"Are you done?" I asked the man leaving the lobby computer.

"I'm out of here," he said. "I'm history. Soon moving into myth."

I'm staying at the Graduate House on the campus of the University of Melbourne (to sort of help explain that dialogue).

Though this is my second time in Australia, this is the first time I've felt that I've come to the other side of the world. It's not that planes have gotten faster. It's because nine years ago I flew straight to Cairns and the heat and humidity, the lush vegetation, were -- after 20-odd hours of sky -- right where I'd left off.

This time I arrived in wintry Melbourne. Yesterday was a lovely day -- partly sunny, in the high 50s -- but the slanting sunlight on facades, gray clouds seen through a web of leafless branches -- were things I hadn't seen in years. It is the landscape of my childhood, but one I associate with the time right after Christmas, not right after the Fourth of July.