Two years

Posted by Angela Beesley on November 19, 2007 (Australia, Milestones, Wiki, Wikipedia)

It’s 2 years today since I first arrived in Australia. I was here for the X|Media|Lab conference in Melbourne and I thought it might be the only time in my life I would visit Australia, so I decided to take a few days off and visit Sydney while I was here.

This was before Wikia had its first round of investment, and more than a year since I’d last had a job that paid a proper salary, so I stayed in the cheapest hostel I could find in the not-so delightful area of King’s Cross. The next day, I met the Sydney Wikipedians for what is still my best ever Wikipedia meetup. They took me on a great tour of the city, seeing the Town Hall, the Royal Botanical Gardens, the Opera House, and the Harbour Bridge.

Two years later, I’m still here! So much for it being my only visit. I’ve now arrived in Australia 10 times and I’m living in Sydney. I came back to Australia a couple of weeks after the conference and moved in with Tim Starling. We’re now renting a house in Hornsby Heights with beautiful bushland views and wallabies in our garden.

View from Rofe Park
Not the exact view from my house, but very similar. This is the view from the nearby non-notable Rofe Park.

GFDL image by John Dalton.

Swamp Wallaby
My photos aren’t so great, so here’s Wikipedia’s Swamp Wallaby. I think these are the ones we see around here.
CC-BY-SA photo by Marcel Burkhard.

3 Comments

  1. NickJ said,

    November 20, 2007 at 4:10

    Hornsby Heights is a lovely area, glad you’re enjoying it. You should have said sooner, my folks live a few kms from there in Wahroonga and just got back from a 3-month overseas trip, and we could have held a meetup at their house, but I didn’t think many Wikipedians lived around the upper North Shore. And wallabies are nice … what you want avoid though if you’re close to bushland is possums in the roof! — All the best, Nick.

  2. Erik Möller said,

    November 20, 2007 at 20:20

    That looks lovely. :-) Congratulations on the anniversary.

  3. Anonymous said,

    December 14, 2007 at 23:13

    Hi Angela,

    I love that you bang the drum for Wikipedia for so long then complain about your own article on there. I notice that it recently passed through the AfD process. You must be so pleased but what bitter irony.

    Fail.