The Small-Town City

You know you’re in Adelaide when you go out with your mum for a coffee and the barista at the café down the road is somehow related to your best friends’ fiancé. Adelaide is tiny (if you can consider a city of 1 million people small). People will know people who know people who know you and it can be a bit stifling. This small-town mentality, this interconnectedness, is rife throughout the city and its culture.

The thing my mother always says to me is that “Adelaide is a good place to come home to”. In other words: Adelaide is a great place to travel away from. When you’re away from this city, you can indulge in the nostalgia of being back there, sitting in your favourite café where the barista knows your name and order. But something is thrilling about leaving Adelaide, about going into the unknown and being unknown.

Adelaide, for all its charm and quirks, is small in more ways than one. A traditionally “blue ribbon” seat, conservatism is rife, and it's very easy for young people to find themselves frustrated by the sleepy pace the city seems to enjoy. Many of the old generation, the ones who can afford houses in Toorak Gardens, will bemoan the fact that the youth of Adelaide have left (usually in search of jobs), when, in reality, they tend to be the driving force behind the mass exodus. When fulfilling jobs dry up and the community around you judges your life decisions on where you went to school, how prestigious your degree is and how “put together” you looked when you ran into them, sometimes the only thing to do is to up and leave; to a new city, a new town, a new country.

To just go somewhere else.

Australians, in general, have a drive to see the world, one that I haven’t seen replicated by any other nationality. We populate the globe, filling up hostel room bunk beds and chilling in dive bars. However, Adelaideans (the young ones at least) are seemingly always heading off to somewhere new, whether it is in our own state or further abroad.

Living away from this small-town city can open your eyes to the different ways of thinking and presents an opportunity for massive personal growth. Last semester, I, too, headed abroad, to study at a German university. Before I left though, I wrote something in my journal that has stuck with me.

“I am looking forward to coming back again in six months when I’ll have changed, and Adelaide won’t have.”

I had spent that day procrastinating packing my suitcase and had instead wandered out to Windy Point Lookout in Belair. The sky was clear, and I could feel the winter sun shining on my face. The city below looked vast but tiny. I remember looking out across the city and feeling an anxiety I’d never felt before. I knew that leaving would change me. Naturally. I was afraid, though, of what that would mean for my return. The people who knew me then would be shocked at the person I would become. But I was also excited. Excited to see what new opportunity were on offer outside of the city I was perched atop of. Staring out across the Adelaide plain and seeing the CBD rise from the sea of suburbia reminded how small the city truly was and the mindset it encompassed. I was ready to leave the roots I had been born with and embrace bigger cities and broader mindsets.

The tricky part about leaving, though, is coming back. When you spend a large chunk of time away from the small-town mentality of this square mile city, coming back can feel a trip backwards in time. While you have spent that time away learning about the world and growing as a person, the people back in Adelaide have continued to live their lives exactly the way they did before.

Six months later I returned to Windy Point, to bookend the experience that had wholeheartedly changed me as a person. Coming to grips with the fact that that chapter of my life had closed as soon as I had landed on the tarmac of Adelaide Airport was a Herculean task. Sitting again at the lookout, it was still sunny. It was still warm. And Adelaide felt smaller than ever. I missed the feeling of having no roots or ties to a place. I felt stifled by the possibility of bumping into people on the street who knew me when I was 5, or 10, or 15. I wanted to be judged on who I was as a person, not the degree I was studying or the job I was working. I wanted to unknown again.

It turns out, though, that my mother was right. In the end, Adelaide is a nice place to come home to. Once the homesickness for a city that was never home wore off, I began to appreciate Adelaide for what it was: small, interconnected, and wonderful in a different sense. Running into acquaintances on the street still gives me anxiety, but the possibilities on offer here outweigh this fear. There is always a new overpriced café to try, a neighbourhood to explore, and new people to meet. While Adelaideans might feel there are more like 3 degrees of separation between us rather than 7, it is possible to find new people who will challenge you, support you, and help you grow. Yes, Adelaide is small and perhaps a bit too connected, but for now, it’s the city I’ll come home to.