MARCH 15, 20172:50PM
Eliza McCann, centre, moved her daughters to Bali when they were just two and four year old. Picture: Supplied
ELIZA McCann said moving to Bali didn’t feel like a big deal at the time.
“We’d moved out of Sydney, we’d had our second child and we were living in the Blue Mountains, in Leura. I don’t do so well in the cold.
“My husband went to Darwin, working, and he met this guy called Gags. He came back and he was like: ‘This guy called Gags lives half the year in Darwin and half the year in Bali. What do you think?’ I said: ‘Why not?’”
Most people would probably think twice about moving overseas on the advice of a person called “Gags”, but Ms McCann wasn’t one of them.
She and her husband, novelist Phillip Gwynne, bought a shipping container to store their belongings. They packed five suitcases, and together with their two young daughters — then aged two and four — they left for Canggu just six weeks later.
“You can write anywhere, so why not somewhere warm? He was doing a six-part series, I was studying a psych degree at the time. The kids were young, we though they could start school there and it would be OK,” she told news.com.au.
Eliza and her husband, novelist Phillip Gwynne, are both able to work from anywhere.Source:Supplied
Initially, they planned to stay for six months, then 12 months. Before she knew it, her family had lived in Bali for about five years.
“We felt at home there,” she explained.
“I hadn’t been there since 1989, and that was at Club Med with my family. I had no expectations, which I think was a good way to go, because you do in wide-eyed and just deal with what you’ve got.”
Theirs was a completely different experience to the one tourists get on the party-saturated streets of Kuta or the touristy cultural capital of Ubud.
At the time, Canggu was quiet and local, although it’s recently developed to become one of the hottest up-and-coming places on the tourist trail.
Ms McCann’s daughters girls grew up with colour, chaos, tropical rain and coconuts.
They’d often commute on a motorbike, with the little one in front, dad in the middle, and the bigger one on the back with schoolbags squashed in between.
“It’s the kind of place where every day there was something exotic or beautiful. The kids might get to school and say, ‘Sorry we were late, there was a cremation in the middle of the street’,” she recalled.
Eliza McCann said every day there was something exotic or beautiful in Bali.Source:Supplied
She and her husband both worked hard to learn the local language, and when the time came, they enrolled their daughters at the local international school.
They made friends with a lot of other expats, many from Australia and England, as well as France, Spain and the United States.
Life fell into a relaxed, idyllic routine. The ladies often took long lunches, while the men seized the opportunity for a round of golf.
“Sometimes you just go ‘same shit, more palm trees’,” she laughed.
“You’re still doing the school drop-offs, taking one kid to a swimming lesson, one kid to a dance lesson, but you just feel like you’ve got more freedom.
“No-one’s doing conventional jobs, so I could choose when I wanted to work hard, and then say yes to lunch or give myself a Friday off.
“A lot of people were in that position, working for themselves.”
The difference, she said, was the fact that your friends become your family, and a good social life is inevitable when you connect with people living the same lifestyle.
That, and the boost in free time you get by employing a local maid.
Coming home, on the other hand, hasn’t been so easy.
Eliza’s daughter, Ella, with the first book in the My Awesome Adventure series.Source:Supplied
“It’s more regimented. People are just busier, I guess,” she reflected, adding the transition has been easier for her elder daughter than her younger one.
“[She] spent five of her seven years in Bali. We had a big house with a pool, she’d run around often with no clothes. She still doesn’t wear shoes, it’s taken some time.”
The family’s ties with the island are strong, and they’re passionate about sharing it.
One day, after dropping the kids off, Ms McCann and her husband went to their favourite coffee shop to work for a few hours, and noticed a lot of kids on iPads.
“He said: ‘Wouldn’t it be great to have an activity book, to get the kids off the iPads?’ I said: ‘Yes, I’ll make one’.”
Just like that, an enterprise was born.
“We love Bali. Even just things like the offerings or learning to count to ten, and the fact that Bali is part of Indonesia and not a stand-alone country.
“It was a throwaway comment, but I loved the idea. That’s basically how it started.”
She found an illustrator and a printer, and is now a published children’s book author.
“That’s the great thing about Bali, you can have an idea and just do it.”
Eliza McCann just released My Awesome Sydney Adventure, the second in the series following the success of her first travel journal for kids, My Awesome Bali Adventure. Find out more on www.myawesomeadventure.com.
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