HI Friends,

Just in the process of moving to Sydney early next year and just thought to ask fellow BEs to share their experience shere which might be encouraging for us too.

Why??? here means what was your motivation to move apart form good weahther and country and how satisfied you are after spending a few months or may be a year. I know there are few lovely prople who have been able to share their life and experiences so far.

So have a go at it and thanks in advance.

Cheers

Company said "fancy a job in Australia?" I said "yeah, why not".

It was that deep.

Arrived in May of this year.

Pro's: Parts of Sydney especially around the harbor are stunning and there are hundreds of parks & beaches all around, great bars & restaurants in town too. Found a good job really quickly, actually before arrival. Air is fresh and locals friendly.

Con's: Housing is expensive (some will disagree), we pay double in rent than we would have paid for a mortgage in the UK (hard to compare, exchange rates I know) and live a long way from my work in the CBD, so I commute 2.5-3 hours per day. Some suburbs seem surprisingly run down, and regularly gun crime is in the news. Traffic can be really bad and driving standards seem poor.

All in all I love the country (I've lived in Aus for 5 years previously), but I'm finding Sydney maybe isn't stacking up and may look to move to another state at some stage. For work/life balance I'll look at Vic and for pure lifestyle QLD. WA looks nice but not much work for me (IT) similar for SA.

I had been to cities that seem open 24/7 - in the North-Eastern US, Brazil and the UK. But despite all my wanderings, Oz just seemed where I belonged.

Karma for the first one to get it

I married an Aussie and she couldn't live in the UK.

After 6 years here I see her point

I question the weather being generally "good" ... obviously it varies a lot in Oz but here the humidity and heat in the summer is only made bearable for me by the cracking storms and the prospect of a blissful winter

I can see me moving to Tassie eventually.

Well, back end of 2006 we knew hubby's job would become redundant on south coast (heavy engineering), so would have had to move up country; so we thought what the hell lets try for Australia. Got the visa and here we are. Have been here three months and love it, settled into a nice area, in a huge rental, both have cars, both have jobs, more money less hours - Life is great.

You have to come with an open mind, yes things are different over here; it is easy to make comparisons to the UK, but you have to try not to. You are in a different country with a different way of life, you soon get used to it!

I killed a man because he pissed me off. Australia seemed like a good place to hide out.

Dorothy Dahmer?

My two pounds worth…

If your idea of paradise is fine blue skies every day, barbeques in the evening and going out on your boat fishing on the weekends and you’re prepared to give up your family connections, future career prospects, history, museums, art galleries, your sense of style etc. etc. then go and live in Brisbane or Perth. That lifestyle really does suit some people.

If your main reason for coming to aussie is weather and lifestyle then don’t imagine you’ll find it in Melbourne – you’ll get more culture here and its more cosmopolitan but this place gets seriously hot in summer and seriously grey and cold in winter (not as cold as northern Europe of course but relative to what you’ve just acclimatised to the previous summer). Lucky for the OP, Sydney probably has better weather than Melbourne (described as the Glasgow of the south by a local friend of mine) and definitely better coastline but don’t worry you won’t get to enjoy any of it, you’ll be too busy stuck in the office working to pay the bills and save for those expensive holidays back to Europe.

If you’re coming here planning to get on the property ladder, make sure you bring a large bag of money with you. Our house in Melbourne has doubled in value in the past 5 years and it isn’t a great house - I certainly wouldn't buy it again that's for sure… People in my street now can’t afford to move to the next tier up and are spending money on extensions and swimming pools rather than moving.

Australia has been fairly good to us over the 6 years we've been here and we now have a family, house, business etc but personally I find Australia pretty mediocre in a lot of respects. Everything I can get here I can get better somewhere else. If I want sunshine I could get that in places like Spain or the Caribbean, if I want good food I can’t go past places like Hong Kong, Italy or France, (hard to get good Indian here too surprisingly, but it is improving…), if I want to go diving I’d go to the red sea, if I want beaches I’d go to the Maldives, if I want outdoor scenery I’d go back to NZ. Its true that you can get all of those things to some extent in any of the main Australian cities but the cities here have to be pretty self contained on the basis you need to get on a plane for 4 hours to get anywhere worth going (that’s personal preference of course and I mean places like Port Douglas, Margaret river, NZ (family), various pacific islands etc. and note also that its twice the flying distance to somewhere more interesting like Hong Kong or Thailand).

