DebraH

same here and because we want to do something different with our lives.

CathnPaul

Well someone has too. lol. They are good for taking the kids to as they get the tickets free from school. It was great taking them to latics then to united. The wow factor was superb to see on their faces at the comparison.

MOM

We went over last June to visit a friend in Perth and absolutely loved it.
Everything works! I felt truly safe for the first time. How home should be!
I loved how family orientated things were.
Went over again - this time Sydney and the Reef. Amazing!
They locals were very helpful and do a wonderful job of promoting their country.
We are from South Africa and if all goes well we will settle in Perth in 2006.
Sorry Hutch! Adding to the number of SAcans ...

Stitch

We want to try another way of living. Not necessarily better but different with different opportunities and new expereinces. There are lots I will miss about being here, family especially but this is something that we have always wanted and we must give it a go. When we visited Brisbane, among other places, it was the one area that felt 'right'. If we were able we would have shipped all our things there and then. I felt 'homesick' for months after when we came back to the UK.

One life and we want to live it!

Cheers

Ginny

bainser

We've got a young son and a baby on the way and we just want them to experience something different in life to us. Scotland is nice and is home, but it'll still be here if things go pear shaped down under.

karenjc

With 2 young children we felt that the more outdoor lifestyle would be a great place for them to develop. Already we can see positive signs in them that our decision was correct. Everyone has there own thoughts about where they come from, mine was that it was going down hill. I like the fact even people in the government say things like : if your not happy here leave :. The fact that Aussies come first is something that i respect.

Des

hi
you seem to contradicting yourself it sounds like you like oz more that uk??? as for us my wife is from melbourne and me being originally from zimbabwe im just used to the southern weather, the space,the different christmas (from uk),the friendly people(in oz), the big houses oh yes bbq's how i missed this in london.

so in short oz is just like home for me i cant wait to go

BartSimpson

We were so called civili'zed people started staying together with friends and family and in heards.
Now we are migrating, this logic goes as with Migratory birds and animals.
Do you know why Birds and Animals migrate (in winter and summer)? Its exactly the same but make a replacement from food (for birds and animals) to life style (human).

- Bart

annqldau

Bart that was a bit too deep!!!

Think it's just like the programme says 'new life down under' for whatever the reason it's new things to see and do for a few years before everything becomes familiar.

Can't say I have ever been mega homesick since coming but do miss having a larger friends circle as had quite a large one in UK but am working on that... .

the more the merrier

puna

better country than NZ in every way and felt at home too when I lived in Sydney fron 98 to 2000.

BartSimpson

Sorry its not me... Bart.. Bart dont write such stuff.
Excuse me for that.
Well I agree with you to some extent. And I dont argue about the rest things I disagree with (as those are person weakness).
Emotional, psychological loss is also loss.. Isn't it?

Meeting new people, searching new options, struggling in new place to prove (yourself and) world etc etc is part of human brain or its an alter-ego whatever you call it.
But I call it a restless soul that is in QUEST for nothing...
I would like to end this converstion by words from one of the best poet I have in my list... Sir Henry Longfellow:
He wrote in his one of the poem...
LIFE is nothing but an EMPTY Dream...
wish you good luck for all the QUEST for LIFE.

- Bart

DunRoaminTheUK

Hi.

Whilst Britain may not be "going to the dogs" in an extreme sense I do feel that the quality of life in this country is being severely undermined. It's all relative and so whilst the UK cannot be put on a par with third world countries and some of the terrible quality of life problems that they experience (only speaking in a demographic context here also) the quality of life that we experience does not seem to reflect our cost of living, or at the very least what we have come to expect when living in a "1st world country".

Take todays headlines in the papers as an example. Apparently, we might be looking at average annual heating utility bills of £1,000. How on earth does that represent a fair and balanced cost thus adding to a better quality of life? This is just one example of what seems to be a generalised problem in this country. Add to this the level of crime and the extreme nature of the crime that we seem to experience in the UK now and you start to see a picture forming.

The bottom line is that things could be a lot better but they are not and whilst we are not (or at least the lucky majority) out on the streets starving tonight we should not have to accept anything less than acceptable when contemplating our quality of life respective to our demographic and position in the league of global powers.

Therefore, our reasons for moving to Australia are QoL-centric but more importantly we recognise that Australia would be a much better place for our baby-boy to grow up in. Whilst I also acknowledge that the grass is not neccessarily greener in Australia (and I got a glimpse of this by watching the Australian news every night for 3 weeks) I still feel that it would be more conducive to a better experience for all concerned. I would rather have my boy living the outdoors life than spending each saturday going to the shopping centre with his friends to do nothing. I don't think that we are naive enough to believe that we are moving to a Utopia but Australia simply seems to offer more. Also, bear in mind that a recent survey put most Australian cities in the top-ten global cities for QoL. This has to count for something? For example, Sydney may be equally as expensive as the UK in general but a distinction worth noting is that it offers more than the UK as far as QoL is concerned.

And to top it all off, the icing on the cake, my "raison d'etre", my "joie de vivre", is that I can go surfing lots and lots and lots and lots