Down Under is just not home

EXPAT: MISSING HIS COUNTRY AS THE SUN SETS DIFFERENTLY IN SOUTH AFRICA’

- Hein Kaiser

»» I miss people, bush drives and biltong, says former ad exec.

Guilty as charged. Colin Jowell is an expat. But he never ran away from Mzansi. Instead, he chased opportunity and, as fate would have it, Australia became his eventual home.

The former advertising executive has just marked his second decade beyond our borders, but, he said, there’s nothing quite like home.

“The sun just sets diff erently in South Africa,” Jowell said. He gets homesick and has done so for the past 20 years but keeping himself busy mitigates the feeling. “I miss people, bush drives, and biltong,” he said.

Before he left South Africa, he made his mark in the advertising world as part of the team that launched Kulula, the South Africa’s fi rst low-cost airline.

“My claim to fame before I left for Australia is that I was the guy who came up with the name of Kulula.” Jowell said they had “a lot of fun, broke a lot of rules, and had some amazing successes at the time”.