We had a short tour along the Queanbeyan riverside this afternoon as my husband wanted to get a sun bath or just simply “get a place to read something or just fall asleep”. He made it in his car eventually and I sat beside, watching the ducks and birds enjoying their happy life in this beautiful place. That was the highlight of my whole week, and that was the moment helped me to settle the heart down and made me really love where I live, our adopted home, Queanbeyan.

I don’t know when we actually started to feel like this. Queanbeyan is no longer our “have-to” solution to avoiding paying higher rent but still living within a resonable distance from the City, or something like a fall-back “Plan B” for an alternative option after seeing the disappointing Canberra property leasing market and over-naturally bushy housing style that has been presented everywhere in ACT. It becomes our favourites, one of the most important places that we have spent or are spending our times. It becomes our home.

We wake up in chorus of birds every early morning, we do the sidewalk seeing the boweling people get really serious about the games, we drive on the main road in front of the police patrol cars, we find places to live, we spend money to buy food, we meet loonies or smarties, we look for a job and tuck ourselves in the bed at every night. For us, it’s not what the outsiders always say about this town, quiet and nice. No, it ‘s never quiet and nice enough for it’s residents, insiders don’t speak that way. For us, it doesn’t matter how good or how bad it is, it is a place we chose and then we like what we chose. With the time passes by, it’s more like a place that we have feelings of the attachment.

Queanbeyan City Council marked the town as “country living, city benefits” which precisely makes the point. We never thought that we would feel like this about two and half years ago when my husband ticked the place in the map and said “we might consider Queanbeyan”. At that time, we even were scared to leave Sydney. With we getting use to this place and even finding it extremely enjoyable, the only concern that reminds our old worries is “shall our kids be born here one day?” It still sounds a bit scary, but even if knowing that it is not impossible, we still feel okay.

However, I am glad that my family, my Mom, Dad, my sister and my niece had been here and saw what kind of place that I am living personally. Actually my sister loves Queanbeyan. And, unlike most of Chinese people who are the big fans of “Big Smoke”, my Mom and my sister showed little interests in Sydney after they got back from there, but were keen to explore this country town by their feet.

I guess some feelings about Queanbeyan or Canberra has just changed in my mind at some stage in the past two years. I wouldn’t worry about the joke that many Sydney people tried to laugh at me and made me believe how boring Canberra is. They say “the busiest and the most promising career in Canberra is lawn mowing workers (because there is nothing in Canberra but endlessly growing grass) . I did get upset for a time but I don’t care about it anymore, because people don’t care about how other people think about their own home if they really love them.