barkingRockateer

Hi
We came out initially in August 2003 to SA but moved to Sydney quite soon after. We have been back briefly to the UK for work reasons since then. I miss England but love living here whereas my husband prefers the UK. It does cause strife as our kids are at uni and settled here. However, my eldest daughter her husband and my grandson came out tolive a year ago and are going back home in March as they cant settle. I think lots of people do this. Is that where the expression rolling poms comes from?

Ginge

Hi everyone,

Thanks for all the advice and comments etc. I’ve been meaning to respond to you all but just never get time to do anything these days!

Thought you might be interested to know that we have come to a conclusion about our dilemma… we are going back to the UK for a ‘2 year trial’ – probably leaving at the end of May!!! Its been a hard decision to make and neither of us wanted to be the one to actually say it first, but we both agreed it needs to be done and its much better to do it now than hang on here for another 5years when things will be more difficult what with schooling for kids and finding a suitable job for my husband.

Its all very worrying and exciting, I feel like I am constantly frowning at the decision we have made! People in England are very excited, we will enjoy their enthusiasm while it lasts as we know that once we’ve been there a while it’ll all just be normal again! Some people think we are mental to give up this lifestyle, which I do agree with but then again its not really about that, we can come back to it if things don’t work out, its just about spending some time with family.

My husband is looking forward to a change and we are viewing this as an adventure in our lives, albeit a very costly one! Money is extremely tight as we have decided not to sell our house here in Oz, we are going to rent it out, I suppose its mostly the banks money anyway! and if we take into account the money we’d spend on a couple of trips back over the next 5 years then some of it is money we would have spent anyway.

We are glad to have finally made a decision, things are a lot easier in that respect! We are going to miss loads of things about being here, its been our lives for 7yrs, we’ll definitely miss our house as we like the amount of space we have, but we won’t miss the dust, flies and mozzies that’s for sure! Not sure how I’ll cope not being able to see the sea whenever I want but I guess the green English countryside will replace that for a while, also we’re probably going to Berkshire and there are lots of canals to walk along it’s a shame that we’ll see abandoned shopping trolleys floating in them rather than the dolphins we see here in the river!

Now comes the mammoth task of deciding where to start, so much to do! We are contemplating taking all our furniture with us and our poor old doggy will have to stay behind in Oz for a few months, we don’t know where yet, so we’re working on that one. It’s all the things you take for granted that you suddenly realise you’ll be without on arrival in the UK – such as a car or a fridge! – our giant Oz fridge would probably be bigger than a UK kitchen! In fact most of our furniture will probably be too big for a UK house, so we may have to reconsider taking it!!

Our decision hasn’t been influenced by anything on this forum but its good to know that we aren't alone as you start to feel like you're going mad sometimes! You always wish that someone could decide for you, but we knew deep down what we had to do, its just getting on and doing it is the hard part!

I may have to end this thread now and start a new one asking for advice on moving!

Cheers!

Stuck

We had a huge 4 double bed, 4 recep, 3 bath house in Oz + pool and double garage and shed - standard issue. We brought all of our furniture back (I was not sure about this at first!), + car + dog + cats x 2!!! Even though we are in a smaller house, 2 double bed, 1 single, kitchen, 1 bath + living room we have somehow managed to fit everything in! We have stored some stuff in the single room (extra bed's and sofa's), some stuff in the cellar. It all might be a little bit more squashed in but it was not nearly as bad as I thought it was going to be. We gave some bits and pieces away (not much though) and chucked out a bit of stuff that somehow just looked like crap after 6mths of not seeing it! We brought our big fridge, stored it in a friend's garage. When we buy a house we will buy one with a big kitchen!

sassenach

we have been here 15 years and cant settle ,so we are selling and going back to live in torquay we can afford to buy there and a beautiful spot too ,i am a bricklayer my wife a nurse ,we havent given up on australia and may well enjoy xmasses in england and fly here to work for 4 months a year and for those four months just rent .We just want to be where our heart is and thats in the uk ,our children have both grown up in australia they are 21 and 18 and youd think they would see australia as their home but they dont ,we have no regrets and we have given our children the benefit of an extra passport and their education i believe has been better they have a lot to be thankful to australia for and so do we ,but plain and simple it just aint home and after working there last year for 6 months and enjoying every day theres only one place for me

Lord Pom Percy

You could try Torquay on the west coast of Victoria, nice town great surf beach.

kiwichild

15 yrs is a fair old shot at it. I've been in oz since mid 90s and most of that in Perth and I'm looking forward to finishing my studies and heading either to the uk or back to nz. Hope all goes well for you and the family back in the uk.

If I find myself in Torquay I expect a pint!!

Lane

This thread motivated me to register on British Expats.com, rather than continue lurking.

I came to Australia from the UK as a child, with my parents. I didn't want to come here, didn't want to leave behind everyone and everything I loved. When I first saw Australia, even though I was excited, for some reason I burst into tears. For years, I thought I must have been a very strange child for doing that. Decades later, I met an English-woman who'd come here by choice, as an adult. She confessed she'd burst into tears at her first sight of Australia, too ... much to her own surprise. Maybe it has something to do with the fact Australia is a very large, isolated and basically empty landmass with a history so old, it defies belief. Whatever the case, something of the brooding lonliness of Australia obviously impacted on me when I first saw it. Despite the dazzling sunshine, beaches, shoreline and cleanliness, it made me horribly depressed ... an emotion unknown to me until that moment.

