*The Background*

I first came to Australia in July 2001 as a backpacker fresh out of uni on a WHV. I came for a year and had an absolute ball. During that year, I met Aaron (my now husband) an Aussie living in Far North QLD. When my WHV expired, I returned back to the UK, worked for 5 months and then came back on a  six month visitor visa – which I had no problem in getting but I did get fully interrogated in Cairns airport on the way back in!

When that visa expired, OH came back to the UK with me and got a 2 year WHV. As the time on that visa ended, we planned to come back to Australia and I applied for a De Facto Spouse visa. We wanted to go through a migration agent as so much depended on me getting the visa and we were a bit clueless about the process. 90% of the agents I called advised I would have no chance. Although, we had lived together for over a year, it had been in a family member’s house. As such, we had no joint tenancy agreements, no joint bills and no joint bank account. However, we found a great agent, got together what we did have, wrote detailed personal statements and the visa application was approved without incident! This was a huge relief!

*The Next Chapter*

So, we came back to Australia together in May 2005. We had 6000 pounds in the bank. OH had left school at 16 but had a few years experience driving an excavator and I had 2 years experience of working in a banking call centre. We weren’t exactly rich or highly skilled!

First we lived in Townsville. We stayed in a caravan park while we looked for a property to rent. We ended up with small part furnished unit which we didn’t have too much trouble getting. We did have to pay 2 months rent upfront as we didn’t have any rental references etc. It wasn’t glamorous and had one aircon in the bedroom which we spent a lot of time sitting next to!  We both got jobs really easily. I worked in a customer service position and OH for a construction company. However, after about 8 months… to be honest we got a bit bored. I might do Townsville an injustice here, but we found it a bit isolated (not too many places to go for a day trip/weekend) and too hot! I found I was spending a lot of time inside or sitting in the shade keeping cool and it felt that for me in my mid twenties - that wasn’t exciting enough and life was passing us by.

So, we upped sticks and moved……to Melbourne! We knew absolutely no-one there! We had no problem in finding a rental property (in 2006…I think it is different now) and little difficulty in finding jobs - we were prepared to do anything at the start to make ends meet and slowly upgraded our jobs as opportunities came up. I continued in the banking industry and Aaron in construction. We worked long hours. Aaron worked six days a week (10 hours a day) and I worked five days with similar hours including the commute for relatively low wages ($60k and $40k respectively).

We loved Melbourne, still do and made a lot of good friends there. However, in 2007 after the loss of a close family member, we re-assessed out lifestyle and realised that we didn’t want to continue living like we were – with no time for ourselves or each other – one day off a week …and we weren’t even thirty yet!

So…we read up on the mining industry. We had seen the reports on A Current Affair etc. of people making big money and with OH having machine operating experience, we wanted to see if he could do that. So, he (well.. I write the letters and resumes) started applying for operator positions. We found despite all the ‘hype’ such advertised positions were fairly few and far between and the chance of them taking ‘clean skins’ (the mining term for someone with no mining experience) was even less likely. However, after perseverance, Aaron was offered a job in Blackwater (Central QLD) We had serious reservations about going back to QLD but decided it was a ‘way in’ … so off we went. By this time, we had accumulated significant furniture so had to arrange for all that to be moved to.

We spent just over a year up there. OH loved the industry … and the money made a huge change in lifestyle for us. I found it difficult to find full time work but decided to do a Diploma in Accounting thru the TAFE system.