Tell us a little about yourself and family. What were your reasons for moving to Australia?

Basically I moved to Australia to marry an Australian! I had visited Australia several times before I started actual migration plans. A close friend in Hobart had led to many trips to Tasmania, and I had fallen in love with the wild beauty of the island. It was on the way home from Tassie that I met “The Bloke” for the first time - we were both in Melbourne for the F1 Grand Prix, and met while on a guided tour of the MCG (Melbourne Cricket Ground). A few beers, we swapped phone numbers, and I came out the following year to visit him in Queensland. Another couple of years went by, and I finally left the UK on Hallowe’en 2003, the proud owner of a Prospective Marriage Visa & a pair of rose-tinted specs.

How long did the emigration process take?

We got engaged in November 2002, while I was visiting him in Brisbane. We filed the initial application – for a Prospective Marriage Visa – in May 2003, after gathering evidence of the relationship, police check, medical, and Statutory Declarations from friends and families in both countries.

In those days a Pros Marriage Visa could be granted over the counter at the High Commission in London, so getting my first visa took about 45 minutes! I handed over the pile of papers, was asked a few basic questions like “Where did you meet?” and “When do you hope to emigrate?” and then had the visa put in my passport! So easy compared to the long-drawn-out Skills Visa process, which at the time was taking 2-3 years.

I left the UK on Hallowe’en 2003 – a date chosen deliberately so as to be memorable, and to make it fun for my sister’s children. I was given a purple witch’s hat as a leaving gift, which still makes an appearance at Expats Meets.

Once we had got married, in Jan 2004, we applied for my Spouse Visa. This is granted in two parts – at first you get a temporary residence visa, and then after two years you receive the Holy Grail of Permanent Residency..... As the two year period draws to a close DIMA contact you and you have to supply various bits of paper – I needed fresh police checks and Stat Decs, and some basic things like bills, to prove that we were still together and still in an “ongoing relationship”. My Permanent Residence Visa was granted in April 2006! At last!!

In which state do you live in?

Queensland, in the northern suburbs of Brisbane

Tell us a little about your personal experiences of the differences between Australia and the UK.

It’s very easy to take life for granted. Only when you are in an unfamiliar place do you realise just how much you have taken for granted, and how much you miss. I have suffered horrendously from homesickness, though I never expected to, and I think it has been worse because I emigrated on my own. If you move as a family unit, then I think it is a bit easier as you are going through the experience together. On your own it’s different. Plunged into a strange culture, with a husband who has never lived anywhere else, life was very hard at first, and is still difficult at times. He takes for granted that you do things in a certain way, buy things from certain shops, and abide by certain laws. He couldn’t understand why I found it odd not buying beer in the same shop as the weekly food shopping, why I hate having to take my passport and prove my identity before posting a card with a badge on it to the UK, (never mind a parcel!), why I hated getting my mail screwed up and wet because it got left on the lawn as the Aussies don’t believe in letterboxes – one of the strangest gifts, but one of the most welcome, was his present of a large mailbox, to keep my post dry!

What are some of the things you enjoy most about Australia?

My husband, the fact I have a better house here than I would ever get on this rent back home in Brighton, the wildlife (apart from the insects!) - love the geckos that live on the sitting-room ceiling! I have made a few lovely friends here, and I’ve had some amazing moments at work while working on various disaster projects.

What, if any, are the things you dislike about living in Australia?

How long have you got?
Lets pick a few things that I really HATE, to make it easier - cockroaches, humidity, red tape, Americanised TV, and the general “she’ll be right” attitude which means things don’t get done until its too late - a good example is the water shortage; they are only thinking of building pipelines to bring water from the north now that we are in the grip of the drought. Forward thinking is rather lacking here. They are so laid back they are beyond horizontal.......

What do you miss most now you are no longer living in the UK?

Family and friends. Even if you think you are prepared for being so far apart, the reality hits only when you want a good laugh with your best friend, or when you want to celebrate something with your family - or of course when you get the dreaded phone call.....

The rain!! It surprising how quickly you start to long for grey skies – waking up to sunshine day after day really makes you appreciate the occasional day of cloud and rain.

Crisp cold winter mornings with frost on the ground.

Tesco, Asda, Sainsburys, Boots, WHS, Thorntons, Clinton Cards, Waterstones......and I never thought of myself as a shopaholic back then!

How badly, if at all, has homesickness affected you?

Badly, even though I never expected to suffer from it at all. I now find that the best way to deal with homesickness is to always have the next trip “home” planned. It makes life seem more bearable for the family on both sides of the world. At times I feel stifled, almost dead inside, certainly not alive any more. I want to breathe, to enjoy, to feel happy again instead of feeling like an "Aussie battler" fighting against the weather and the insects and the strangeness of things and people and the ever present feeling that I don't belong.

Has your quality of life improved, if so how?

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.

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.

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