The Year of the Dog came bounding in, knocking over the furniture and turning the world upside down for Your Settled Girl Reporter. The noble hound has offered me a special assignment which I can’t refuse. It’s time to drag out my travelling shoes and ready-to-go bag from under the bed and get back out in the field. I’m going to the city which raised me and will be filing this year from the magnificent streets of Hong Kong.
For those of us born in the Year of the Tiger, the Dog promises a year of big changes and new opportunities. But nothing could be bigger or more opportune than a return to Hong Kong.
I had two goals this year, now that I’ve got the new website up and running – still getting to grips with the design constraints, but it’s coming along – and both will be well served by the move.
My first goal was to continue the story I’ve been telling of the intertwining histories of Hong Kong and the Spackman family, in particular my parents Jack and Margaret Spackman.
So far, the spotlight’s been on my dad but my mother’s role was equally important. I am keen to redress the balance. And while I have boxes of Jack’s material, I have very little of hers.
The second goal was to take the time to work through everything I’ve written so far and assess whether there’s a book in it.
I was expecting to do all this from my comfortable perch in Ipswich, west – but not too far west – of Brisbane, Australia. Instead, I’ll be on the ground in the best place possible to research and reflect as I pursue both of those intentions.
I’ll also be filing regular updates on the continuing Adventures of a Girl Reporter. I can’t wait to learn what’s changed in Hong Kong and what remains the same. I am expecting the geography to have shifted significantly – it always does. But I am expecting the spirit of the place – brash but always pragmatic – to be unchanged.
I’ll miss Brisbane and the incredible people I’ve had the privilege to work with in pursuit of my Daily Crust. It’s a time of big change at the Word Factory and who knows what it will look like on my return?
At least I’m familiar with the unsettling sensation of change. I first left Hong Kong in January 1978 to attend school in Brisbane. When I returned in December work had begun on the Mass Transit Railway.
I walked from our place in Macdonnell Road down to Central, as I’d done a thousand times before. When I turned at the corner of the Hilton Hotel, expecting to cross the road and head past the cricket ground to Sutherland House, I was suddenly lost.
There was no cricket ground. A vast construction site blocked my path and I could see no clear alternative route to the streets beyond.
Since then, I’ve experienced a few moments when the ground has seemed to shift beneath my feet and all my certainties are swept away. This is not the biggest of them, nor the least.
It is, however, one of the hardest. They do say that when people make plans the gods laugh. Mine was very simple: to live in an old Queenslander on a quarter-acre block and learn what that’s like.
My journey began in 1967 when we arrived in Hong Kong. I left in 1987 for Britain, with no thought of returning. When I brought my daughters over to Brisbane in 2001 it was to settle, finally, in my own country after all those years away.
Now, for the first time, I’m leaving a place with every intention of returning. It’s hard to leave behind those girls but they are quick to remind me that we are a family used to separation.
They also say that it appears I’m not done yet. Luckily, I still know how to travel light.
© Maria Spackman 2018
Your Girl Reporter will be setting up her Hong Kong bureau from April 2018, with no planned interruptions in service – refer to comments above relating to PLANS. All being well, there’ll be one more offering from Brisbane before we go, a farewell to a traditional Aussie backyard by Special Gardening Correspondent Sally Baxter.
Looking forward to the updates. I am in Hong Kong living in Central and working in Homantin.
Welcome back to Hong Kong!