Last weekend I found myself waist-deep in a lake in central Sweden with a saw in my hand, deconstructing a birch tree felled by beavers, and dragging it ashore to be used as firewood.
A few days earlier I had caught the train up to Stockholm from the southern region of Skåne. The plan was to go see a couple of bands playing at the Gröna Lund theme park. Yet the summer had decided to abandon Stockholm early and I felt that standing around outside in 10 degrees and pouring rain, watching ageing musicians trying to milk a few more drops from their success in the 1990s didn’t actually sound so appealing. So I bailed.
Earlier this year I had a pair of Swedish students staying with me in Melbourne. Over the past few years I’ve found myself the unofficial welcoming committee for young Swedes coming to study in the city. It began by renting my flat to a pair of students in 2022 while I was in Sweden, and then word of mouth doing what it does to produce a steady flow of youngsters coming my way.
For most Melburnians there’s an innate parochialism to our existence that means we relish being tour guides. The city has limited natural beauty, but is full of hidden gems that require local knowledge. This is knowledge we are desperate to share. And, of course, being home to the greatest sport on earth, we love taking foreigners to the footy.
In January a new student who has contacted me was arriving in Melbourne. Her arrival coincided with a work trip I needed to make to Wellington and then on to Canberra. So with a bit of creative key organisation she was able to make her way my flat from the airport and have a place to stay while she and another Swedish student searched for a place together.
Yet finding both acceptable and affordable accommodation in Melbourne at the moment is incredibly difficult. And as I tend to think every structural problem is my own personal responsibility, I soon found myself with two students living with me in my flat. They stayed for two and a half months.
Which – even though I am usually desperate to be alone – was actually a delight. They were both brilliant young women. After a couple of weeks they bullied me off the couch and back into my own room, insisting that they could share the spare room. And they were impeccable houseguests – given that I’m a fastidious clean-freak this was a relief. They also gave me a great hook to write about the cost of housing in Australia as a serious foreign policy issue for the Lowy Institute’s The Interpreter publication – and the importance of civil society picking up the slack when there are major policy failures.
So a few weeks ago when I mentioned that I was coming up to Stockholm, one of the girls offered that I stay with her family. I accepted, and they extended the most extraordinary hospitality to me – feeding me like a king and having me sample almost everything from their liquor cabinet. Her Guyanese step-dad was thrilled to have someone to talk about cricket and watch back-to-back episodes of Jeopardy with (the rest of the family unfairly make fun of his love of Jeopardy).
Then over the weekend they took me out to their cabin in the woods. So instead of going to see some bands in Stockholm, I ended up in Västmanland, doing manual labour.
Which was incredible. I, of course, have no outdoor skills. Most of my life has been spent living in big cities, and dreaming about living in even bigger cities. The only capability my hands have is a decent typing speed. But I was keen to learn, and I enjoy being helpful. Give me a task and the duty I feel will compensate for any lack of knowledge or ability. I now know how to saw and lug wood – it’s a start.
The experience taught me two things. The first being that maybe living more than five minutes walk from a tram stop or metro station isn’t actually hell on earth. I am now rural-curious and I am rethinking my firmly held belief that the only reason to leave central Melbourne is to get on an international flight – potentially even reinventing myself as a woodsman. And secondly, the wonders of the reciprocal rewards that come from opening one’s door to others.
Back in 2022 when I first opened my door to a pair Swedish students the concept was cheap rent for high responsibility – given that all my things would remain in the flat and my plants needed watering. These young women completely understood the arrangement. I couldn’t have asked for more considerate houseguests – especially the way they Marie Kondo’d several of my cupboards and drawers into way better configurations.
That was reward in itself. But since this initial arrangement the snowballing effect has been extraordinary. I’ve made a suite of new friends who have a variety of different interests, got to indulge my love of selling Melbourne to newcomers, had my arrogant urban assumptions challenged, and picked up a whole new family in Stockholm. I expect that the flow of young Swedes to my door will continue. The problem now is in order to accommodate them all I’m probably going to need a bigger flat. Or some kind of rural estate.