Meet Your Neighbor / Summer 2010
Meet Lief McKay
In the first installment of our “Meet Your Neighbor” series, SLO LIFE Magazine sat down to talk with Lief McKay (he pronounces his last name as if it rhymed with “McGuy”). He is an Australian native and twelve-year resident of San Luis Obispo, who, together with his wife, Amy, a local artist and landscape designer, have two young children, Ian and Maggie. Lief stays active in SLO-based charities, works as a landscape architect employed by RRM Design Group and is the President of the SLO Rugby Club. Here is his story…
Where are you from originally, Lief?
I’m from a small town of 5,000 people or so about 2 hours southwest of Sydney, Australia. It’s a rural town. My mom is a school teacher and my dad was a potter. He passed away when he was only 46. He was an artisan and made really fine pottery. I have a younger brother, Huw, who is an economist. He’s sometimes interviewed on the news about the particulars of Asian economies, which is his specialty. I went to university in a city called Canberra, which is about 4 hours south of Sydney. While I was there I had an opportunity to come to Cal Poly for an exchange to continue my studies in landscape architecture.
What was it like coming to San Luis Obispo the first time?
I arrived in town, knew nothing, knew no one. I didn’t have accommodations squared away so I went up to the Lab, which is what they call the landscape architecture studio at Cal Poly, and was looking for ads seeking roommates. You know the kind where you tear off the phone number on the bottom of the paper. I called on one of them and, unbeknownst to me, it was Amy’s number. She and a girlfriend of hers were looking for a housemate. I called on it and they weren’t home, so I left a message. School hadn’t started yet, so I didn’t know her from anyone else in the world. I didn’t have time to wait around because I was staying in a hotel and it was getting expensive, so I called another place and took it sight unseen. Not 20 minutes after I committed to this other place I get a call from Amy saying she got the message and I had to tell her ‘sorry, I found something else.’ That’s really the first time we met.
Then when did you first meet in person?
School started and I show up at class and get introduced to everyone as one of the two exchange students there. It just so happened that Amy was in the class too and she figured out pretty quickly that I was the voice on the other end of the phone about the room for rent. We hit it off immediately and had a whirlwind romance. We were engaged within 3 months of that day.
Wow, that was fast! What happened next?
We finished the year together there at Cal Poly and then Amy came back with me to Canberra for my last year in university. She was able to do the same exchange I did in reverse. We got married at the end of that school year in Australia. We just celebrated our 10 year anniversary last December.
What was the plan from there?
We really didn’t have a plan at the time, to be honest. We decided to come back to San Luis Obispo, but we had to go through this long, convoluted immigration process. Right after we got married Amy had to leave because she was on a student visa that was expiring and my paperwork wasn’t even close to being ready to move to the States. So we were newlyweds, but we had to spend the Millennium New Year’s Eve at opposite sides of the world. I was at the Sydney Opera House and I believe she was in San Francisco somewhere. It was pretty ironic, we had just been married and here we are so far apart. So, everyday I’m calling the US Consulate, you know, I’m newly married, but my wife has left and I want to be with her. I’m basically begging these guys to help me out and I finally get through to someone who is sympathetic to my story and he says to come in on such-and-such a date with your wife for a meeting and if everything checks out my visa will be issued.
But, at the time Amy is still back in SLO finishing out her last year at Cal Poly?
That’s right. And, we just paid for our wedding and we’re just completely broke. We had to spend the cash we got as a wedding gift to buy a ticket and she was there in Australia for about the same amount of time that she was in the air. We were completely stressed out because we had so much riding on this moment. We were trying to coordinate our stories so that everything checked out in the interview. If you’ve ever seen the movie ‘Green Card’ it was a lot like that. So, we got ourselves all worked up and are basically freaking out and thinking that we will be placed in two separate rooms for interrogation. You know, the whole ‘good cop, bad cop’ routine. We had been advised to bring proof of the relationship, so we had this huge dufflebag filled with every single keepsake possible, you know, birthday cards, wedding photos, and on and on.
The day of the big appointment finally arrives, so how did it go?
We are cramming like we would for a final exam or something and we get to the bloody consulate for the appointment and I remember walking down a long hallway to a window, which is kind of like something you see at a train station where you can pass papers through a hole at the bottom of the window and it has one of those little metal things that amplifies your voice. Anyway, we passed a few forms under, she stamped it and we were done. They didn’t even look at anything we had brought!
