My Highlights of Living in Australia

It’s been nearly 2 years since my last bog post. These 2 years living in Australia have whizzed by and, begrudgingly, it’s now time to say goodbye. I look back on how the time passed I realize that it was abundant with wonderful experiences and delightful people.  As I reflect on it all, it suddenly and surprisingly occurs to me that I’ve gone through a metamorphosis. I’ve transformed into a different person than when I arrived. Some of the change is physical as I’ve become the most fit I’ve ever been. Oh, and don’t forget about the hair! However, most of the change is within. I’ve tried new experiences, re-invigorated some of my dormant passions, and discovered a few new things about myself. I think it was all due to a perfect storm of open-mindedness, taking opportunities, luck, having a positive attitude, and living in an amazingly beautiful and community-centered town (go Bunbury!).

Here are my highlights of living in Australia.

The Beaches!

I’ve now been to numerous beaches across 4 Australian states and every single one of them was spectacular. Here are my favorite beaches:

Back Beach, Bunbury

I never got tired of watching the sun set over the ocean on a beautiful beach

Lucky Bay, Esperance

I was able to get up close with a few kangaroos right on the beach!

Whitehaven Beach, Whitsunday Island

The Hill Inlet at Whitehaven Beach, which is not too far from the Great Barrier Reef

Tennis

As I mentioned in a previous blog, Bunbury, and Australia in general, is very sport and fitness oriented. There is a club for just about any sport in Bunbury. I tried a few of the clubs in town including running, cross-country running, tennis (hadn’t played in 2 years), badminton, and boxing. I ended up staying with the tennis club and got to a point where I was playing tennis 6 days a week during the peak season, which was a good way to get used to playing on grass courts. I even convinced Amber to try it out and she ended up loving it. The tennis club atmosphere was great because we got to play quality tennis with friendly and often joking people of all ages. A highlight is getting to play with Dez, an 80+ year old Aussie who still has a mean stroke and a quick-witted tongue! Once, when I was partners with him he miss-hit a ball and scolded himself, “Ahh, c’mon Dez! You’re playing like an 80 year old! Hit the ball!”

A lovely tennis sketch of Amber and me. Made by fellow Bunbury tennis club member, Penelope Northcott.

I had regular tennis lessons for 2 years and got good enough to participate in an inter-city league and club tournaments. A highlight for me was winning the Bunbury Club Championships Singles “B” grade division (interestingly enough, I had to play against Amber’s boss in the finals). I also won 2 competitions in mixed doubles playing with an awesome 11-year-old girl. Big thanks to Andrew Woodward, the coach at the Bunbury Tennis Club, for drastically improving my tennis game!

Fitness

With such beautiful weather (it’s sunny most of the year, and during the few months of rain there are rainbows on an almost daily basis) and a great path along the beach, it makes sense to run along the ocean. The view was so great that it inspired Amber to join me for runs. This is a major accomplishment in itself as I can only recall one time in the past 13 years that we’ve ran together outside! Even though she was a little discouraged by her pace compared to mine (why is she always competing against me?) she kept at it and ran just about everyday after work. After training together we ran our first 10k race together in Margaret River and were quite pleased with ourselves. Later in the year while I was visiting the US, she completed another 10k race with marked improvement. Our most recent race was a 5k in Brisbane where we both posted blazing fast personal best times, 22:23 for me and 24:40 for her.

We’ve also regularly exercised by doing various fitness programs. First, it was fit boxing classes at the local boxing gym, then it was Jillian Michaels workout tapes, then we did the 63-day “Shape 21” program, then I did the “Shortcut to Size” 60-day program, and currently we’re in the 4th week of the 2-month “Insanity” workout program (yes, the workouts are crazy insane!). Needless to say, we are both in the best shape of our lives and we owe it all to the Bunbury lifestyle.

