Fifteen years ago I left Melbourne for Paris, grieving my mother’s death and finding unexpected solace in the unfamiliarity of the wild and wonderful 10th arrondissement. A French theatre school, a Frenchman … I made a home inside the thrill of the differences, the frustrations and complications, the visa dilemmas and renting difficulties.

Life there as a student and later a wife (not to the French guy) was drunk with adventure, wandering the streets from sunrise to sunset, living hand to mouth off music and acting gigs, jobs at the track, voiceovers, translations, teaching English to businessmen. When, years later, our daughter swam into a Paris bathtub, though we were both Australian, we were determined to continue our life there as normal. But we soon realised the choice wasn’t only ours.

At the dinner one night when she was almost four and well entrenched in Paris life, she stated in a clear, authoritative voice:

“When we go to Our Stralia for Christmas, I want to stay and live there. D’accord?”

‘In the photo, all rugged up and hopeful in the dark misty air, we look like a small immigrant family on our way to a better future.’ Photograph: Jayne Tuttle

We hadn’t considered it, but her oracle status by that stage was well known. Life had become stressful - her school hours were long, my work in advertising intense, my husband’s visa restrictive. She had never had a skinned knee, eaten sand or jumped in a “muddy puddle” that didn’t contain centuries of piss. Visions of Australia began dancing in our heads.

“Australie … j’en rêve … ,” says every Parisian. I dream of it. To the greater world, Australia has an unwavering magical quality; people’s eyes dance, they see koalas cuddling people riding kangaroos in the twinkling outback sea. They’ll never come – it’s what, an eight-hour flight? So the dream grows and mutates, the land of endless summers and calm and beauty, where everyone has a backyard (even in the city!) and everyone is happy.

I think we Australians see it like this too, which places a horrible expectation on us. Livin’ the dream. Are we? This is one of the reasons I fled. Australia is beautiful, magical. And, if you feel like crap, it can be tough. The sun shines so bright, people smile so wide. ’Stralia was a haunted place where everything looked the same but never would be again. In my grief, I’d felt at home within the existential angst of Paris, the ennui and public tears, the long, grey winters. But denying my kid a free, tree-climbing childhood for my own escapist reasons was wearing thin.

And so, on a freezing December morning we mounted the plane with the Oracle and her doudou, for the eight-hour flight (times three).

As a kid I had this recurring dream of coming home to find my house disappearing on a truck with my whole family inside, all that remained an empty block of land. Coming back to our neighbourhood in Melbourne’s inner north was a bit like this. We’d skipped our 30s, our world had moved on; most our friends had moved to the country, overseas or back to the suburbs to get free childcare from their parents.

Fruit shops had turned to apartment blocks; once-busy shopping strips were full of for-lease signs. We realised urban life was not the Australia we had fantasised about when overseas; we saw the sea, big horizons, tall, lazy, swaying trees. We found ourselves unpacking our boxes in a holiday rental down at the beach where my dad lives. It was wonderful. Fresh air. Sun-dried sheets. Water you could drink from the tap. No white funk in the kettle. Drains that didn’t constantly block. No garbage trucks at 6am, no need to tiptoe in your house, our girl up a tree, barefoot, running wild, jumping in muddy puddles to her heart’s delight. Soy lattes, sausage rolls, Vegemite that didn’t cost les yeux de la tête.

When you needed food you got in the car and drove there, and walked the groceries in a trolley to the boot of the car and drove off rather than lugging them up the Faubourg Saint Denis and leaving a huge gash on your shoulder. People on phone lines helped, waiters were kind, our nostril hairs grew back. Our daughter blossomed like a flower before our eyes, the drawn little face broadening and turning shiny and ruddy. A kid, quoi.

But despite the joy of seeing her thrive, it wasn’t long before I became depressed. The gear change set all my demons free. I blamed the country for my unhappiness: the booze and smalltalk and smiles. I loathed the driving, the bland strawberries, my daughter’s all-white kindergarten, speaking my own language. I felt exposed. People could see me. In Paris nobody looked or cared, there were too many of us. I closed myself away and continued my life in Paris, maintaining my copywriting business à distance, my Paris clients actually preferring me in Australia – I could work while they slept. I could be in both places at once. Good in theory. But in practise, lonely and isolating. Neither here, nor there.

Within six months we were back in Paris, our life straight back where we’d left off. Our daughter slept in a walk-in-robe. I got new clients. My husband’s band got more gigs. The pace was delicious and the stress kept the demons at bay, but my husband saw a better life for us ahead in Australia. Six months later we were back in the seaside rental. For the next few years we went back and forth. We grew accustomed to two homes. Two lives.

This year we returned to Paris for another six months but something had changed. Our daughter was crying herself to sleep at night – life in Her Stralia had concretised. She’d become her own person, grown her own life, and moving from place to place was no longer viable to her. Committing to Australia was terrifying to me. “Settle” and “for good” were not part of my language.

In her oracle way, perhaps she manifested the bookshop. Midway through our stay in Paris, the bookshop in the seaside town came up for sale. Images of her walking there after school with friends, riding her bike to the sea, growing up with the wind in her hair seemed to outweigh the intellectual beauty of a young life in Paris, visiting galleries and reading philosophy.

It’s been two months in the bookshop now, the first time we’ve dug our feet into the earth in a decade and a half. It feels better than I could ever have dreamed. I don’t think we’ll ever truly leave Paris. But for now at least, it feels unbelievably good to call Our Stralia home.

• Jayne Tuttle is co-owner of the Bookshop at Queenscliff. Her memoir, Paris or Die, is out now, published by Hardie Grant.