Hi all

Born and bred in London and in the process of planning a move to Brisbane this year.

Would be interested to hear people's (particularly those in Brisbane) reasons for moving back to the UK after emigrating to Aus?

Hi. Welcome to BE.

I’ve moved your post in to a thread of its own, where it’s likely to get more views than being tacked on to the end of somebody else’s.

I’m sure people will be along shortly, you can also search the forum to find people’s stories. After too many years of modding these forums I’d say the most common themes for returning seem to be family, just not belonging, or financial (Oz being a lot more expensive than anticipated).

But a search will bring up more info, you can also search the Moving Back to the UK section of the forum as people often post about it in there.

Good luck.

Hi, there are a few returnees in this site from Queensland so hopefully they can fill you in on their journey, we returned home after a numbers of years having a good life living in West Australia and we have loved being back in the UK and also nearer to Europe etc. Good luck with your move hope all goes well

Emigrated to Brisbane to marry an Aussie. When the marriage fell apart I didn't have the money to come home, so I stuck it out and just lived for my jobs for many years. But I always planned to come home once I could get my hands on my Super, and here I am, back in Brighton where I started from, 19 years on.

Why did I leave? I never fitted in. I always felt I was looked down on & seen as odd for being single, and having no kids. I didn't understand Aussie humour, the Aussie way of life - endless family bbqs and beach visits. I hated the heat and humidity with a passion, and one of my reasons for leavlng was the way it was affecting my health. It was hard to make lasting friendships - most of my remaining friends there are British
I wanted to be somewhere where I understood people, and they understood me. Somewhere familiar, where I just felt I fitted in - and I never felt that in Brisbane.

But it works well for many people, so don't just listen to me! I am very based against the place and will never go back.

We live in Kent, we have been visiting Brisbane since 2013 when our son moved there. We applied for a parent sponsored visa in 2017. We paid $47k each for our visa (Approx £64K at the time), which came through in early 2023. Since then I cannot believe how the housing has gone up in Brisbane and its hinterland.

We still have some time to run before our visa expires, it is only now we have the option of moving permanently to Brisbane has it dawned on us how comfortable we are in the UK (despite all the -ve news) and are having re-thoughts about the viability of moving to Brisbane. I accept everyone's situation is different, and my best advise is go by all means, try it out, if it is for you - great but try and keep your house in the UK, until you are certain.

I think you should validate your visa to give you more time to think about the move.
we retired here in 2003, age 60, fairly active and healthy on the old retirement visa, now citizens, after 10 years as expats in Brunei, but with no immediate family here, our thinking was to enjoy living and travelling around for a few years. We settled happily on the Sunshine Coast and never left, as we love our life here.
We had been here for a few years, this was before two of our children followed us to live here. We had good friends visiting, and the most awful thing happened, the husband had a massive fatal heart attack. As a result my husband and I had a good discussion as to should we go back to England as our 3 children were there, or stay here as we had a really good life and friends here? We decided that we would stay.
Later two of our children moved here, one in Brisbane and one in Sydney, and will never leave.
We are now in our early 80’s, and to be honest, it’s very reassuring that we have close family near’sh. We are still independent, but have had a few health hiccups recently and have been grateful for some family support.
There is good local government support here to enable you to stay in your own home, we have access if needed to home help, at very low cost, cleaning, gardening, basic home maintenance etc.
Retiring here has worked for us, and although Australia doesn’t suit everyone, we are in a position of knowing very many in our age group, who have also chosen to retire here, and like us have no regrets at all. The only retirees we know who returned to UK were on the old totally self funded 410 retirement visa, and couldn’t afford to stay without access to support.
Good luck with your decision.

ps. House prices in Brisbane and surrounding areas have escalated in the last few years, no signs of slowing down, so many people moved from Melbourne and Sydney for the lifestyle.

Thank you for your helpful suggestions Tomar. We have validated our visa and we will most likely will buy a house in Brisbane, which we could leave to our son there.

Thank you, Christmasoopma for moving this into it's own thread. I'm fairly new to the forum world in general, let alone the BritishExpat forum. I will certainly be scouring some of the existing threads on this forum in search of some interesting information and discussion!

Hi Brits1, you make a very good point about being close to Europe when residing in the UK. My Australian wife has mentioned the same whilst she's lived over here in the UK since we met, and it's something I've not perhaps fully appreciated - I absolutely love long weekends away in a European city, or an escape to the southwestern France wine country, or a (relatively cheap) ski trip in the Alps. I do now worry slightly that I'll miss that access to different countries, but I suppose Australia is so vast and has such a variety of different places to visit and explore within its own border that perhaps you don't feel the need to go abroad? However, I think I may struggle with the lack of variety in culture, perhaps. What do you think?

