I am an expert straddler. No, I don’t mean boudoir Olympics, you cheeky devils. Nor am I referring to my prowess on the gymnastic vaulting horse.
I’m talking hemispheres. Moving to London for love in the late ’80s, my children ended up putting down roots here, which means I now find myself boomeranging back and forth between Britain and Australia on a regular basis. Straddling two hemispheres means I get to have two summers a year.
Yes, I’m doubling my chances of a melanoma, but it also means twice the fun. Kathy Lette, at Elouera Beach, Cronulla in Sydney. Credit: Louise Kennerley Yet despite dual citizenship, I remain 100 per cent Aussie: I don’t feel completely myself until pushing my trolley out of the Mascot terminal and inhaling that heady fragrance of frangipani and eucalyptus.
To cure jet lag, my three sisters invariably whisk me straight to the national park for a bushwalk. Australians feel an affinity with the bush, which is ironic as the vast majority of us live in cities. Sure, I can start a fire by rubbing two sticks together – as long as one of them is a match.
But there’s something about being out there under that big, easygoing sky, surrounded by all that space, that acts like psychic penicillin; a calm balm for the soul. Sipping “Kardonnay” on my sister’s balcony overlooking the Port Hacking River, as the night sky illuminates, there are more stars popping out than on the Oscars red carpet. Of course, in England they conquer the Great Indo.