Coming from NZ originally (greener), I find the aussie bush just dry, empty and boring and likely to catch fire every chance it gets but I know the aussies like it. Boating, camping, fishing is what they’re into here – if you like that sort of lifestyle then this is the place for you. We tried it, even bought the obligatory 4-wheel drive but it wasn’t our thing. Personally I miss family and friends, career opportunities, travel to Europe, properly designed clothes at sensible prices, old-world wines and sensible prices, reasonably priced books and magazines, houses made out of more than just wood with tin roofs (especially in winter…), proper cars, I could go on.

I would echo other posters here and say that its not a cheap lifestyle here. I wouldn’t use Australia’s past performance in surviving the global recession as an indicator of future performance. Big changes affecting the country will come up over the next few years – house prices are already stabilising and could go down (I’m not a doomsayer mind you, just cautious), Australia is pushing ahead (albeit ineffectively) with implementing carbon trading which will be expensive for people and businesses, there will be a big tax on mining company profits introduced soon apparently (again, ineffective progress just like the solar panels initiative, home insulation disaster, privatising the power companies, solving the drought problems - just as well its started raining again huh?). China will also start shopping elsewhere - they’re already making stronger ties with resources rich countries like Africa and just yesterday they imposed a blanket ban on importing Australian lobster – the aussies don’t know why yet… maybe its ‘just because they can’….

To stop rambling for a minute and answer OP’s original question, I’m from NZ, moved to UK to make some money, married an English woman who didn’t want to live in the UK any more and as I didn’t want to go back to NZ we came to Melbourne. We will probably be back in the UK in a few years, or maybe Singapore, or the middle east or…

My advice, do your own research and just be very clear and honest with yourself as to your reasons for moving – and then stop listening to people’s advice. If your reason for moving is transferring within the company then it is clearly the right choice so just go with it and be prepared to be flexible. Even if your reason is only as good as ‘to give it a go somewhere else’ then be honest with yourself, go with it, enjoy the experience, be prepared to be flexible with whatever you find and don’t be surprised if one day you want to go back.

Once you’ve been living here for a few months you’ll know if its your place and if it was the right decision. Spending time looking backwards is probably the only thing you can do wrong at this stage…

To summarise my ramblings, weather seems to be the major driver for leaving the UK for aussie these days (and aussie weather is not everyone’s cup of tea) – but I prefer Billy Connolly’s advice “there’s no such thing as bad weather, just the wrong clothes”. Good luck and enjoy your time in Sydney.

Interesting stuff.. I would take issue with just this one line at the moment...

"I find the aussie bush just dry, empty and boring and likely to catch fire every chance"

In my part of NSW it's currently wet, stuffed with plants, and likely to submerge at any moment. Not stopped bloody raining for weeks.

Take a look at todays 'blue skies' !
http://www.bom.gov.au/products/IDR713.loop.shtml#skip

Hmm, that is a lot of rain. Camping, boating, fishing without having to leave your front door. But give it a few hours of sunshine, you'll be back to extreme fire risk levels and banning of open flames in just a jiffy.

I went to bed last night and it was raining. I woke up this morning and it was raining (or, more accurately, I was woken up by the parrots squawking enjoying a bath at stoopid o'clock). It's rained all day so far, just like it rained all day yesterday. Just like it's forecast to rain for the rest of the week. And the weekend.

Weather was not on our list of reasons for moving.

And, yes, I'm in Sydney.

I never thought you were old enough to be on the first fleet?

Contrary to Mr Sinatra I wanted to sleep in a city that didn't wake up.

I like it here

Quite a good balanced view.
The only thing I would add is about children. I had my 2 children here and I am quite happy to stay to offer them a lifestyle that they wouldn't get in France or the UK. I know loads of people will come on here and say "education is crap", "life is too expensive", "blahblahblah". From living in France and the UK and seeing now what life my friends with kids have there, I know that raising a family here makes more sense to me.

Back in Europe we would most likely have to live within commuting distance of Paris or London (OH's job needs big city) and that would mean long/expensive commute, smallish house/land, or flat with no garden, not so good parks and playgrounds, 2 cars to pay for, and most likely no money left over to travel around Europe anyway.

Here, we have no money to travel far but since there's nowhere to travel close by , it doesn't matter! We have a good-sized 3bed house with a decent garden, near a train station and within 40 mins of the CBD. We have good childcare and schools within walking distance. We only need one car. Most of the parks and playgrounds within a 10 minute drive are excellent. We feel safe. As said above, not everybody will share this view, but I still think that Australia (or Melbourne at least) is a great place to raise a family. Without kids in the equation, it might be a very different story for us as we do miss some of what Europe has to offer.
Methinks we've got your weather here. Warm, humid and almost sunny! And yes, not a bit of dry, empty, boring bush in sight! Went to the Grampians a couple of weeks ago. I had always found it a bit dry and grey for my taste. Well, not anymore! Waterfalls, flowers and green fields galore!