Hi we are back in the Uk after spending a yr in Adelaide, long story! but we hope to return later on this year or sometime nxt yr BUT to Perth instead, my question is,- do you find it easier 2nd time round,,,eg,homesickness not as bad, settle better,appreciate OZ more etc

bluekipper

Well I'm a ping ponger twice over so far selling house and moving over and back, and now in process of third time before visas run out. I cant speak for every one, but yes we did find it easier second time around because you are all ready familiar with things and know how to handle it all and there are still things that we will do differently third time than the last two times, like not selling the house and renting ours out so to pay the rent the other end.
Homesickness did get better for us as time went by, we seemed to speak to family more over the phone there than we did in the UK.

Thanks aussi dream

we also dont know wether to rent house out here so as we have a nice little lump sum for retirement, should never have sold our 1st house in the UK, didnt have much owing on that house Deffo cannot afford to ping pong again after this time, I admire your stamina, congrats for keeping going at it nice to know the homesickness subsides, thats a major factor for me returning this time round.

bluekipper

Hi BlueKipper, We feel that by not selling the house and renting it this time it gives us that little bit of stability and if it did not go well then we would have that to come back to and plus i don't think i could go through the process of selling again at this present time as i am still worn out from the last.
Homesickness was bad the first time going as we did not hear much from family.
Second time we heard from the family nearly every week and we felt fine out there.
Problem was when we came back we hardly saw or heard from family as they were busy with there lives and thats when we felt lost, but we see and hear from them more now.

I wanted to mention that i wish you all the best and hope you feel more settled next time.

We are here in Brisbane on our 3rd time also. The first was only for 8 (ye eight) days The second stay, which was 12 months later, lasted for 8(yes eight) YEARS and we came back 18 months later and have now been back here for nearly 8 years.It has cost us a small fortune and quite frankly made us virtually start again from scratch in 2000. There is nothing that anyone can say that will change how you feel about your own situation................BUT.............I can say, that from our experiences, the dawn of the computer age and especially WEBCAMS, made the homesickness feelings less intense. My Dad took up a computer for the first time in his late 70's and with the help of family and friends we were able to keep in touch on a daily basis. Sadly he passed away in 2005 and I am so glad that he was able to keep in touch with us during his final years.

The thing to try to do, is to try to focus on what is best for you and your family. Yes it's hard to discount the feelings of others, but if and when you get back there and you start to have the sorts of feelings that I got, which was, I was now depriving my own children of a better future and all the reasons that we left the UK come flooding back again, you will end up driving yourself around the bend.

Gosh, kudos to you - three times!!!!

For me the homesickness experience has been different - it has got worse with the advent of the computer. When I came here nearly 30 years ago it was basically a "shut up and put up with it" experience and contact with my very small family was sporadic and by airmail letter for the most part because phone calls were L1 a minute! Now as travel has become more affordable (I go home every year at least) and communication is instant and cheap, I find that my homesickness has increased exponentially to a point where it is very hard to manage.

I dont know that coming here automatically confers on your children a "better future". Most young Aussies cant wait to leave and half of them dont come back or, if they do, they wish they didnt have to! I have one that went and came back and one that went and will, in all probability, never come back because the lifestyle and career opportunities are so much better for him there! (Of course, it doesnt help my homesickness that I have one kid there as well as ageing rellies these days too!)

I regret that I am not able to be there for my parents in their old age - they would never dream of asking me to be there, they have always told me to go out and live my own life the way that I want to live it. I know though that they count the days to my visits!!! I am an only child which makes it worse IMHO.

If I had known then what I know now, I would have kept our house back in UK so that we had something to move back to. As it is, we are stuck here (apart from the fact that DH is Aussie and wont move home) mainly because the Aussie economy has not paralleled the UK one and financially we would be strapped.

I'm a ping-ping, not a ping-pong.

We bounced from NZ over to Oz rather than back to the UK. It was a lot easier the second time round and we've appreciated Oz a lot more than we would've done if we'd come straight from the UK.

Being in NZ & so close gave us a chance to look around first and decide on where we wanted to live and work, which was a lot better than if we'd taken pot-luck and just come out from the UK sight unseen.

Once you've got used to the feeling of being a migrant it doesn't really matter what country you live in: you know that you're always going to hanker for the things you left behind, for your family and friends and that a piece of you will be forever British. And, what's more you grow to learn that it's OK to feel like that and you'll accept the duality more easily the second time round.

We have rellies here that left Britain as £10 poms and still have great affection for the UK and all of it's traditions and quirks. They're British to the core but outwardly Ozzies.

I guess it would be easier as you know what to expect, so not as much of a shock.
Why Perth anyway?

Very interesting Quoll. Food for thought for me in particular on this one. I've a feeling that Aussie has caught back up with the UK on the Economy issue over the last 2-3 years though. Your obviously about the same age as the wife and I. I'm planning to spend as much time in my retirement in the NHemp as possible. Havn't worked out the accomodation side of things for this yet... I'm actually considering a mobile home for the 5 months of the year that the UK has decent temps and plugging into rellies houses LOL plus doing our own thing around Europe, Would that work for you ?

Back to the thread, do you think people as they get older are more likely to spend more time in their old country, as they can afford this easier ?

