Born in 2022

If you were born in 2022, the Djokovic visa cancellation saga in January was the thing that made Australia briefly famous for reasons both comic and serious — the world's best tennis player detained in a Melbourne immigration hotel, his visa cancelled twice, his anti-vaccination status clashing with Australia's pandemic requirements, the Federal Court involved, Scott Morrison eventually allowing the cancellation to stand. Novak lost the Australian Open without playing. Then Anthony Albanese won the May election, ending nine years of Liberal-National government and four prime ministers in three years, and the sense of relief in much of the country was palpable.

Albanese — from a housing commission flat in Camperdown, the son of a single mother who had raised him on a disability pension — represented a different kind of Australian story. The floods in Queensland and northern New South Wales in February and March were catastrophic, the Lismore CBD under three metres of water, communities simply overwhelmed. Climate change was now undeniable and undeniably connected to the disasters.

The cost of living was rising sharply — petrol, groceries, energy bills — the Reserve Bank beginning its interest rate hiking cycle that would add $2,000 per month to a median Sydney mortgage. The flat white was $6. The country was turning a corner, hoping.