No. Its good to have a partner at last, but I feel a deep loneliness as I have fewer friends here.
Healthwise I have had nothing but problems since I got here, some days too sick to get out of bed, with depression, skin reacting to the climate, hayfever, and sheer misery. I spent 2 months with shingles the first year I was here - just try and imagine the combination of shingles and eczema...........
In the last couple of months things have improved a bit but it’s too soon to say whether it will last.
How does the cost of living compare?
When you are earning pounds, and visit Australia on holiday, everything seems cheap. Once you are earning Aussie dollars, you quickly realise that it’s not as cheap as it appeared! I think on the whole the cost of living is about the same. Some things have surprised me – renting a home here is cheaper than buying – the opposite of the UK. There is no way we will ever get on the housing ladder here – but then as I lived in Brighton, where property was an extortionate price, I couldn’t afford to buy there either.
My salary is probably less here, on a pro rata basis compared to the cost of living, but we do OK. I can afford trips home because of the cash my dad left me, which is preserved for that purpose.
The Work Experience
The Prospective Marriage Visa gives 9 months in which to marry and apply for residence. It also allows you to work at once. The problem is that because it is not a PR visa, some employers are reluctant to engage you. I found work fairly fast, but mainly because I was prepared to do anything to bring in cash. I didn’t get the luxury of the holiday period that most people had – I was job hunting the day I arrived, 6 hours a day – I know if I had to do it again I would want time to adjust and relax first.
I did manage – after a couple of false starts – to achieve my initial goal, a government job. I have now been on temp government contracts for over 2 years, 3 months at a time usually, and they don’t renew them until the last week. I hoped that when I got PR I could finally try to crack the permanent job there – Qld Govt won’t employ you permanently without PR. I missed out on 6 positions purely because of the permanent visa problem.
A serious of unfortunate coincidences meant when I got the chance of my dream job being permanent, I was rejected. I had done the job for 18 months doing, but the panel considered me not suitable partly on the grounds that I still did not have enough Australian experience. So I have now very little confidence left as regards seeking work and am resigned to spending my life limping from one temporary contract to the next. Having left a fantastic career in the UK it’s easy to see why I am bitter. I have many many friends at work who have tried to keep me cheerful, and encourage me to keep trying, but I think even my “mentor”, who took a couple of gambles with my UK experience in order to get me into emergency work here, has finally given up hope that we will ever get me a permanent position.
It’s such a shame because I - and many people I work with - feel I have so much to offer the department, but my demons always take shape to come out and thwart me, leaving me with a bitter taste in my mouth and a longing for the past.
In what way does Australia fit into your long term plans?
I’m not sure really - can’t see me growing old here, it’s not something I can imagine, at least not in Queensland. Maybe in Tassie - I think part of me has always been there and I can’t wait to visit again and see if it would ever be possible to move there. On the other hand, even if we could afford to move, I can’t see The Bloke ever wanting to live in the UK, or being able to adjust to life there, so I think we are here to stay. In some ways that makes things easier as there is no choice involved. Some families are torn and can’t decide which country to live in. I just have to accept it – I’m here for the “term of my natural life”.
In retrospect is there anything you would change?
I don’t know. I don’t think about that side of things. A long time before I ever thought of coming to Australia I made a pact with a now deceased friend, that neither of us would ever regret anything we did.
Are there any final thoughts you would like to share?
I wrote this many months ago, when approached by BE to do it. I was reluctant to do it in the first place as so many of my experiences are already on the BE forums. But I promised I would, as long as I could hold off submitting it until I had achieved one of my dream goals. As you will have seen in the work section above, at that time I had almost given up hope of a permanent position in the government. But yesterday I heard that I had managed to get through a very stiff interview and was appointed to a Support Officer role in Emergency Management.
It’s taken me nearly a thousand days of temporary contracts to do it, but I managed it in the end!! I am so grateful to these people who have stood by me and helped me get through to this point, I can never thank them enough, except by showing that I am more than worthy to hold the position. So who knows, maybe finally things are looking up.....and at least I don’t have to spend my life applying for jobs now! I might even start to find a new life.
Final words to anyone still applying - Australia isn’t paradise, it isn’t a place to come to if you are trying to escape from a humdrum existence, and it has the same problems as every other country in the world. Some love it here, some hate it, some can leave, some are stranded here for whatever reason. The only thing that is certain, as I’ve seen after many years on the forum on this site is - everyone’s experience is different, and we can all learn a lot from reading about how others deal with being strangers in a strange land.
BritishExpats Member "Pollyana"
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