Tasha Tatton landed and immediately started playing netball

England's Tasha Tatton was on a netball court barely 24-hours after landing in Australia. Picture by Ash Smith

The last thing most people want to do the day after a long haul flight is leave their house.

After hours sitting in airports, planes, cars, and with jet lag to boot, it's almost inconceivable that you'd get up the next day and play a game of netball.

With a new team.

In a new country.

Tasha Tatton moved to Wagga from Devon, England just a fortnight ago and within her first 10 days in Australia had already taken the court in five different games.

But she didn't always have the up and go for netball, in fact it's a passion that's cultivated over many years.

Like many people moving town, or in her case country, she was drawn to sport to help settle, get out of the house, feel normal in a new place.

Tatton doesn't remember playing netball in or out of school as a child, but as a full-time student and young military wife, she soon found solace in the sport.

"I hate exercise, and netball doesn't feel like exercising," Tatton said.

"It's a bit of me time away from two small children and it's a way to meet people, when you're a military wife you kind of get other military wives forced upon you and you won't necessarily have anything in common with them.

"Some of my best friends are more colleagues because you've got a common interest, I'm not going to be working for a while, and netball is another common interest."

Watching, playing, even umpiring netball back home, the feeling of community with people she's chosen to be with is important to her.

"No other community puts things on like the military does, but that might be the only thing you have in common with those people," she said.

"And it's not even my thing."

A long time coming, Tatton has had a while to prepare for life in Wagga and building herself a new community, but it isn't the first time netball has helped her find herself in a new place.

"Our first posting, in Devon, they set up a wives netball team, my husband was away all the time, I'd just got married, I was 22-23, and I just went to that, and that was my thing," she said.

"I was studying in vet nursing, I was working long shifts, my husband was away, I didn't know anybody.

"Everything the military puts on for you is daytime or for the kids and I couldn't do that, so I just got into netball.

"It kind of was just that being with other people when your husband is away all the time."

Moving around after that first taste of playing, Tatton fell in and out of the sport, both due to busy work schedules and having her children.

Not long after though she found herself back on the court.

Now she says she can't imagine not being involved with the sport.

Tasha Tatton has recently moved to Australia from England and is already getting involved in local netball. Pictured with her sons Oscar Tatton, 6, (left) and Isaac Tatton, 3, (right). Picture by Ash Smith

"I just found myself out four times a week and in this run-up to the move here, I've done as much as possible because I didn't know I was going to get straight into it so soon, and I wanted to just get as much in," she said.

"One of the most exciting things about moving to Australia was the love of netball, and being able to watch it for free.

"I'm not wishing to go back to work again right away because of experiences with each posting, I want to be there for the children, but I also need to get out and do something for me.

"It's just a way of meeting people and it's escalated, which I love.

"It's the one thing that's not an effort, it's hard on the court, but in 2012, when our team formed, it sounds a bit dramatic to say it saved me but I was in a low place, I moved five hours from where I grew up, on night shift, on student wages, and you don't know anybody, it all just got too much and it was my one thing.

"I have got my best friends through netball."

There was one disappointment Tatton admitted to, now having had a taste of Australia netball.

Having left England, where their season proper was just kicking off, she arrived in hot and dry Wagga, where spring social competitions are on the go.

She'll have to wait a few months before the winter club season begins, but by that point she'll have played a hundred games on Australian soil anyway.