ALUMNI DIARY

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LIFE STORY

Barefoot in Oz Jessica Wynne Lockhart makes herself at home Down Under

Forlornly, I stared across the departures lounge. My bladder was full and the restroom was mere steps away. There was just one problem.

I looked back down at my feet. Could I do it? Could I really walk into a public bathroom barefoot?

A traveller by trade—I work as a freelance journalist—I long ago vowed that I would be sensitive to the culture of my host countries. It hasn’t always been easy; my career has taken me everywhere from Finnish Lapland to the jungles of Guyana.

Two years ago, when I moved to Sydney, Australia, I figured adjusting would be a breeze. After all, as anyone who has ever been to Whistler (arguably home to Australia’s largest diaspora) will insist, “Australians are just like us.”

Except I discovered that’s not exactly true.

Australians carbonate shiraz. They make a mean cup of coffee, but are stumped by nachos (cheese would be a good start). Their politicians attend campaign events in “budgie smugglers” (even Trudeau couldn’t get away with that). Worst of all, they print everything on A4 paper.

Yet, I took all this in stride. No, what broke me wasn’t even the snakes or the spiders—it was the fact that Australians seemingly hate wearing shoes.

Now, let me clarify: I’m not talking about the surfers who live beachside. What I’m talking about is the businessmen who pop into corner stores downtown loafer-less, the millennials in my inner-city neighbourhood who can’t be bothered to put on flip-flops for brunch, and the entire families shopping barefoot in the grocery store.

Safety aside (I once witnessed customers in a liquor store tiptoeing awkwardly around a smashed wine bottle), I just find the practice kind of gross.

It wasn’t until I was on a Toronto Star travel assignment last year that I realized I was doing exactly the thing I’d pledged not to. My attitude was ethnocentric. As the saying goes, you can’t knock it until you’ve tried it.

The next morning, I strode out my hotel room barefoot, checked out, boarded a bus, and went through airport security. Nobody said anything, not even about my absurdly long toe hair.

Surprisingly, I enjoyed it. It was glorious being liberated from the tyranny of shoes.

That was, until I had to go pee.

“Would an Australian use a public toilet barefoot?” I asked my tour guide. She laughed, but nodded.

I cringed, but knew what I had to do. I inhaled sharply and bravely did what no Canadian has done before.

Unfortunately, the social experiment ground to a halt when we landed in Melbourne. “You can’t walk across the tarmac barefoot,” said the flight attendant. I didn’t bother arguing that I had done that very thing only three hours earlier.

“Being told to put on shoes is so un-Australian, I almost want to write an official complaint,” said my tour guide, hugging me. “I’m proud of you.”

I want to say that the experiment made me feel more Australian. But the truth is, the only thing it made me feel was a burning urge to wash my feet.