ellen fedulow

Hi all
as some of you know i left for Perth 25/10/03 for a 2 week fact finding mission, i came back yesterday, 4 days early (for personal reasons) I stayed a few days at Scarbourough (1 min from the sea) for a few days. Scarbourough is a beautiful, clean place, the beaches are outstanding. The last days of my trip i spent in serronto beach resort (near Hilary's) once again a beautiful place. i visited AQUA, travelled on the bus to Perth city centre, went to Freo and Cottoslow. The weather was great, especially the last couple of days when the temps hit 28/29 degrees.
I know some of you will say i wasn't there long enough to get a true sense and picture of the place. But all the time i was there i felt it was a good place for a holiday, but really couldn't see my self and family settling there. I felt "out of place" the locals were friendly enough, but treated me as a tourist...yes i know i was one! but they diddn't know that! the flies drove me mad, are they Kamakarsi type or what? they constantly seemed to dive in my eyes, mouth and up my nose! eating outside was impossible coz of them, mossies come out in droves at night. Oh no i sound like a whinging pom!! I already know how difficult it would be for my self and hubby to pick up our careers in perth (i'm a social worker and he's a college lecturer)I am also aware that we stand a better chance, job wise, in Adelaide or Victoria.
I am glad i did the trip, i am now going to concentrate my research on Adelaide, Melbourne etc..
Once again Perth is BEAUTIFULL and maybe if our job percpectives were better, i would definatley still concider it, but it is far too risky without it..
cheers
ellen1

Jirrupin

Hello Ellen,

I was wondering how you were getting on, I thought you might have posted whilst you were still out here. I think it is possible to know if something feels right to you and your family during the time you were out here, that was the purpose of your trip after all.

I think the 'feeling' can be difficult to explain to anyone else, its different for us all. The job search in social work seems to be getting worse, I am thinking of going agency for the elderly at the moment, but not sure if we will move further south for the summer and then try an agency there we only have a couple of weeks left on our current lease.

P.s The flies have only just started gets a lot worse. see a recent thread about swallowing them started by janeyray.

keep posting and let us know how you get on.

Donna

Plus if I see any great jobs over here I'll give you a call

ellen fedulow

cheers donna
it is difficult to expain "the feeling". as you know i have only recently completed my social work degree, and don't have much experience, although i have a good and very demanding post in the City of nottingham. i appreciate your honesty about the difficulties of social work in perth, what chance do i have when you are far more experienced than i! i also have 3 children to concider. i wish you all the best in finding work and thanks for opening my eyes, perth may be a wonderful place, but it may as well be siberia if you can't provide for your family!

cheers ellen1

steandleigh

Hi Ellen,

have missed a few of your posts. Last time I read, you were thinking of jacking the whole thing in!!!

Glad to hear that you have gone out to Oz to have a look for yourself.

When we went this summer, we went to Sydney, cairns and melbourne.

Sydney - very nice, clean, bright, folk friendly, but also very fast paced and to me, not for raising children. ( each to their own though. )

Cairns - beautiful, good weather, folk friendly, small and compact - loved it.

Melbourne - FREEZING COLD!!!! ( wrong time of year to visit ), found it to be quite graffited, dirty in city centre, people not so friendly, didn't like it much. did go out to Dandenongs - beautiful scenery, fantastic people etc, etc.

You can't cram much into 3 weeks, we found anyway, even though we had a good go at it!

You will never experience the true "Oz" until you live there, - we tried to do the " normal things " - trips to the supermarket, visiting real estate agents, going to prospective employers, looking at schools etc. got a general idea, but nowhere near to what it will really be like.

It's a big step into the unknown, but one we are prepared to take.

As for the areas we visited and our impressions, all I can say is that we either visited at the wrong time of year, we didn't visit the things we should have visited, we missed out on some great stuff while seeing other things, etc, etc.

Melbourne didn't appeal to us at all, but when we got back to the U.K and sat down and discussed it, we thought " well, there must be SOME good stuff about Melbourne, 'cos SO many people migrate there!"

keep an open mind about where you have visited and listen to the good and bad opinions on this site, then make up your own mind.

The only real thing that matters, at this stage, is whether or not you came away with the general " feeling " that you either love Oz or not and whether or not you could make it your new home.

If you felt right there, then you are halfway to winning the battle. I think the rest will come with what you make of life when you get there.

Good luck and best wishes,

WBB

sorry to hear the news ellen.

we have never been to perth, dont think it would be for us either and what you say does not suprise me.

good luck with the rest of the hunt, at least now you will have to have another holiday to the other cities.

