INTRODUCTORY ARTICLE THREE OF THE SEVEN PART SERIES: THE STORIES BEHIND MEMORIES ARE MADE OF THIS
I was born in Sydney, Australia, on 13 November 1963. I spent the first eight years of my life there, which, looking back, was a fairly short introduction to a much bigger world.
In early May 1972, my parents, my four younger sisters and I left Australia and moved to South Africa. I was eight years old. At that age, you do not necessarily appreciate the significance of moving to another country. You are more concerned with what your new home looks like, where you will go to school and whether you will make friends.
South Africa was to become home for the next twenty-eight years. In January 2001, I moved again, this time to Britain, where I have lived ever since.
Three countries, three different environments and a lifetime of experiences in between. I suppose I have had rather more than the usual opportunity to compare notes.
My Australian beginnings
Australia is where my story started. Although I left at a young age, those first years gave me some early memories that have stayed with me.
One of the experiences I remember particularly well was visiting Coonamble, in the outback of New South Wales, with my family. It was a very different environment from city life. There were sheep farms, horses, rabbits, pigeons, kangaroos and frilled-necked lizards. We saw sheep being branded and experienced a way of life that was quite unfamiliar to a young boy growing up in Sydney.
I did not realise it at the time, but those experiences would influence how I viewed the world as I grew older. They gave me an early appreciation of the outdoors, wildlife and the different ways people live.
I have never returned to Australia, although I have often thought about doing so. I would particularly like to meet up with some of my old school friends. It would be interesting to discover how much has changed and how much, if anything, has stayed the same.
Twenty-eight years in South Africa
South Africa became the country where I spent most of my adult life. It was also where many of the experiences that eventually became stories in my book took place.
I grew up there, went to school, worked, travelled and made friendships. I experienced its landscapes, wildlife, history and different communities. In 1988, I moved to Cape Town, adding another part of the country to my experience of South African life.
It is difficult to describe South Africa in a few paragraphs. It is a large and varied country, with an extraordinary range of landscapes, people and cultures. There is always somewhere new to explore, and even familiar places can reveal something unexpected.
I enjoyed getting out and about. Hiking became one of my interests, and I had opportunities to explore nature reserves and some rather remote areas. On one occasion, a hiking trip involved going out of our way to find a rare yellowwood tree. It was not the most direct route, and some of the other hikers decided they would rather continue along the main trail. Three of us took the alternative route. We thought it was worth the effort.
There were also plenty of experiences away from the countryside. I became involved in chess, including coaching school teams, and developed an interest in rugby. My Australian background occasionally made life interesting when it came to supporting sporting teams.
During the 1991 Rugby World Cup, I found myself cheering for Australia while living in Witbank, South Africa. Australia went on to win the tournament, and I watched the final in a local pub. I was probably the only Australian in the place. The following year, when Australia toured South Africa, I wore my gold Australian rugby jersey at a match against Northern Transvaal, surrounded by supporters dressed in blue. It was a fairly obvious declaration of allegiance.
Fortunately, the people around me were good sports about it.
These are the sorts of experiences that illustrate what living between cultures can mean. You do not necessarily abandon one identity when you move to another country. Sometimes you simply add another one to the collection.
Learning to live somewhere new
Moving to another country involves more than changing your address. There are different customs, different ways of doing things and sometimes different assumptions about what is normal.
You also discover that your accent can give you away before you have even introduced yourself.
I have held passports for Australia, South Africa and Britain, but having a passport does not automatically make you feel completely at home everywhere. I have often felt like a foreigner in someone else's country, and my accent has usually been a fairly reliable indication of that.
There are advantages, though. Having lived in different places, you become accustomed to meeting people with different backgrounds and perspectives. You learn that there is rarely just one way of doing something. You also become more aware of the small details that make a place distinctive.
Sometimes it is the food, the landscape, the language or the way people interact. Sometimes it is something much less obvious that you only notice after living somewhere for a while.
I would not claim to be an expert on the cultures of three countries simply because I have lived in them. But I have had the opportunity to experience them from the inside, rather than just passing through as a visitor.
Britain: another chapter begins
When I moved to Britain in January 2001, I was starting another chapter of my life. After twenty-eight years in South Africa, I was getting used to a different country, a different climate and a different way of life.
Britain had its own attractions, particularly its history and the sheer number of places to explore. I have always enjoyed discovering places, learning something about their past and finding out how they fit into the wider story of the country.
One of my favourite examples of this came in August 2004, when my parents arrived at Heathrow from South Africa. They had decided to make a new home for themselves in Britain. After the complications of my mother's arrival and a rather lengthy discussion with the authorities, we eventually got them through the airport.
Rather than taking them straight to my flat in London, I decided to give them a little welcome tour. We drove to the Salisbury area and visited Old Sarum, Woodhenge and Stonehenge.
It was quite a change of scenery for them. Only sixteen hours earlier, they had been in South Africa. Now they were standing in front of one of Britain's best-known historic landmarks.
I remember how fascinated they were by Stonehenge. They had travelled a long way, and I wanted their first experience of Britain to be something memorable. It was a good start, even if they were both exhausted by the time we returned to London.
That day also reminded me how much history there is to discover in Britain. There are stories behind so many places, and I have enjoyed finding them.
Three countries, one collection of memories
Looking back, I can see how much these three countries have contributed to the experiences I have collected over the years.
Australia gave me my earliest memories and an introduction to a very different natural environment. South Africa became home for most of my life and provided the setting for many of my adventures, friendships and unexpected encounters. Britain became the next place in which I built a life, with its own people, places and opportunities to explore.
The experiences have not all been dramatic. Some have involved travel and adventure, while others have been ordinary moments that took an unexpected turn. Some have made me laugh, others have given me something to think about, and a few have brought back memories of people and places that are no longer part of my everyday life.
These are the experiences that eventually became the fifty-one stories in Memories Are Made of This.
I did not set out to write a history of three countries, nor is the book a chronological account of my life. It is simply a collection of things that happened along the way. The countries provide the background, but the people and experiences are what matter.
Having lived in three different parts of the world, I have come to appreciate that wherever we happen to be, people have much in common. We meet, work, travel, make friends, get ourselves into difficult situations and occasionally wonder how things turned out quite as they did.
And that, perhaps, is what makes a lifetime of experiences worth writing about.
The places may change, but there is always another story waiting to be told.
About the author
Gregory Mark Haynes
Author | Storyteller | Speaker
Real stories. Real people. Real life.
#GregoryMarkHaynesAuthor
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