was before you had to go and upset the apple cart and leave the Motherland. But the emotional bubble that’s been swelling since your guests’ arrival is about to burst open with catastrophic results. Tensions simmer dangerously high and those pent-up frustrations, unresolved arguments, and off-hand remarks from the past year lived apart soon boil over in a series of stormy outbursts.
“This isn’t your true home.” “Your friends and family miss you.” “When are you planning to return?” “And who’s going to look after us in our old age?”
The accusations fly and the anger burns yet, as suddenly as it started, the drama is over. Opponents retreat to their respective corners. After all, the show must go on.
Week Three is less eventful but tinged with sadness.
Regret and remorse are rife as the reality of the situation sets in. This is the last week of the visit and we’ll soon be back to living separate lives on separate continents. Thoughts turn to leaving and every moment in each other’s company is a precious commodity to be jealously guarded.
The visitors consume themselves with thoughts of the mind-bogglingly boring journey home that awaits them. The thoughts of the ‘visited’ turn to cleaning the house, fumigating, burning off, de-cluttering, and getting back to the gym again.
Before long, tear-laden farewells will be said at the airport’s departure lounge, a flurry of text messages will be exchanged before the plane leaves the gate, and acceptance will kick in that you won’t see each other again for what could be a very long time. A quick cry on the drive home, wondering why and how you ever got yourself into this situation. Then the steely resolve returns. This is an adventure of course and the last things adventurers have are doubts. Emotions are buried deep and life goes on.
All this in a brief Three-Week Visit.
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| Photo credit: dan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net |
The thing about living in Australia, in this sandy outpost in the middle of the Pacific, is that you can’t help but feel the isolation set in as bags are packed and visitors say their goodbyes. There’s always that nagging feeling of being left behind that comes with living so far away from the ‘rest of the world’.
Oh so true! For some family members though the appropriate period of time is not 3 weeks, but 10 days, after which I start searching for a knife and a quiet spot in the garden for the body. The other side of the friends/family visit is the comparisons…. it’s not like this at home, you used to like doing this at home, it’s easier to get a full English at home… etc etc. Funnily enough I get this when I visit my family (all but Mum are NZers) in Australia. Before long the topic turns to – how much better Australia is than NZ. I also relate to the cry on the way home. My English husband and I have done that saying goodbye at the airport so many times now and each time I end up going to the gate with a deep ache in my belly. It isn’t easy being an expat and feeling pulled in many directions simultaneously, but it is really living life in full colour isn’t it?
I like the way you took this piece of research and put yourself forward for the case-study! I guess we never think, when we move away, that all future physical interactions will take place under the shadow of a stop-watch counting down. It really is “goodbye” to everything when you leave, even those you remain in contact with. No relationship would stay the same under that kind of changed dynamic. We all really do become strangers.
A side of expat life oft-forgotten in the excitement. Thanks for sharing it. Families eh! Who’d ‘ave ’em???
Skipping the three-week visit in order to avoid the downside isn’t truly an option, certainly not a healthy one. Despite the emotional push & pull, the questioning and justifying, and feelings of alienation, sadness and loneliness (maybe even a touch of relief!) that come with the end of such a visit, we all know that the ‘re-linking’ that takes place is important. Our lives may have changed, but our desire to reconnect to who and what has been important to us doesn’t. Thanks for stirring up some interesting memories
Hi there I can totally relate to this post on all levels. I’ve often written about one of the great advantages of living abroad – namely that you end up playing host to family and friends for extended visits – but it’s not always easy. It’s certainly not easy when they leave. Also…after stints in Austria, France & Germany me and my OH at the time thought we’d try Australia for size 9 years ago. I had never ever felt so isolated and homesick in my life. Don’t get me wrong I ADORED so much of what I experienced, but the ‘hiraeth’ (Welsh word – means longing for one’s homeland) never left me…so we headed back to explore more of Europe instead.
Oh I hear you…this is a VERY typical 3 week visit!