Hi trejon, same here we went to Brisbane and going back third time, lasted a week first time and eight months second. Have just secured a job to be able to go back before visas run out but now every thing looks set for us i my self do not know whether to go.
I feel different this time where as the last two times i went with the flow and thought no matter what i will make it work, seem to be worrying a lot more and being unsure about every thing, perhaps its because i know this is our last chance before visas run out to make it work.
The children are a lot older now than the first time we went and leaving home stage and eldest says he wont go so i suppose that contributes towards feeling uneasy about things.
The webcams are a good idea, but for me i think it would probably make the missing home worse as seeing them on there would make me want to come back knowing i was missing that time with them.


Quoll can i ask how did you cope with your children now staying.
My children were poorly not long after coming back , they both came down with asthma and back to the same routine of playing playstation and watching tele instead of out and about like they were in Brisbane.
I must say that most of the aussies that we met especially the removal man we had were English and had been there years and now could not get back to UK due to no money as the earnings were less and he had become trapped there, and we have aus friends that would love to come to UK but same same cant get here.


Ozzieeagle, Hi i have thought about that issue many times in the last few weeks about staying here in UK as we are getting older and knowing we will be secure, thought that if we stay and pop away on stays in Europe we can still get that warmth and change that we crave for.

I actually thought that we would be doing the 6 month here 6 month there thing, just like my parents did. I cant persuade the DH to do that though - he is an Aussie and he yearns to go out and live in the bush to be self sufficient and minimize his carbon footprint We compromise - I go home whenever I want and he comes with me for important family events

My kids went back after uni so they werent affected in the same way - they both got out and about a lot and the one that is still there is always doing something - he's off on an adventure training course in Anglesey this week.

Even when we went home for visits they did a lot of outside stuff - muffled up in duffle coats we just did whatever we fancied. It is so much easier to cope with the cold than the hot IMHO.

Only problem that we ever had with visiting UK was both times we came back from UK DS2 experienced blue apnoea (breath holding) attacks when he was a baby and then again when he was 5. It was probably purely coincidental but it was a scary time! He wont take his own baby on a plane now!

We will be going back for the third time and I cant wait......its killing me not being able to just go but its an expensive hobbie and we need to save like mad.

Someone said on here the other day, you need to do it a couple of times to know where you really want to be, and I agree with that.

Nothing has changed back here and now I realise that family means, myself, my lovely hubby and my two amazing kids.....no one else....because no one else cares as much as they reckon they do.

I did feel very bitter about the fact we came back for family and they have not been around for us after the initial couple of weeks of excitement......but I have decided that its making me ill worrying and I need to stop.

We will go back to Oz and I will still feel guilty, but this time round I know it will be better, because there is nothing back here...... They have their own life and we have ours!!

And after a lot of debating we have decided next June will be our departing month which is great because we have something to work towards and something else to focus on......if I can wait that long!! (Or if we win the lottery, a lot earlier)

Also, we made a lot of good friends out there that I can not wait to see again, who cared a lot more that anyone back here.

LibbyX

Hi and thanks everyone for your honest posts, lots of different opinions and thoughts going on regarding UK versus OZ,, my own account of it all is :-we are not close to family,so thats not what brought us back,although mum-in-law passed away which made the homesickness kick in a lot more for me, for us it was missing our old life eg:jobs,local pubs,cheap holidays,familiarity, basically I didnt let go of my old life and concentrate on my new one! I so wish I had let it go and moved on, I wouldnt be back here getting settled, got my job bk, bought a house etc etc, it makes the move harder but also OZ is still on my mind daily, we miss the lifestyle and beautiful scenery etc. Why Perth? well why not? done Adelaide,dont want to go backwards so we will (hopefully) go to Perth and give that a go! House situation is another story, its so hard to get decent tenants and would having our own house here make it easier to return AGAIN? probably YES, so needs a lot of thought on that one I think. My kids are teenagers now so if we are going, it`l be a fight to get them uprooted again, makes you wish you`d never have gone in the 1st place---ignorance is bliss!!!

Bluekipper

[QUOTE=ausi dream;6200793]Hi trejon, same here we went to Brisbane and going back third time, lasted a week first time and eight months second. Have just secured a job to be able to go back before visas run out but now every thing looks set for us i my self do not know whether to go.
I feel different this time where as the last two times i went with the flow and thought no matter what i will make it work, seem to be worrying a lot more and being unsure about every thing, perhaps its because i know this is our last chance before visas run out to make it work.
The children are a lot older now than the first time we went and leaving home stage and eldest says he wont go so i suppose that contributes towards feeling uneasy about things.
The webcams are a good idea, but for me i think it would probably make the missing home worse as seeing them on there would make me want to come back knowing i was missing that time with them.

We all assume that our story and trials and tribulations that we experience are uniique. Well they aren't are they cos there are so many stories out there that could have been written by us and all the things that we go through have been happening to others as well. There is NO right or wrong way to handle what we all have to handle when moving to another country far away and leaving our families and friends.

All we can do is share our experiences with others and offer any help along the way that we can. In my experience, the hurt from the guilty feelings that we get, do get less as we get older. You have to focus on whats best for your particular circumstances.

When people back in the UK (when we were back there) used to ask me about what it was like in Australia, I used to tell them that if they were happy with their lives as they were, don't think about what its like elsewhere, just get on with life and enjoy it. If they weren't happy with their lives as it is, then get off their bums and go and try somewhere else. It's a big world out their waiting to be explored and if you don't do anything about it you will be just another one of the millions that say "I wish I would have done that when I were young enough"