Looking for the magic

My partner and I do not have an anniversary  because despite being an item for 20 years, we were too lazy or too cheap to ever bother getting married (or when we are feeling rotten we tell each other that the reason is that we are waiting for a better offer. Yeah, good luck with that.)

But last weekend we did have an anniversary worth celebrating as that was one year since we arrived here.  It has been an unforgettable year with a few ghastly lows and many wonderful highs, all the while watching from afar as the city we left behind unfortunately copped a truly unforgettable year too.

So last weekend we headed out to celebrate our milestone. On Friday night we went to the shiny, new and gobsmackingly gorgeous State Theatre Centre (above) for a night of fresh, funny, poignant and original theatre in the form of Perth Theatre Company's production of The Pride. The next night we drove to Fremantle to a tiny club to see one of my favourite acts all the way from New York: the amazing, inspiring, ridiculously cool yet charmingly chatty Joan as Policewoman.

Magic and magic.

So how have we done compared to what we'd hoped when we moved here? Well I've certainly come a mighty long way since our first day when we drove past Mandurah's many enormous and to my mind architecturally bankrupt houses and I glared at my partner and scowled "You said it wasn't like the Gold Coast!"  I've recovered from the shock of discovering that the two predominant styles in these parts are cashed-up bogan and doing-it-tough bogan. I've discovered that there is much, much more to Mandurah than initially meets the eye; this is a good thing.  When people ask how I'm finding it here I say "very interesting" and I am not telling porkies.
 
We are now on a roll finding the joy and fun that comes with living in a new place.
 

 
We came here to explore,
 

 
discover and learn,
 

 
to find challenges and thrills,
 

 
and to be fascinated and intrigued.
 

 
 We came here looking for new things to try, new things to love and new versions of the old things we already loved. 
 

As the marvellous Joan would say, we came here looking for the magic.  We're finding it,  but we sure aren't finished yet, and for now we aren't the slightest bit interested in better offers.