A few months ago, in April to be precise, there was what I didn’t know at the time a temporal window, to move from my 30 year Victorian bordertown home of Mildura, to Queanbeyan in regional NSW to be closer to my daughter who lives in Queanbeyan and works in ACT.
This meant amongst other things, that after years of living in a border region – I had ended up again, in a border region! Now this wouldn’t have mattered 18 months or so ago, after living in and moving around my country without barely giving a thought to the state I lived in apart from noticing the novelty of interstate car rego plates, or coming up against different state tax protocols – it hardly mattered. There was the mostly friendly joshing based on things like the Melbourne/Sydney rivalry, or silly nicknames like ‘crow-eaters’ (South Australians), ‘Mexicans’ (Victorians), or ‘banana benders’ (Queenslanders). Now of course, borders within our country have been massively magnified in terms of their impact on everyday life. And I do mean, literally, every day!