Although my last visit over Christmas/New Year 2010 was only 2 weeks and the best trip ‘back home’ I’ve had. You get savage with your time, only spending it the way YOU want to when it’s that short. And I would only trust my family to handle a jet-lagged me so the demands on my time from all and sundry were greatly reduced versus other visits…
I think the visits both to ‘home’ and from loved ones at ‘home’ are so important, no matter how traumatic they might be. They ground us and remind us of who we are. I find that the longer I’m away from family and old friends, the less ‘anchored’ I feel, even though I have friends and family here. I agree that it’s important to reconnect and not avoid any downsides. Gotta love the emotional push and pull, eh? Thanks for stopping by.
Lol. Pleased to see I’m not alone in experiencing these blessed visits, Kym! Over the years, I’ve also taken more of a selfish approach, only seeing those most important to me. In the early days, I’d literally spend three weeks driving up and down the country (it may be a small country but it would still physically drain me) visiting people I’d not seen in years, just so that I would feel satisfied with having ‘seen that mate’ or ‘reconnected with this distant cousin’. I can confidently tell you I’ve well and truly moved on from those early days…
Always like to take one for the expat team! Yep, we’re often so caught up in the excitement of moving to a strange, foreign land, that we don’t think about the implications of visits from afar. Don’t get me wrong, I love the Three-Week Visit. I’d just rather they were more often and not so predictable in their format.
Hi Rhiannon – thanks for stopping by and commenting. It’s interesting that you felt so homesick here in Australia (probably because of the sheer distance from ‘home’) but felt less so once back in Europe. I too have felt the ‘hiraeth’ which I feel comes largely from being on the opposite side of the globe. Familiarity isn’t the issue – after all, so much of life here is so very English in its outlook. But the sense of everyone and everything of importance being thousands of miles away is a tough one to ignore. The hiraeth grows louder and louder but my desire to absolutely get the most out of this time in my life is just as strong. We’ll see which aspect ultimately wins out. I’ll be sure to keep you posted. Cheers!
Oooo, a knife and a quiet spot in the garden for bodies. I haven’t come that close… yet. I forgot about the ‘comparisons’ aspect. Hmmm, that’s a very annoying part of the Three-Week Visit, especially in your case when visiting other expats. I’ve got that a lot from expat friends visiting from other countries (Canada, NZ) but I think a lot of that comes from the Aus-NZ and Can-US rivalry… and the similarities between the US and Australia. The old ‘chip on the shoulder’ issue?
I like the notion of ‘living life in full colour’. It absolutely is. The goodbyes can be terrible, but have become a core part of the last decade of my life. I now liken an airport, on the one hand, to a fantastic place of possibility and adventure and, on the other hand, to something akin to a hospital – a place I’d rather not see the inside of again for a very long time.
I really enjoyed reading this, at a time when we have just said goodbye to our latest visitors (four weeks…we were close). Everything you’ve said rings true for many of the long term visits we’ve had since moving to Sydney two years ago…you look forward to it, you enjoy it, you can’t wait to have your own space and routine back, then you cry when they leave and start planning when you’re going to do it all over again!
Thanks, Sarah. Always good to get positive feedback like this! Yep, it’s a bit of a mouse wheel, eh? Missing them, welcoming them, needing space from them, then parting from them. Four weeks was a good chunk of time and I hope they enjoyed themselves – and the rain 🙁
I wonder if anyone has had a longer experience with family or friends – I’ve heard of families visiting for 3 months at a time. Wonder how that works?!!
The first visitors we had, a year after arriving in Aus, stayed for six weeks. We probably went through your three week cycle twice!! Another factor that makes things extra exciting (and potentially stressful) is that visitors from Europe often come to Australia over the Christmas period, I find Christmas a frantic time without house guests so throwing that into the mix really get things going 🙂
You’re right. Adding Xmas in to the mix adds to the levels of stress and anxiety – but is better than no visitors at all (perhaps!). At least the visitors are outside as much as inside. A return to the UK at Xmas can be traumatic given the weather and the need to all share the same space under one roof 24/7! I try to clutch on to these small benefits whilst here 🙂
By the way, great website – I had a look at some of the articles and it’s very informative. Useful looking resource for folks on their way down under…