Hey Pollyana - thank you for being open and sharing. I'm actually in a fairly similar boat now compared with when you first emigrated, except I've just married my Aussie wife in the UK before she's whisking me away to Brisbane. Did your Aussie ex-husband have a life and friends group that you fitted into when you emigrated? I'm wondering what that's going to be like when I move. In some ways I think it could make the move (and integration into Aussie society) easier - rather than having a completely 'clean slate', I just slot into my wife's old life from when she lived over there. Had you been to other parts of Australia? If so, did you get the same feeling of disconnect with people?

Hi Manrug - wow, that's a heck of a lot of money spent on visas! Can I ask if your son is enjoying his time and is wanting to stay? We live in a flat in Bromley but we're unfortunately going to have to sell it as we sadly cannot afford to keep it and do the move. I have been monitoring house prices in Brisbane over the past couple of years and it does seem like the housing market has exploded, especially since annoucement of the 2032 Olympics! We're in the fortunate (or unfortunate!) position of being able to move into my in-laws place in Manly initially whilst we find our feet and save up for a deposit for our own place, likely around Lota or Wynnum. May I ask about your statement about the realisation of how comfortable you feel in the UK (I assume compared with Brisbane?) - is that financially? Job security? Healthcare-wise? Or just general comfortability with the lifestyle you have in the UK compared with Brisbane? Appreciated your thoughts, thanks!

Hi again, after just over a year if living in Perth we began exploring Perth/Madurah/Bussleton regions and then much further around WA a couple more years on we felt a bit “groundhog day” and decided to explore the rest of Australia which took a few more years and it was also not cheap to do so but although we enjoyed sightseeing these different states it it was kinda of all the same to us ie same food, same accents (well to us a way) and except for maybe Queensland where it was hot/humid and also wet on occasions but very green and had a tropical feel to it there was not much of a difference , NT was similar to Queensland, we are glad we “got” to travel the Aussie states but we then started to have holidays overseas (not cheap to do) ie Malaysia, Singapore, HongKong but we really enjoyed the differences in culture etc. As I mentioned we enjoyed most of our time in Australia but not enough to keep us there, we like variation, history, different cultures and we cans do and have all of that here in the UK. Honestly I wish you the best and sincerely hope all works out well for you.

Sounds like you ticked off a lot of Aus!

I think I will be inclined to want to visit slightly more exotic (and arguably more interesting) places like Malaysia, HK, Philippines, Japan etc. on holidays, but as you say - it costs money!

Thankyou very much for your thoughts and also wish you the best.

Unfortunately my then husband didn't really have a big social group, and thus I tended to gravitate towards people I had met on this website, who had also ended up in Brisbane - and some of whom remain close friends to this day. Maybe if he had had a more vibrant social life, I would have enjoyed Brisbane more, guess I'll never know. I did try to find into his lifestyle, but going to bed at 8pm after watching 3 hours of bad TV, every night, really wasn't my thing! If your wife does have a good crowd over there, I could make a big difference. Also the two of you have a much longer history together than we had.
I struggled with a lack of culture, and with the lack of western style historical buildings, a lack of green spaces - I still marvel now at how many shades of green there are in the UK! - and with the different language (amount of swearing at work, among professionals, for instance) and the different humour.

I visited a few other places over there - Tassie was my favourite as the climate, and the attitude to history, was more British in many ways. I went there as a bolt-hole, at least twice a year, but since Covid even Tassie changed and became more suspicious of foreigner, and vastly more expensive. Melbourne was great, but only in small doses, and I found Sydney a little pretentious, and built around " who you know" and "which private school did you go to"

Married an Aussie and got rather stuck here but had the best 9 years of my life 2011 to 2020 when we accidentally didnt return to Aus from a holiday in UK and stayed to care for the aged rellies. I would be back in a heartbeat if I could - I just dont belong here even though we have been here since 1979. Friendships I find are situation specific and not enduring. I dislike the heat so Brisbane would be out for me. Canberra is as good a place as any if you have to live in Australia but quite honestly nothing floats my boat here neither places nor people and I have been all over.

