We Decided to Call Sydney Home

For nearly a year, Partner-in-Crime and I were semi-slyly planning a change of scenery. We first met in Florida, a state that - despite its complete weirdness and frequent disfunction - we felt at home in because we're both laid back sunshine lovers. P-i-C has always liked the idea of moving to Queensland, Australia's most tropical state, to recapture the Florida vibe. For a long time, he'd say, "let's move to Queensland," and I'd shut him right down, saying that I'd moved across the world, settled in Sydney, and that was enough moving for me.

After I got pregnant, we were staring down a move since we live in a one-bedroom apartment. Moving is the pits, especially in Sydney where the rent is shocking, the competition is stiff, and what you end up with is often short at least a few of the boxes you hoped to tick off your list. We dreamed of a nice house, but that meant moving much further out of town than we wanted to. At that point, I had a part-time casual job and P-i-C was working for himself, so we had no real professional ties. Our friend-soulmates were moving back to the States soon. It's no secret that Sydney is not my favorite city on this planet. It all started seeming way too hard to me. "Maybe we should just move to Queensland," I finally declared.

We started researching and settled on the Sunshine Coast where we would be near the beach, the mountains, and could rent a 4 bedroom house for what we pay for our one bedroom apartment in Sydney. A trip up there confirmed that it was lovely and easygoing. It seemed like a fait accompli. I didn't want to move while pregnant, so we decided we'd be Queenslanders shortly after Hushpuppy was born.

It might have all gone as planned if it hadn't been for the yoga.

In the late stages of my pregnancy, I was taking four classes a week at a beautiful studio and looked forward to taking the Hushpuppy to some of their Mums and Bubs classes. When she was 8 weeks old, we went to our first one, and it quickly became such a special time to me. I started researching for something similar on the Sunshine Coast to disappointing results. It was my first little clue that I might not be completely happy there.

I started looking online at Sydney apartments - just out of curiosity - and after many long conversations, P-I-C and I agreed that we would look for something special in both places and, as I declared, "let the universe decide." I threw down a gauntlet of must-haves for a Sunshine Coast house and he did the same for a Sydney apartment. We were going to have to make sacrifices either way we went.

One day while walking back from yoga, I clued into the neighborhood for the first time. I was looking at funky shops, an organic cafe, a nice Thai place, a Subway (my favorite for picnics), a kid's park, families everywhere and right on the bus line to the city. I expanded my search to that suburb, and before long, we found a 2 bedroom in a complex with pools, sauna, club house, a cafe on premise, and across the street from a leisure center. I felt like the universe had responded in kind.

Around the same time, we found a beautiful rental listed on the Sunshine Coast that ticked every box on the nearly impossible list I'd created. Many more long conversations later, we finally came to the mutual agreement that Sydney was the right place for us right now.

The saga of how we finally got into our new apartment is a story for another day. Let's just say, the universe wanted to test our resolve. But, at last, we pick up our keys today and will continue to call ourselves Sydneysiders for some time to come.

A lot of those "long conversations" took place at this park, which probably didn't hurt Sydney's chances.