So I've lived here nearly all my life. I'm married and have grown children. Most of my years in Australia have been spent on the Gold Coast in Queensland which is a glorious place. We've always had nice homes, close to the beach, surrounding by stunning scenery. No complaints about Australia -- it's a very nice place and offers a lovely lifestyle.

However, I am still homesick for the UK, after all these years and years. I became quite ill as a child after we first arrived and although I didn't know it then, my parents were at the point of sending me back to the UK to live with my grandparents. God, I wish they had. But they didn't. When I was in my late teens, returning to the UK was still uppermost in my mind. My father was on the point of sending me back to my grandmother -- but she died. Life went on, I married, had children of my own and of course there was no possibility of my returning then.

When my children were in their teens, I planned to finally take them to the UK for a holiday, once they'd finished high school. But then a long-time business partner embezzled my earnings of the past 17 years. We scraped through, managed to hold onto our home. Then there was the children's tertiary education to pay for.

All my life, I've wanted to return to the UK. Sure, I knew people claimed I would not like it any more. They said things had changed for the worse in UK and I should be grateful to be in Australia. And I'm sure they were correct. But I wanted to just be able to touch the UK again, even if I could only afford to stay for a week. I wanted to see that light in the sky, which is so different to Australia's. I wanted to visit the church where my family --- all gone now -- are buried. I wanted to walk past the places I've held in my memory all these years. I wanted to breathe the air, and be able to tell that little part of the world that I had come back to see it once more. To let it know I have never forgotten it. Such a small luxury. I believed all my life that I'd do it one day.

But the years have passed by. One thing and another has prevented me from returning to the UK. I doubt I'll ever be able to do it now, apart from have my ashes sent back there.

My parents were the same. They missed the UK like mad: missed their families and friends, missed those dear old places that wouldn't leave their memory. But they were too proud. They didn't want to return to the UK until they 'made it' here in Australia. And they never did make it. They struggled and fell and struggled and fell again, on and on, all those years. But they couldn't admit that to the families whose hearts they'd broken by leaving UK. So they wrote letters 'home' to UK, saying how great it was in Australia, how sunny, how warm, how full of beaches and bar-b-ques etc. it was.

My mother saved like mad and went back in the 70's on her own --- only to arrive days after her father passed away. Ten years later, after more saving and scrimping, she flew back on her own again -- and this time it was her mother who'd just died. My father parent's died in the UK without him ever seeing them again too. He claims he has no regrets about coming to Australia, but of course, he's not telling the truth.

Some people come to Australia and feel at home straightaway. For others, it takes a bit longer for them to feel at home. Some people never feel truly at peace here. Sometimes, people have to return to UK several times, before they finally come to accept Australia as 'home'. Some, despite the best effort and intentions in the world, can find peace of mind only in the UK, no matter how humble a part of the UK they come from.

My brother told me once that Australia is full of people who 'cannot afford to go home (to UK)'. It's been that way since the 1800's. There are people in old-people's homes here in Australia whose only treasured possession is an old, tattered photo of some little village in Britain. They look at it even when they're blind. They can see that village in their mind, fresh as the day they left UK. For some, UK is where the heart is, and never mind the cold and rain and troubles ... it's where their heart is.

My advice is to return to the UK if that's what your heart yearns for. Do it while you can afford it -- while your family there are still alive - and before you commit so deeply to Australia (mortgage, children's education, etc) that you can't afford it.

It won't be easy --- getting to anywhere from Australia is not easy, because of the distance and expense. It won't be easy trying to re-establish in the UK because of their strong currency compared to the Aussie dollar. But if it's something you have to do, do it -- even if simply to confirm to yourself that Australia is, after all, right for you at this time.

And best wishes and good luck

Lord Pom Percy

l had neighbour from Greece in OZ and everytime l spoke to her she would whinge about OZ and tell be how she only came here to earn money, how great Greece was how beautiful her village was and how shes looking foward to going back to Greece to retire. After 20 years in OZ she eventually went back to Greece and l thought thats the last time will ever see her. 2 months latter shes back in OZ telling me what a dreadful place Greece is, how much its changed for the worse and how great OZ is and how good it is to be back home. Maybe its easy to have a rose tinted glasses view of the UK when you have'nt lived there for so long, maybe if you did move back there you would end up being homesick for OZ.

SCOTTISH MARK 2

[QUOTE=Lane]This thread motivated me to register on British Expats.com, rather than continue lurking.

Thankyou for your story......it's much better to do what
feels right at the time rather than have a lifetime
of regret.....after all, as they say "we only regret the things we don't do".

