12 Australian Country HOMES
P
eter Allen’s emotive anthem
about this beloved land we
call home is an apt theme for
the life shared by Brisbane
couple, Riza and Cam Taylor. “Together
we have lived in Malaysia, Tanzania,
India, Vietnam and Ethiopia,” Riza, who
was born and raised overseas where
her father took on diff erent roles for
the Snowy Mountains Engineering
Corporation, explains. “Cam and I met
in Hyderabad, India. I was visiting
my family from boarding school in
Canberra, and Cam was working with
my Dad — scandalous! He was already
well-liked by my younger siblings who
were living in India with Mum and Dad.
I remember Mum telling me he was
coming over for dinner and saying he
was really nice, to which I replied in the
sass only a teenager can manage, ‘If you
like him Mum, he’s probably an idiot’.
She told me to go shower and put on
something nice and the rest, as they
say, is history.”
After a short stint on the Gold Coast
together when Riza was at university, they
left Australia to follow Cam’s engineering
assignments in what would end up being
a decade-long expat adventure to the far
reaches of Asia and Africa.
However, they realised it was time for
the ships to come back to the shore shortly
after their second child, Myla, was born
in Hanoi, Vietnam. “It was one evening
coming home on a Vespa scooter from a
barbecue,” Riza recalls. “I was driving, Sam,
our eldest, was three years old standing
in front of me in the footwell. Cam was
on the back with six-month-old Myla
strapped to him in a Baby Bjorn and there
were plastic bags fl apping from the handle
bars. I turned my head and yelled to Cam,
‘do you think we’ve been here too long?’ It
turned out to be the moment that started
our conversation.”These pages: After decades living everywhere from India and Ethiopa to Vietnam and Malaysia, Riza
and Cam Taylor and their family have made their home in a Queenslander in Brisbane’s inner suburbs. ›