Roots and Wings: Loving Brisbane From Afar

Brisbane Beginnings

I’m from Australia. From Brisbane, to be exact. (Dee will write one on Tasmania soon!!!!) And while my passport stamps now outnumber my days at home, Brisbane is stitched into my DNA.

There’s magic in Brisbane. It’s family. It’s sunsets that turn the river into fire. It’s storms rolling in on humid afternoons, with lightning so dramatic it looks cinematic. It’s the sound of mowers on a Saturday morning, the jacarandas blooming purple in late spring, and that collective sigh when the heat finally breaks.

For me, Brisbane will always be backyard barbecues, the smell of sausages and onions sizzling, pavlova covered in cream and passionfruit, and eskies filled with crushed ice and cans of Solo (because someone always forgot to buy Coke). It’s cricket in the backyard, thongs kicked off at the door, sprinklers arcing rainbows across the lawn, and someone inevitably falling asleep on the outdoor lounge.

It’s the kind of nostalgia only those who grew up in Australia in the 80s know. A world before iPhones, when your bike was your freedom, and afternoons stretched out endlessly until the streetlights told you it was time to go home (and if you were really fancy, you had those spoke things on your wheels, clicking the whole way).

Brisbane is home. Always has been. Always will be.

“You Mustn’t Love It If You Moved Away”

And yet, I recently had a friend from high school say to me: “Oh, you mustn’t love Brisbane if you left.”

Nothing could be further from the truth. And so I’ve tried to explain it the best way I know how.

Love for a place isn’t measured in the number of years you log on its soil. It’s measured in the way it shapes you, how it echoes in your heart even when you’re thousands of kilometers away. I may not live in Brisbane every day, but the city lives in me every day.

I left not because I didn’t love it, but because life called me somewhere else. Because love and opportunity and a story bigger than I could imagine pulled me to Japan. And that doesn’t cancel out my love for Brisbane. It amplifies it. It allows me to see it even more clearly, to appreciate the details I might have missed if I had never left.

Roots and Wings

There’s a saying I come back to often: There are only two lasting things we can give our children…roots and wings.

And while my family gave me both… Brisbane gave me roots. Japan gave me wings. And I’m lucky enough to live in both worlds.

It’s possible to love where you came from and love where you are now. To feel at home in two places. To carry one inside the other. People think it’s a binary. You either love where you live now or you love where you came from. But that’s not true. We’re complex enough to hold both.

I can love Brisbane with its subtropical storms and jacaranda blooms, while also loving Tokyo with its neon energy and quiet shrines. I can crave pavlova and lamingtons, while also finding comfort in bowls of ramen and matcha lattes. Nothing takes away my love for where I started or who I am now.

The Nostalgia of Brisbane

When I think of Brisbane, I think of:

• Family gatherings where everyone brings a plate, and somehow, there are always five different new types of salads. (But we always end up going back to the mango, bacon, avocado salad from the Matthew Hayden cookbook.)
• Ekka week, showbags, strawberry sundaes, and the smell of dagwood dogs lingering in the air (which, let’s be honest, was about 60% nostalgia and 40% regret). The cows and bulls and being a part of the parade. (And the one time I had to crawl out of the Haunted House.)
• Summer storms, the way they roll in heavy and fast, thunder rattling the windows before the skies split open.
• The Brisbane River, snaking through the city, carrying stories in its bends.
• Jacaranda season, when exams loomed, and petals scattered like confetti across the ground.
• Saturday mornings filled with the hum of mowers, the scent of fresh-cut grass, and the faint sound of music on MTV drifting from the TV.

These aren’t just memories. They’re anchors. They remind me who I am, no matter where I live.

For Those Who Stay

And for those who say they would never live anywhere else, I get that too. Staying is its own kind of courage. Building a life in the place where you were born, where your roots are deepest, is no less meaningful than leaving. There’s pride in being the keeper of traditions, the one who holds the fort.

But for some of us, the pull to leave isn’t about dissatisfaction. It’s about expansion. It’s about curiosity. It’s about testing out those wings while knowing your roots are strong enough to hold.

Life Between Two Worlds

Now, when I return to Brisbane, it feels like slipping into an old, beloved sweater. Comfortable. Familiar. Full of warmth. But I also know I’ve changed, and so has the city. We’ve both grown in different directions. And that’s the beauty of it.

Living in Japan has given me a new lens on Brisbane. The pace of Tokyo makes Brisbane feel like a deep breath. The precision of Japanese culture makes Brisbane’s laid-back charm feel even more endearing (you haven’t lived until you’ve watched someone in Brisbane say “no worries” while holding a busted umbrella in a cyclone). The seasons in Japan… 72 micro-seasons, if you count them properly… make me notice the subtler shifts of Brisbane’s climate in a way I never did as a child.

Why It Matters

This is the truth: your roots don’t disappear when you move. They deepen. They stretch. They hold you steady, even when the ground under your feet is foreign.

Brisbane is part of me. (And don’t get me started on Sydney … where I spent some of my childhood and where my youngest brother was born…) It’s not about geography. It’s about identity. And while my career, my love, my everyday life may be in Japan, Brisbane is the foundation that makes it all possible.

Because the jacarandas of my childhood are the blossoms that taught me to love beauty in fleeting moments. Because the storms rolling across the river taught me the beauty in nature. Because the backyard barbecues taught me that community is everything.

These lessons travel with me. They’re in every wedding we plan, every photograph we take, every film we make. Brisbane gave me the grounding to build a life abroad. And that’s such an extraordinary gift.

Looking Ahead: A Third Place?

As much as I love Australia … my roots … and Japan … my working life… I can’t help but wonder if there’s a third place still waiting in my story. Somewhere quieter, where we can both just be. Not planning, not building, not sprinting, but simply living.

It’s a strange kind of freedom, too, this not-quite-belonging anywhere anymore. When your heart is stretched across continents, you stop looking for one place to hold it all. Instead, you learn to belong to the movement, to the in-between, to the story you’re still writing.

I don’t know where that is yet. Maybe the coastlines of Europe. Maybe a tucked-away village somewhere green. Maybe back in Brisbane, full circle. But I know this: wherever it is that we retire, Brisbane will always be my beginning. And Japan will always be my becoming.

Final Reflection

So, to those who wonder if leaving means I don’t love Brisbane, let me say it with deep love and gratitude: I love it with my whole heart. Always have. Always will.

Living abroad doesn’t erase that love. It deepens it. It reminds me where I came from. It reminds me of the extraordinary, ordinary moments that shaped me.

Yes, I left. But my roots remain. And they’re still blooming… just like the jacarandas that line the streets of Brisbane, turning the city purple every summer. (Which, if you grew up there, you’ll know meant two things: exams were looming, and your parents were about to complain about the driveway stains.)

And maybe this is the truest thing I’ve learned: when your heart is stretched across places, you stop belonging to just one. You belong to all of them. To Brisbane’s storms, to Tokyo’s neon, to whatever future coastline waits.

It’s a strange kind of freedom, this not-quite-belonging. But it’s also the most extraordinary gift. Because it means you get to carry more than one home inside you. And no matter where we land, that makes life extraordinary. As long as we’re together. Home is everywhere.