I hope you manage to make that trip back and it's all you hope for

Lane

To Lord Tom Percy: You might remember what I said was:-- " So I've lived here nearly all my life. I'm married and have grown children. Most of my years in Australia have been spent on the Gold Coast in Queensland which is a glorious place. We've always had nice homes, close to the beach, surrounding by stunning scenery. No complaints about Australia -- it's a very nice place and offers a lovely lifestyle."

As you see, I'm not whinging about Australia.

I originally wrote " All my life, I've wanted to return to the UK. Sure, I knew people claimed I would not like it any more. They said things had changed for the worse in UK and I should be grateful to be in Australia. And I'm sure they were correct. But I wanted to just be able to touch the UK again "

To Lord Tom Percy: What I should have said regarding those who well-meaningly warned that 'home' had changed for the worse and that I would no longer like it, is: ... ' I'm sure they may have been correct in their warnings'.

On the other hand of course, they may not have been correct.

I read an amazing fact recently, in a book about Italian history. It said 29 million people had left Italy to settle in the US, Canada, Australia, etc. And 20 million went back.

20 million went back ! That's something I'd never heard about, until I read the book.

A few years ago, I read that we're each aligned to the area in which we're born at the moment of birth ... and this is the area to which we will always be most physically, mentally and spiritually attuned.

Interestingly also, in a book about wine of all things, I read about a fortified wine ... an apparently well-known Port, I think it is ... which is grown in a specific and small region in Portugal. Wine lovers would most probably know the name.

The wine is known as the 'English-Port', because English people prize it most of all.

Only a certain amount of this popular fortified wine is produced each year, because of the smallness of the area in which it's grown. The wine-book said that the entire stock is purchased, years in advance.

Then the amazing part: ..... the wine loses it's distinctive flavour and aroma if it is removed from the area in which it's grown !

In other words, the wine has a memory .... and it pines and 'loses heart' if taken away from its homeland ! Isn't that remarkable?

We (similar to wine/grapes) are to a degree, the product of the land we spring from. In our bones are deposited miniscule trace elements carried by the water we've drunk and food we've eaten, which in turn bears trace elements of the rocks and land they sprang from.

Just as importantly, we are descended from our ancestors who in many instances (particularly in the UK) remained in the same small regions for centuries -- until the Industrial Revolution changed them from rural dwellers to urbanites. Many of our UK ancestors drank from the same local water supply and ate locally grown crops for generation after generation in many cases.

They were literally part of the land on which they lived. And we are part of all that too -- we are literally part of our ancestors and all that went into them.

To prove that, all you need do is look back in your family to see your son's eyes in your great-grandfather, or find your own red hair three and four generations back. And those ancestors four generations back lead back another four generations, and so on.

We are not just packs of frozen peas to be exported to a foreign table. We are spiritual beings with links that can be traced back for centuries.

In the olden days, when people moved about, they did it gradually, very gradually. There were no planes and ships and trains then. They moved at walking speed. They stopped for years at a time, of necessity. They acclimatised. If something happened, they moved a bit more. It gave them time to absorb the local water and food and the spiritual element contained in both. Often, they remained in the same place for hundreds of years. All of this provided time for them to 'become part of ' the new area into which they'd moved, passed down parent to child. It all took centuries.

Isn't it strange that as supposedly 'modern, educated' people, we willingly grant credence to the claims of indigenous folk that they are part of their land -- physically, emotionally and spiritually --- yet we deny the same to our own !!!!

Why would a descendant of hundreds of generations of Cheshire ancestors be less a part of his region .... than the American Indian or Australian Aborigine claims to be of theirs ??

Some of us are more adaptable than others. Some of us are less rooted in our home soil, and therefore might easily feel at home 12,000 or even 100 miles from our origins.

The main thing to remember is that we're all individuals.

We don't all take the same size shoe. We don't all like tomatoes, for example. We don't all like the same music, or colours, or temperature.

We don't know what we like until we try it.

We may like Australia -- just as we may like the colour yellow --- but we may reach the conclusion that even though we like it and even though it is 'popular' and supposed to be great, it just doesn't suit us .. just doesn't make us feel as at peace as we need and want and have a right to feel.

The wisest bit of advice we're given is 'Know thyself ' and ' To thine own self be true'.

And we are wise if we live by that advice, don't you think? We only get one life, after all.

[Thank you, Scottish Mark, for your lovely post ]

jad n rich

I think the bits above are such good advice, weve been here nowhere near as long as you, but already by the time 5 years was up we were well and truly affected by the eduation factor, and older children in a relationship factor. Have met many more people for whom the aussie dollar has become a factor too.

I think your right if you want to go back and the kids are young enough to settle again get on with it, do it now, it doesnt take many years before you find yourself locked in here unless you make some massive compromise.

Anyway best wishes to you, hopefully one day you can afford a nice long trip back

Del Boy

Brilliant post - a lot of truth in there

barkingRockateer

Can I say you have touched something deep within me which has allowed me to acknowledge that despite my determined and doggedly positive attitude to being here in Australia (and for which I am very grateful) I am and will always be a lancashire lass and know within my soul that at some point I will return to England. I have made some wonderful friends here who will always be part of my life and i appreciate the open and welcoming way I have been embraced by people but ultimately I know I will go home.