Musical Endeavors

It’s interesting how ideas, events, or experiences in life can just snowball and take a life of their own. This happened to me when trying to rekindle my passion for playing music. A single, tiny, innocent event led to another opportunity which led to more opportunities and so on until the result was much bigger and surprising than anything I could’ve imaged. 

Playing music has been a major part of my life, but unfortunately I didn’t do any music during the 2 years living in Thailand. Upon moving to Bunbury I decided to get back into music, particularly drumming and percussion. I ended up finding a 2-hour introductory class on African Drumming at the local community center – little did I know that this class would kick start an avalanche of opportunities that would completely reshape my life for the next 2 years and beyond. Even though I had never done African Drumming, I thought the class would be a good way to get back into drumming. The class was taught by a social worker at the Milligan Community Resource and Learning Centre that recently learned how to play the djembe drum so that he could facilitate a drumming therapy program for at-risk teens. The class was fun, the teacher was great, and we had lots of enthusiastic participants. The rhythms were pretty basic and easy, yet had a powerful, repeating effect. Later on, the technique became more difficult and the rhythms more complicated. Due to my drumming experience I could catch on but other people who were complete beginners could not. I ended up helping facilitate the class and giving my advice – essentially teaching the class here and there. After the class, it was recommended that I teach a series of classes for African drumming. It seemed kind of strange to teach something that I knew very little about, but it did sound interesting and I didn’t have anything else to do!  I did some researching on African drumming by buying a few books and finding helpful websites and videos on the Internet. It didn’t seem so difficult, so I decided to give it try, and I ended up teaching an 8-week African drumming course. I was getting paid for doing something I love - it doesn’t get much better than that! We had about a dozen people in the class and it was a great success. The class continued to be renewed for the next year and a half.

Having fun teaching African Drumming

In the meantime, one of the board members of the community center, Megan, heard about my African drumming class. She invited me for coffee and told me that she had participated in African drumming classes in Sydney and was eager to start a business teaching African drumming. I agreed to be a teacher and to help her get the business going.  Megan already had the name (Dindindi Drums), a logo, and eventually purchased 20 drums and a trailer. I ended up making the website (www.dindindi.com.au), teaching classes and workshops, and participating in gigs and performances. Dindindi has become a thriving drumming community in Bunbury and I’m proud to say that I helped get it off its feet!

Megan, Gina, and me giving a Dindindi performance at the Bunbury Performers Club

One of my regular students from the 8-week African drumming courses at the community center, Tracy, was an at-home piano teacher for kids. She was fascinated with learning new rhythms and recognized that her ability to read rhythms could be improved. Over time she realized that rhythm was the most important of the 3 aspects of music (rhythm, melody, harmony). She said that her piano students would simply memorize the rhythm of a song and not actually read and understand the printed rhythm on their sheet music. She wanted to overhaul her teaching process so that it was rhythm-reading focused. She asked me to help her create and co-teach a percussion and rhythm class for her piano students.  I agreed, and we created a 2-month lesson plan of weekly 30-minute classes for a group of girls aged 8-13 and a group of boys aged 8-15. I was a bit apprehensive to teach the class, as it would be my first time teaching kids.  Also, I had to learn new names for the notes because they have different names in the UK/Australia (an 8th note is called a quaver, a whole note is called semibreve, a half note is called minim, etc). We designed the classes with fun, interactive activities using various percussion instruments while still teaching the students how to read and write rhythms. The classes were a success, and it was very rewarding watching the kids progress so fast. It was especially rewarding for me because the kids were great and I was able to do two things that I love, music and teaching, and get paid for it!