If you are in a mixed marriage one of you always gets everything and the other gets nothing so watch out for being a bit like a shag on a rock - it isnt hard for resentment to set in when you are spending your 10th Christmas with the in-laws and havent seen your folk in more than that. Personally I would try and be a good couple of hours away from the inlaws - I am sure they are lovely people but they skew the power in a relationship, hence the shag on the rock. For us, the 10 hour drive to the in-laws was enough for both of us but we certainly made regular trips down to see them so the kids could know their grandparents and my folk came over every year for 6 months. Be wary about slotting into her old life - it isnt yours and if you are newly married you might do better as a family to forge a life together where both of your are starting from the same place, that'll make your relationship stronger and provide fewer grounds for resentment for you starting afresh in a foreign country.

Why dont I go back I hear you ask. Financially it wouldnt work - we passed the point of no return some years ago and we have a nice house in a nice place and living on superannuation our money wouldn't go as far in UK as it does here. We have one son in UK - he went back for a year's holiday in 2002, hasnt returned yet (that's a bit of a thing with our family) and sees no reason why he should - good career, nice home, lovely holidays, good working conditions, good education for our grandson, etc etc. Also have another son here in Australia so wherever we are we are going to be separated from one or the other. I would caution anyone to be wary of the Point of No Return - if you have any inkling that this isnt going to be the place you want to turn up your toes and die in then dont let yourself go past that point - make your views known very clearly, make decisions regularly about whether you are doing OK or whether it might be time to move on. If I had been even half way alert, I would have pushed for a return to UK before the kids started High School but it was so comfortable just to slide along and assume that retirement would be different.

Just be sure that your wife gets her UK citizenship before you move - you never know, you might want to return and you know how hard it is to get a spouse visa for UK. Good luck.
PS, can you take a sabbatical from your job for a year just in case you find it hard to get a job when you arrive?

Quoll that’s was heartfelt, excellent info/advice. I often think of you when driving up and down then A1 and see the signs for Cambridgeshire and a coincidence, just sat down in our local coffee shop (just before I read your reply)and sat next to a couple….(long story short) both newly retired bought a canal boat, live on the boat for 9months of the year the majority spent “up north” as they love the hills as they are from Cambridgeshire, spent 4 years in Australia when the were younger and decided it was not for them.

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I’m originally from Romania. In 2010, I moved to Australia with my fiancée (now my wife) on a permanent resident visa, and became an Australian citizen four years later. We spent five fantastic years in Brisbane, a city we still consider one of the best in the world.

In 2015, shortly after our daughter was born, we relocated to the UK to be closer to family and to have better access to Europe, the US, Africa, and Asia for both travel and business. We launched a company that became successful, and we’re now working on a new start-up. We settled in a lovely village near London, just 35 minutes from Heathrow, and bought a home there.

Earlier this year, after ten years in the UK, we returned to Brisbane for a visit—and the contrast was striking. Life in Australia feels very different. We were reminded how much we love the Aussie lifestyle: it’s safe, people are friendly and relaxed, and there’s far less stress than in the UK or Europe. There are no wars on the doorstep, salaries are high, and hybrid work is the norm. Many office workers only go in two days a week—Tuesdays and Thursdays are busy, while Mondays and Fridays the CBD is nearly empty. Public transport around Brisbane costs only 25 pence per trip—yes, just a quarter of a pound!

Coming back to the UK after that experience was tough. It made us question whether we should sell everything and move back to Australia permanently. Australia’s lack of an inheritance tax alone is enough to make the move attractive. We’re not that old—I’m 49, my wife is 39—so it’s still a realistic option.

But in the end, we’ve decided to stay in the UK for another eight years so our daughter can complete her education here. After that, we hope she’ll choose to attend university in Australia—ideally QUT—and we’ll follow her there. My wife prefers the milder UK weather, while I enjoy the tropical climate.

From a business standpoint, the UK still works for us. Even though we have no clients here (they're all overseas), the UK’s global brand reputation helps our positioning. We live here, run our company, and pay taxes—but I wish I had more visibility on how those taxes are used, like I did in Australia.

That said, rising taxes and declining safety in the UK may push us to reconsider sooner. The UK has been good to us—our business gave us a great lifestyle, and we’re in the top 1% income-wise. But overall, life in Australia feels better: safer, cheaper, and with salaries in my field about 40% higher.

If I were just an employee, I wouldn’t have stayed in the UK. I would have gone back to Australia within the first year. I don’t recommend the UK over Australia to anyone looking for high-quality jobs. I even told my neighbor—who works for Apple and chose the UK instead of Australia—that he made the wrong choice! 😄