A fleeting moment on a Sydney ferry turns into romance. Photo / Getty Images
A fleeting moment on a Sydney ferry turns into romance. Photo / Getty Images
This Valentine’s Day we’re looking at love, lust and long-distance flings, spurred on by chance travel encounters. For Lucy Pearson, a fleeting moment on a Sydney ferry turned into something completely unexpected.
It was a decade ago that I locked eyes with a stranger on a ferry in Sydney who would change my life forever. He was from the North Island of New Zealand and his thighs were shadowed and swathed in Māori tattoos. The sides of the ferry were shaking in the night air, and he held my gaze as we started chatting, a wolfish smile on his face. His eyes crinkled, and I couldn’t look away. Soon after docking in Circular Quay, under the pale light of the moon, we swapped numbers.
A fleeting romance, a lifelong love for a city travel is the ultimate matchmaker. Photo / 123RF
When the text came the next day, asking if he could take me on a date before I left Sydney, I almost said no. But I was swayed by the ease of it all: there was no complicated dance waiting for the other person to make a move; no trying to decipher the meaning of his texts with friends. He said he wanted to take me to watch the sun set over the city, so we agreed he’d pick me up the following afternoon after work.
I watched him from the window that looked out on to the street as he walked towards the apartment door. His feet were bare, and the edges of his lips turned upwards, just slightly, in the beginning of a smile. I remember thinking how different he was to the men I knew in London; the easy nonchalance, the quiet confidence in his own skin. We shared a beer on the balcony; our knees knocking against each other’s as he moved his chair closer to mine, and I tried to still the quiver of my hands as we passed the bottle back and forth. The desire was nauseating; a taste of salt in my mouth that I couldn’t swallow. I wanted him to kiss me, in a way that I’ve never wanted anyone else to - not in the decades before, not in the years since - but instead I gulped down the beer as we listened to the gentle lap of the ocean, and as the water sparkled in the late afternoon sun.
A fleeting moment on a Sydney ferry turned into something a lot more for traveller Lucy Pearson. Photo / 123RF
The whole night had an epic, almost cinematic quality. The wisps of cloud against the darkening sky, the flicker of the harbour bridge lights in the distance, his hand in mine; he never let go. We spoke about my life in London, and how I found myself in Australia, staying in the apartment of a man I barely knew. He told me about his life in Sydney; what it was like for him growing up in New Zealand, the time he had lived in London and worked as an engineer on the Olympics.
After the sun had dipped below the horizon, the bruised sky was soon inky black, and the once-warm air now had a cool breeze, so we drove to a nearby lighthouse, and climbed the concrete steps of some bleachers overlooking a sports field. And then, he kissed me. It was a tidal wave, the first inhale of a cigarette, the collapse of a ceiling. It was the sharp focus of a clear head against the drunken dates I had grown accustomed to in London.
The next morning, before he left for work, I called the airline to book a new flight home for a week later, while he searched online for a hotel so we could spend the rest of my time in Sydney together. For the next six days, we saw as much of each other as we could. We drove the long stretch of curving coastline to one of Sydney’s most northern beaches, held hands while we sat in traffic jams with our windows wound down as we snaked back into the city after a day in the sun. And we discussed the possibility of my moving back to Australia.
On my last day in Sydney, he had to work so I caught a bus to a neighbourhood on the water with views of the harbour bridge and spent the afternoon lying in the summer sun reading a copy of Ethan Frome. I remember almost nothing of the book except its cover and that the pages were stained with tears by the time I finished it. He left work early that day so we could go for dinner on the water before taking me to the airport. We drove past the place where we first kissed, past the balcony where we watched what seemed like a year of sunsets, though in reality it can only have been a few. I was hysterical at the thought of leaving him.
Sydney is the perfect romantic backdrop. Photo / 123RF
A little over six months later, I flew back to be with him.
It didn’t work out - but I’m thankful to the girl I was at 29, who took a chance on love with a man she barely knew. And who was blissfully unaware that on the other side of heartache, there would be a love affair with a city that would last well beyond the time spent mourning the ill-fated fling with that steady-eyed stranger from the ferry.