As we continued to teach the next rounds of the rhythm classes, I was asked if I could teach guitar to some of the piano students for the following month. It had been maybe 5 years since I played the guitar, and I didn’t even own a guitar. I thought, “why not?” and I took on the challenge. I bought a second-hand guitar for $25, bought a few guitar books, and regained my technique with some practice. When the following month rolled around I was ready to teach guitar. I started out with 4 students of various beginning skill levels. We worked from guitar books for kids and I made it a part of my curriculum to teach them how to improvise and teach them about keys and chord progressions. They all loved improvising, as it was something new that they hadn’t learned and it gave them the freedom to really rock out and be creative. As the months went by I picked up more guitar students, and I was even teaching drum set lessons to a few students. I had lots of fun teaching and found it very rewarding to watch each student improve and see their confidence build every week.  It was particularly nice to hear the compliments from parents that their child enjoyed the lessons. One parent told me that when she told her son that I would be moving to China he became really sad and was nearly in tears knowing that we’d have to stop our lessons (it almost put me in tears hearing that). It’s amazing that the 2-hour introductory African drumming class started all of these musical endeavors.

Teaching Computer Classes

Returning back to that 2-hour introductory African drumming class, it’s break time and I find myself chatting with a fellow participant who happened to be a staff member at the community center. When she heard that I was an engineer she asked if I wanted a job teaching computer classes such as MS Word and MS Excel. Their current teacher was leaving soon and they needed a replacement. I felt I had a good grasp on computers and those programs, and again, I didn’t have anything else to do so I accepted the offer right there on the spot. After the African Drumming class I filled out some paperwork, applied for an Australian Tax File number, and I was on my way to teaching computer classes. I met the current teacher, looked at their computer lab set-up, and got copies of their class manuals. A month later I was teaching 4-5 classes a week, and I continued teaching computers classes for the duration of my stay in Bunbury.

One of my computer classes at the Milligan Centre

The classes were great as I was able to meet a lot of different people. Most participants were people trying to improve their computer skills to get back in the work force, or retired people who were new to computers and wanted to either use a computer they were recently given or just to try and understand and keep up with their grandchildren who were computer whizzes. A memorable moment was when I was teaching the introductory students how to use a computer mouse. Just as I was explaining how to hold the mouse an elderly gentlemen behind me frustratingly blurts out, “The bloody thing ain’t working”. I turn around and see him holding the mouse in the air pointed at the monitor and furiously pushing the buttons in a stabbing motion as if it were a television remote control. It took all my determination not to laugh out loud, and I kindly demonstrated to him that the mouse must lay on the table with his hand rested on top of it. Similar to teaching music, it was very satisfying to see the computer students learn a new skill and build confidence in their abilities. It was also very cute to see a child-like wonderment coming from retired people when they learn how to use MS Paint – yes, that’s right, MS Paint. Never mind the amazing Internet or complex database and spreadsheet capabilities that a computer can do; they were absolutely marveling and touting the genius of computers and modern technology simply because they could create and color basic shapes using MS Paint. Ahh, the joys of teaching.

When I arrived in Bunbury I had no idea what I was going to do. Before I knew it I was working a full time schedule. A typical week consisted of teaching computer classes, African Drumming classes, English classes, rhythm classes, guitar classes, drum classes, and volunteering as an after-school tutor. My free time was mainly tennis and exercising (there was a time when I went surfing regularly, but the numerous shark sightings on our beaches and nearby shark attacks scared me off). Oh, and another highlight was that I took a motorcycle class and got my motorcycle license.

I’ve been told that I’m “the most interesting man in the world” (a reference to the Dos Equis beer commercials), "the luckiest guy in the world", or that I am “living the life”. I must admit that I have enjoyed my time in Bunbury, Australia. It’s been one opportunity after another and all involving things that I’m passionate about and enjoy doing. The area is wonderful and the people have been great. It’s been a life-changing event living in Bunbury and I will sorely miss the place. A big thanks to all the people I've encountered in Bunbury, and an especially big "thank you" and "I love you" to my lovely wife who supported my unorthodox lifestyle!

As far as the future goes, Amber has accepted a short-term project in China. We are going to live in Brisbane, Australia for a month or two until our Chinese visas are approved and then it’s off to China!