Sunlover

On the news tonight I heard that Adelaide was no longer the most disadvantaged capital city in Australia since Hobart has now been awarded that dubious honour. Adelaide is now only the second most disadvantaged (woohoo).

Taking the cost of living into account Perth ranked as the second most ADVANTAGED followed by Sydney, Melbourne, Darwin, Brisbane, Adelaide and Hobart (Canberra was the most advantaged).

I would say that if you think your job prospects are grim in Perth
and better in Adelaide you may be sadly mistaken.

(On the other hand there appears to be lots of scope for social work !!)

booboo1

I would say that your jobs are more suited to Melbourne...

My friends hubby is a lecturer and lived in Melbourne for a few years.. they are applying for jobs in Melbourne as they want to sttle there...

good luck for the future

booboo

tennisoz

And another survey said Melbourne was the world's most liveable city (equal with Vancouver) and Sydney was 5th (I think). It is your personal experience and circumstances which are important, not the average. It is possible to be better off in Hobart or Adelaide than anywhere else in Australia for example.

TennisOz

ellen fedulow

Please don't take this wrong, but i need disadvantaged to get work! i think thats the problem with perth, its not disadvantaged enough! most of my work (child protection) in uk involves working with families/individuals in poverty, that is not to say child abuse does not happen in more advantaged areas, but the particular area i work in (cp) is an area that not a lot of social workers (globaly) either try or stick to, so hense there would be more opportunity for me in less privalaged areas.

cheers ellen1

TraceyW

Hi,

I've just found this site and I thought .. yipppeee more info to absorb and digest about our exciting move to Oz. Oh now I am so doom and gloom after reading the items on Perth and Adelaide. These were our two top locations!

So we're either going to get eaten alive by flies and mozzies (that's if the spiders and snakes don't get us first!) or our daughter will be pregnant by the time she is 16... and our son will have never finished high school!!

More doubts to add to that getting longer by the minute list of doubts!

HiddenPaw

Hi Tracey
The full article about disadvantaged cities puts it into perspective...it's not really a doom and gloom story!
http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/com...55E1702,00.htm
HPl

Sunlover

I think it's important to know the facts about the place you're moving to and not only the exciting, thrilling stuff don't you ??

That way you'll be more prepared and less disillusioned when it isn't exactly as you expected it to be (which it definitely won't be).

Jirrupin

I take it you missed the recent thread on inner ear eating cockroaches and head pecking attacking magpies

Welcome to the forum, we are in perth only been here a few months will help out with info when we can.

tennisoz

Hi Tracey, welcome to the forum

As others have said you need to get opinions and experiences good and bad. I would argue (as an Australian) that you don't quite get the right balance here but that's another story (just wait and some regular posters will come on with 'you need to hear about the bad, it is the reality of life in Oz' - true but keep it in perspective!). For example, you already think you are going to get eaten alive by flies and mozzies etc, etc. It happens but just keep all these things in perspective.

Someone else made a very valid point recently that it is difficult to compare moving from an established life in the UK which might have taken you decades to achieve to starting off in a new country. I think they said stick it out for 10 to 15 years and then tell me how Oz compares with the UK which makes sense. Of course some won't be able to stick it out for that long and they don't have to - its just maybe the only way of making comparisons.

For example I gave up a good job, home and lifestyle in Oz and moved to Scotland with my wife. We didn't have a job and because we moved in February it snowed the first few weeks we were here. We rented a cold, damp house for a few months. Eventually we got jobs, we bought a house, we've paid it off and life is good here. What I would have said when we first moved would be unrepeatable.

Emigrating is a huge move so doubts are understandable. I've done it once to the UK and will do it back to Australia in the near future (my wife is Scottish).

Just have a look at the headlines in the UK - postal strike, Soham murder trial, boy killed in Lincolnshire school, interest rates to rise, 7 year old girl shot in the back in London in drug feud etc, etc. This doesn't necessarily mean that life is intolerable here for everyone. I really like living here incidentally. The south west corner of Scotland is a beautiful part of the world and I have a good job it's just that we personally think that life is better in Australia for us.

Good luck and use the forum to get more information to help you make your decisions. Finally, Australia is different to the UK. That's part of the fun of moving to a new country. The people are different (you will find friendly ones, aggressive ones, laid back ones), they speak differently, they have different attitudes, the climate is different, the creepy-crawlies are different, salaries are different, house prices are different, TV programs are different, sport is different ............... Don't expect it to be the same.

TennisOz

debsy

welcome back Ellen. At least you know what you want to do now you have actually seen Perth. Did you get to meet up with Whisky whilst you were there - is she geting on ok?

Debs