You make your way back to San Luis Obispo, was it a difficult transition?
Amy actually found us a place to live and it was all set up when I came to town. She was finishing up her last year at Cal Poly and I was able to get a job. I remember driving my moped to work one morning. I stopped off at the Lincoln Deli on Broad Street for a bit of breakfast. Anyway, I somehow ended up merging my moped onto 101. Mind you, this thing tops out at 35 miles per hour. There was a huge big rig that buzzed me doing about 75 and my heart was thumping out of my chest. I ended up turning around somehow and driving back down the onramp. It was an eventful morning.
Aside from learning how to identify an onramp, did you have any trouble adjusting to life here?
At some point, I think I must have been missing home a bit, so I looked up the SLO Rugby Club and showed up for a game. I got to play right away and met some great people. I knew about the club from my first visit here when I played rugby for Poly during my exchange.
It’s interesting that you sought out rugby as a way to stay connected with Australia.
I had never really thought about it that way, but there’s probably a lot of truth to that. I think it may be similar to you moving to Australia and joining a basketball league with some American guys. Actually, there’s a lot more to it with rugby. What you have in Australia, and around the world, are rugby clubs. They’re not associated with schools. These are guys that are generally really active in their communities and do a lot of socializing around their club. For many small towns, they are like the hub. Most of them have a clubhouse, which is basically a pub attached to their playing field. After the games they invite the opposing team for a celebration. We beat up on each other for 80 minutes but we’re good friends afterward. So, yes, I suppose you could say that, when I moved to San Luis Obispo I was looking to preserve that part of my upbringing a bit.
I understand that you had a game last weekend, how did it go?
It was good, but I took a cheap shot from their fullback. He cracked me around my head and I don’t remember a whole lot right afterward. I got up and I was seeing all sorts of colored spots. He got penalized. I was knocked out there for a moment, I reckon.
How are you doing now?
Much better. I went to the doctor afterward and he said that he thought I had a broken jaw and I thought to myself, oh no… not again. Amy is going to kill me.
You mean, this wouldn’t the first time you have broken your jaw?
The last time it happened was a few years ago, my daughter, Maggie, was only a few days old and it wasn’t a very popular move on my part. They had to wire my mouth shut.What was that like? For some reason it makes me feel a little claustrophobic just thinking about it. They literally get wire and they stitch your teeth together. So, it looks like you got braces that were put on in some back alley. They’re not real neat about it because they know it’s temporary. There’s steel everywhere and you can’t budge. But, they give you these little wire cutters that you keep in your back pocket in case you get into trouble and start choking or something and have to get them off quickly.
So, what’s the prognosis now?
Well, I had to get a CT-Scan, but personally, I don’t think it’s broken. I was only able to fit my pinky between my teeth earlier in the week. Now I can fully open my mouth. I’m pretty sure that it has self-righted. It can’t be broken. [editors note - we are happy to report that Lief has been cleared of all injuries since the interview]
You talk about breaking your jaw with the same casualness I might use to describe my last trip to the grocery store!
Apart from the occasional bumps and bruises I’ve been pretty fortunate in rugby. I did fracture my sternum, which was maybe the worst but wasn’t that bad, frankly. Some banged up fingers and just typical stuff that anyone would get. I’ve been pretty unscathed really. The last few years, I’ve realized that I’m really not invincible and infinitely young, because the injuries have been piling up apparently. How did you get involved in rugby in the first place? Growing up in Australia, it is the biggest thing around. Just like a kid growing up in the States would idolize the guys in the NFL, we would have posters of our favorite rugby players. We’d wear their jerseys to school and play footy on the playground. It’s a bit of a novelty here, but worldwide rugby is huge, the Rugby World Cup is the third most viewed sporting event behind the Olympics and the Soccer World Cup.
…“footy”?
That’s what we would call any sort of football sport. It’s slang. If you grow up in the South around Melbourne, footy is Aussie Rules or Australian Rules Football. If you grow up in New South Wales or Queensland it’s one of the two rugby codes. The two codes are quite similar, but there are some differences in the rules. Rugby in Australia is like football here in the States. Not everyone plays it, but everyone watches it or at least knows about it. The same is true about rugby over there.
It was great talking with you, Lief, thanks very much for sharing your story with us.
No worries, mate.
