Living in the city is a ripoff. Tolls, housing costs, mould, crowds, construction noise. Parking for a day can cost $60. Getting from place to place should not be this frustrating and expensive. Each time I remember it, I am radicalised anew.
All of it, sometimes every day, spurs my long-held and worryingly sincere view. That I should move to the country.
For many reasons, I can’t move to the country but I think about it all the time. It’s a niggling thought I carry with me that starts boiling over with every parking ticket, every forced viewing of a public urination, every train delay, every driver that doesn’t know how to merge in peak hour. Living like this, I can’t help but yearn for the green rolling hills of a totally theoretical farm life.
I have this vivid notion where I am eating veggies I grow, have a pet baby lamb and suddenly I am handy enough with tools that I could fix, say, a boiler. In reality, the last time I needed a heavy mirror mounted on my wall my technique was to mention it frequently around my dad, who eventually did it for me. I am in my 30s.
My daydreams frequently conjure a life where work days are spent outdoors with big open skies. Devoted animals trail behind me and I am at one with the seasons. Once when I was passing through Scone, a few hours north of Sydney, I almost bought a cowboy hat (this was before Beyoncé sanctioned that kind of thing). I even attribute extra skills to people from the country. I assume they can all drive two or three kinds of motor vehicle and do a bit of light carpentry.
When I mention this all encompassing pack-up-everything sensation, almost all the city dwellers I know share it. Everyone seems to have this daydream so much that they have a crisp idea of precisely where they would go. One friend described the sensation of going back to her home town as her “mind going blank”, another friend offered to show me the listing of her country fantasy home.
TV hits such as Muster Dogs sell the idea by showing bucolic scenes of herding cattle, seasonal crops and what I can only presume is a profound communion with nature. It shows people who face the Territory heat in sensible sunproof outfits, have practical skills and a no-nonsense attitude. They have probably never sat through a training on how to sit at a computer without injuring yourself.
There’s a whole genre of “Escape to the Country” type shows where the protagonist never seems to actually move to the country. The promise of a simpler life tugs at me in a visceral way. In the pandemic, people really did move to the country in massive numbers once the need to be in the city for work vanished – thousands of people needed no further persuading.
Of course actually being in the country is not all fresh air and outdoorsy lifestyle. It’s less fun when you need an appointment with a medical specialist, want to go to the shops without being recognised, want to see a new release movie or can’t be bothered cooking. In reality, growing up in a regional town as even a moderately weird person wasn’t enjoyable. The only bookshop closed in my formative years. Try explaining “but we had a 24-hour Coles” to someone who grew up in the city.
In my farm life fantasy, I never have to consider any of this nor the tough physical days, the mud, the early starts, the threats of storms and droughts. I’m always looking great.
In reality, the country towns my family grew up in have shrunk in size, the high streets emptied out, lined with sad vacant shop fronts. The rural life whereby people make a living off the land used to be the reality of a lot more people, the actual trend is less Escape to the Country and more Farmer Wants A Wife.
Kylie Tennant’s iconic Australian book The Battlers, set in the 40s, describes a time when the cities were disgusting and overcrowded, especially for the poor and there was a better life to be had in roaming the countryside in search of work and camping outside lively country towns. Better to be soaking wet and free than stuck in the city or a restrictive, exploitative job.
My country daydream rotates between the coast, the outback and lush green hills. Perhaps my escape to the country, like those cowards on TV who never take the plunge, is more of a complete fantasy.
Emily Mulligan is a mum, aunty and occasional writer, begrudgingly from Sydney
