I left my soul there, down by the sea
It's day 11,424 in September, 2000 and I'm in New Zealand for the first time. I find myself trying to figure out if I want to come back.
Although I was born and raised in the UK to immigrant parents from India, I had always wanted to work overseas myself, too. It was part of my motivation to train as a clinical psychologist: A UK qualification in clinical psychology is widely recognised and sought after by employers.
So, when I finally got accepted onto a training course just before I turned 30 (I’d already had part of my psychology career in research and teaching), I started thinking seriously about where I might want to work once I qualified and had worked in the NHS for a while.
My shortlist includes where I thought I would have the language ability to do therapy work and culture shock would be manageable included:
USA
Canada
Singapore
Australia
New Zealand
UK Overseas Territories
I ruled out the USA because each State has its own regulatory requirements for overseas-trained psychologists, which also meant that I would have to sit more exams, and more study into legal aspects of practice. I almost did my first Ph.D. in San Francisco and was studying for the GRE before I got an excellent offer and a generous scholarship that encouraged me to stay in the UK.
Next, I decided against Canada - which was hard. British Columbia has access to world-class skiing, a dreamy coastal Pacific lifestyle, and I had always dreamed of moving there. I was also attracted to Vancouver because two of my favourite authors (Douglas Coupland and William Gibson) live there. But the big barrier was more exams. Though these were less onerous that the States in the USA, I still didn’t fancy yet more study. It was a close decision though, and never say never, I guess.
I eliminated Singapore, because the more I looked at it, the more hot-house pressure cooker it looked to me - I was most interested in continuing to work with children and families back then. This wasn’t an environment I was particularly attracted to working in.
I even investigated moving to St Helena, a remote British island possession in the middle of the South Atlantic. But the more I looked into it, the more I saw it as a 1-year experiment. One to keep up my sleeve in case nothing else worked out. But I was interested enough to request information and see that I could probably do the job.
So, it left me with Australia and New Zealand. I’d never been to either country before. The furthest east I had ventured was India, the furthest south, Egypt. So, this was going to be new.
Structural racism and colonisation
In July 2000, I landed in Australia, following 3 weeks in Thailand. I did the standard backpacker route of 6 weeks up the east coast from Sydney to Cairns, with extensions up to Cape Tribulation and the red centre of the continent. But throughout my journey, I was reflecting on my identity, as well as how the surrounding people - fellow backpackers and Australians I met - thought of themselves and related to one another.
Colonisation had consequences in my family history, with my parents having to flee Pakistan to India when partition was imposed. They spent years living as refugees in India, and also experienced significant racism when then moved to the UK in the 1960s. I was interested to see how colonisation was playing out in Australia.
I was one of the few non-white people on the tour bus up the coast. That itself wasn’t a problem - it wasn’t an unusual position for me, growing up in the UK once I got out of my part of London. But Sydney itself was weirdly segregated. It probably still is now. It reminded me of the UK back in the 80s, where racial groups tended to ‘stick to their own’, and were discouraged from mixing with other groups. I saw groups of white people, groups of Asian people, but very few groups of white and Asian people. This partition didn’t change during the entire time of my trip.
This was jarring enough to me, but I had worse shocks to come. A relentless account about how disenfranchised aboriginl Australians were from the very outset of the history of the modern Australian state. The most significant of these was being in outback New South Wales when the tour guide informed me that people were still heading out at the weekend with shotguns to see if they could ‘bag themselves an abo’, as late as the 1970s. I don’t think I recovered from this during my entire trip.
Don’t get me wrong: I had a wonderful time in Australia during those six weeks. But I was left with a nagging question during my walk around Uluru, as I prepared to leave and reflected on my time. How can I come to work in a country where the colonising forces had systematically stripped indigenous Australians of all dignity? Aboriginal land was taken over by British colonists on the premise that the land belonged to no-one (‘terra nullius’). To my mind, this denies that indigenous Australians were even considered being human.
The state of relations between the Australian State and those that had been dispossessed repelled me. Working for a State that only paid lip service to making good its transgressions did not sit well. In my mind, this was going to be difficult to reconcile if I was going to move and work there.
So, it was in this disturbed state of mind that I boarded my plane from Alice Springs to Christchurch, via Sydney.
A different world
It didn’t take me long to figure out how different things were in New Zealand. I hopped off my plane, got some sleep, and got on yet another tour bus. This time, I headed across the south Island to the West Coast and started heading south. Whereas, aboriginal Australians were almost completely invisible to me on the East coast of Australia in 2000, I met Māori who not only worked in the establishments I visited and tourism services I used, but they owned them too. I found out more about the Treaty and how it was a framework for having tough conversations about the impacts of colonialism and how to right the wrongs of the past to build a better future. I learned about how things were difficult and imperfect, but also how people committed to keep talking to ensure better outcomes.
As I swung through the lush mountains and bleak windswept beaches of the West Coast, the sounds of Morcheeba played through the bus sound system. It was my turn to offer a CD soundtrack to the bus driver (I’m still in contact with him on Facebook).
My mind was astounded. I’d heard of the Treaty, but I never thought it lived in life this way. And as I continued my journey around the south and through the North Island, my mind was settling on New Zealand (even though my first night in Wellington I ended up in hospital).
It was the furthest point I could get from the land I grew up in. But it also offered the most alignment with the values that were important to me and which steered my psychological work.
Who knew you had to go so far to feel at home?
Very much enjoyed The Sea track added to your story Sarb.
Nice Sarb. Recall visiting AU from NZ as a teen in 1984. A rugby tour. Billeted with familes across NSW. A week or so in, having seen precisly zero Aboriginal people in Syd, asked our host in Nowra where the bloody hell are they? as it were. Drove us to a caravan park on the outskirts of Nowra. Not welcome in town was the explanation. Then a litany of reasons why this was "necessary". you can imagine.
As a kid pumped up by the affront that was apartheid South Africa I couldn't reconcile how this was tolerable in AU: widespread cultural acceptance and structural disinterest on the part of instutitions of state. We are often clumsy and complacent here in NZ but there is not that disinterest and ambivalence in our culture that could allow such a separation to occur btwn cultures, especially re tangata te whenua. Not to be taken for granted. Certainly to be celebrated.
Enjoying your stuff.
Best etc, Brent