pockygoes

Just wondering what the percentages are on those that stay on in oZ & those that come back.

Whatever your situation - what were your reasons for staying or returning?

Thanks Pockygoes

hevs

should be interesting, look forward to seeing the results!

kevpreece

im lookin forward to seeing them too....................so come on, get voting!!!

cheers

kev

megawho

though we're still in Oz voted for the 'returned to UK after 2-5 years',as this is what we plan to do.

Kath

Same as us!

Rosy

We`re still at the "should we stay or should we go back" stage at the moment, so can`t really vote with any degree of honesty on your poll.

However, I would say that since we mentioned to our (newly-acquired) friends in Oz that we might be returning, they all, to a one, replied "not surprised, most do...."

I think as far as this forum is concerned, you will get a biased response - those who are really happy here do not tend to post on the forum.

If you are happy in life, you get on with it... That`s why 80% of the posters on here are from the UK (unhappy with their lot there) and 20% - rough estimations, I know, are from Oz and saying they`re not particularly enamoured with the life here...

And before any of those nasty people who delight in attacking posts start on me - I have owned up - AT THE MOMENT I am not deliriously happy with Oz (but there again, I wasn`t too chuffed with the UK either, which was why we came here in the first place!!!)

pockygoes

thanks for your honesty & I really hope that this poll doesn@t get hi-jacked by the usual culprits - although any relevant points would be useful.

What are your reasons for thinking of returning. We have known 3 couples that have left for OZ in the last 18 mths & 2 have come back & one is thinking about it. Just interested in everyones reasons.

Cheers

pockygoes

tinaj

I can't believe what short periods of time some people are giving before they come back. Surely to give it a fair try you should stay for at least 2 years? Anything short of that is unrealistic time span to get to know a place inside out.

We will be staying for 2 years before we decide if we want to come back, at least then we can go for citizenship which will mean if we change our minds again in the distant future the door will still be open for us and the kids.

hevs

I agree with you Tina, we are doing the very same thing. You need to give it a fair go

Rune

I emigrated from the UK in 1969, with two daughters, then 3 and 11. We came to join my husband, who had come a year earlier. He had worked in the North of WA and fallen in love with the wide open spaces.We arrived in early January, which I wouldn't recommend; the climate change is very hard to take.
I was very disillusioned with Perth; Australia House had stressed that it was 'The Capital of the West' and I expected something similar to London. What a joke that was! Instead of being a city such as Leeds or Bradford, it was more like Otley in those days. I also quickly became disenchanted with the education system. My elder daughter had attended High School in the UK, but we were informed that she had to repeat a year in primary school. In a couple of months, we'd realised just how far ahead of her classmates she was, so we decided that it would do no harm to travel for a while, so that we could learn something about our new homeland.We bougt a trailer and camping gear to go behind our second-or-third-hand Holden and headed North.
Highway One was still largely unsealed, even single track in places. We took our time, stopping to camp in the bush as and when we felt like it., sometimes driving through the night on the long stretches between one town and another.
And everything I saw was so new, so fresh, so different from the UK that I was fascinated.
Four months later, we arrived in Darwin - and that was even smaller and more parochial than Perth, so we turned around and headed back south again. But the North of the state had got me too; and although we were able to rent a house and find jobs within a week, neither of us could settle. So we went to various agencies which specialised in finding work for people who wanted to go North, and obtained work in Derby. And after about six months there we were offered a job in Halls Creek, running a hostel for 100 Aboriginal schoolchildren.
We stayed for more than three years there - and it was like living on another planet. And when we moved, again it was to live 'above the 26th', the latitude which really divides the North from the South of WA.
I have been incredibly homesick more often than I can count; often, all that held me here was worries about interupting my daughters' education. And certainly, for the first 15 years, I still thought of living in Australia as being on an extended working holiday, and that one day I would go 'home'. Then I went back for a holiday, and found that either I'd been looking at the past through rose-coloured glasses, or that the place had changed to a point where it was not, and could never be, home again. So one of the first things I did when I got back to Aus. was apply for citizenship.
.

karawara88

Thanks Rune, I enjoyed your post, if we were to go travelling (which is our plan at the moment), setting off from Perth which way would you reccomend we do it, any tips or pointers.

booboo1

My brother went to Aus in the 70,s as a 16 year old with the Fairbridge Society. He returned to the UK when he was 20/21 and stayed for about a year and a half. He didnt like it here and couldnt settle at all.
He went back to Aus joined the army over there and after that joined the police force and has never stood on British soil ever again.
He is more than happy for his children to live in Aus and not the UK.

BooBoo

pockygoes

wow this post is getting better and better - it is so interesting hear these accounts of what people have been thru & the decisions that they have made - keep it coming!!!!!

pockygoes

chippy

My dads old business partner and his family has been in Aus now for thirty years. He absolutely loves the place, and has never been back to the UK, not once, even for a holiday.

MartyO

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Rune

I was very disillusioned with Perth; Australia House had stressed that it was 'The Capital of the West' and I expected something similar to London. What a joke that was! Instead of being a city such as Leeds or Bradford, it was more like Otley in those days.


Hi Renth. I lived in Horsforth outside Leeds for a while and often went to Otley. I hope to move to Perth WA and wondered whether over the years you feel that Perth has become more 'developed' (for want of a better expression). I was out there 18 months ago and felt that it had a nice mix of big(ish) city life and local community feel to it. It's not a London but then it's not an Otley (nice though Otley is). Are you more fulfilled in WA now than in the early years?

Thanks for a really good post - sometimes few and far between.