Well it's just over 2 years since we moved here to Brissie. To be honest the move here seems to all been pretty easy, and I've felt settled and at home here from day one. So I'm not sure how useful any kind of detailed update is going to be, but here goes.

Basically, I'm married to an Aussie (he moved to England to do his one year living in London and traveling in Europe thing, met me, and then ended up staying for eight years instead) so we thought it would be a bit of an adventure to try moving to Brissie. So I got a spouse visa, which was overall pretty straight forward.

We left England on 1st August, but didn't arrive in Brisbane until 7th Sept because we travelled to Brazil, Argentina and Peru on the way. Oh, and we spent a a few days in LA, and a week in Fiji. It was brilliant. We love traveling and so we thought as we were in between jobs, and in between countries, why not take the opportunity while we could. We had the best time, it was amazing.

So we finally arrived in Brisbane, and stayed with the in-laws (in the country about 1.5 hours from Brisbane) for a week or two while we sorted ourselves out. We found a nice rental in Yeronga, which is a nice suburb close to town (we both cycle to work).

I joined the Queensland Police which I love. I did seven months training at the Academy, and I have now completed just over a year in the job. It was a complete career change for me and I love it. Obviously there are parts of the job that are better than others, but I like helping good people, and arresting the bad ones. I know cops get some bad press, and there are obviously some bad cops out there, (out of 14,000 in QPS, there are bound to be a few dodgy ones) but I know myself and my colleagues deal with the public well, which makes me very proud. I've been at a few different stations, but my permanent one is Southbank and I reckon I'm pretty lucky to be there. So if you see a female cop walking around Southbank (in shorts) it'll be me. Come and say hello, we're very friendly!

My other half really enjoys his job too, so we're both happy on that front. We're thinking of buying a house now we've been here a while, so we'll see what happens.

I LOVE living in Brisbane. I love that it's not a big place (moving from London anyway) I love how clean it is - something I had started to take for granted until my Dad came out for a visit recently and remarked upon how clean everywhere was. The people are generally friendly, and laid back (and that's coming from someone who deals with the less-nice people of Brisbane in my job!). I love the outdoorsy lifestyle which we very much embrace. I love how easy it is to go up or down the coast to find amazing beaches. I absolutely love the weather here. I manage the heat in summers no problem, and I enjoy the sunny blue sky days of winter, and I love the colourful birds (although I hate the evil attacking magpies!). In fact I love heaps of things about Brisbane.

So yeah I can safely say we're having a great time. I think we're generally positive people and so we try and make the most of every situation, and I guess there's been some luck involved too, but I've never felt home sick and I love living here. Mind you I also loved living in England - we certainly didn't leave because we think England had "gone to the dogs" or whatever. I think England is a great place. Mind you I grew up in Dorset and although I lived in London for the last 10 years, I still spent a lot of time in Cornwall where my parents live, so we certainly spent time in other areas of England. It's just that this is where we live now, and we love it here too!

We haven't travelled much around Australia since we arrived, but a few years ago we came out here for nearly 5 months and travelled all around Australia on a brilliant great big trip (only missed out the top bit, so want to go there sometime). So I've seen quite a lot of the country and intend to see more.

I don't have any real words of wisdom on where to buy things, or how to make the move here successful, like I said, we just moved here, got on with it and love it. Probably having my other half's family here helps, and obviously we've made friends through work etc. I guess we're lucky that it's all been relatively easy and we're really happy. Don't get me wrong, of course there are things about living in Australia that drive me mad, just as there were things that drove me nuts in England. Nowhere is perfect. But I reckon we've got it pretty good.

Share

©BritishExpats and "Scubaemma"