Things you only know if… you moved to the other side of the world

After a major break-up, Kate Leaver uprooted her life and moved 12,500km – and got more than she bargained for…

when, in 2015, I broke up with my boyfriend of seven years, I considered getting a drastic haircut. The only problem is that I’m fond of my long, scraggly mane. So instead, I packed my life into a whopping great suitcase and moved to the other side of the world.

I was born in Sydney, where I was living at the time, but my mother is from a little English village, meaning I have a British passport. It was over a roast chicken dinner, just a few months after the break-up – the most significant of my life – that Mum had casually suggested I put that passport to good use and visit London.

I didn’t take much persuading: I booked a one-way ticket the next day. I was ready for a change, promptly quitting my 7am-10pm job as a senior editor on a women’s website and giving one hell of a candid exit interview (the prospect of being able to escape the country gave me diabolical courage).

And so, after 27 years of living within walking distance of hot golden sand and the Pacific Ocean, I left for a land of squirrels, monarchs and fish and chips. Twenty-five hours later, I arrived in my new home, unsure whether I’d be here for a month or a lifetime. It was the most impulsive thing I’ve ever done and totally changed the course of my life.

From the start, I embraced the, well, Britishness of it all. Soon after landing in London, I serendipitously ended up working for JK Rowling’s website, writing about wizards for a living. Sunday roasts became an instant ritual. I bought thermals. I went to the Tower of London three times. I booked £29 tickets to European cities, astonished that I could be in an entirely different country in two hours (it takes half a day to fly across Australia). I downloaded Citymapper so I’d know where I was in this vast, grey metropolis. I lived above a pub with strangers. I made new friends, I met new people. I swiped right on a Scottish lawyer, an Indian model and a Northern scientist who wore cardigans. And then I met the love of my life.

He was producing a musical about depression and, as I interviewed the show’s star for a magazine, I was only half-concentrating because the producer’s good looks disrupted my professionalism. Perhaps being so far from home and so new to being single gave me a certain bravery, because I gave this man my number and, only a full calendar year later, he texted.

We’ve now been together three years and we’ve adopted a remarkably dumb but extremely cute shih tzu dog together. I would probably have gone home by now, except that I’m really quite fond of this man, and this dog, and the view from the top of the hill at Hampstead Heath, and the proximity of Prague, and the colour of the buses, and of drinking wine by an open fire in winter. It gets into your heart, this place.

In the process, I have learned to live a life 12,500km from everything I knew and grew up with. I know now who I am, independent of geography. I know that I need to speak to my parents by phone most mornings, if I’m going to ward off the feeling of such epic distance between us. I know that I can manage my closest, long-distance friendships via Whatsapp if I make a habit of being vulnerable and candid and chatty on there. I know that asking people on Twitter to meet in person is a good shortcut to making new friends.

I know, too, that you shouldn’t offer the squirrels in Hyde Park hazelnuts straight from your hand because they will inevitably bite you. I know that you cannot predict the outcome of a national referendum. I know that many beaches over here have pebbles, which hurt to walk on barefoot. I know that it will always be a little bit weird to feel cold on Christmas Day.

I also know that I will probably live my whole life never feeling completely at home, no matter where I am, because I’ve now split my sense of self between London and Sydney. Whatever city I sleep in at night, I’ll feel like a part of me is elsewhere. But for now, I’ve made a life here in the UK and it’s a life I cherish – of walks in the countryside, writing books and seeing musicals.

I feel proud to call it mine. I am grateful to know who I am here – a woman with two places to call home, two sets of friends and two passports (but just the one boyfriend and the one dog). I’m glad I didn’t opt for that radical post-break-up haircut instead.

I’ll probably never feel completely at home, no matter where I am