EuroTrash

Just read this thread (quickly, so apologies if this has been posted before!) but some of the comments reminded me so much of this Jez Lowe song, do you know it ? about family who return from Oz and don't get the welcome they expected
(he does ramble on with his intro but worth bearing with it I think)

aries

I did in fact receive a good welcome from many family members when I returned from Oz, and after staying with my brother and his wife for a month, I lived with my sister for 6 months while looking for somewhere to live. We had a marvellously close relationship (though her husband is a miserable sod), but sadly my sister has since died as a result of cancer. As for my brother and his wife, they are quite happy for me to visit them, and I've done this many times by train (3 trains), but seemingly they think it is too far to visit me, only 193 miles along the M5. It is not about a lack of welcome, but a glitch in priority.

Flying Enterprise

aries, It seems that us from the former Colonies have to do all the running around!! why is that???

aries

You have hit it on the head saying colonies, it is how my brother still regards Australia! I've made many trips back to the UK, so perhaps he thinks it is my role in life to do all the travelling. Nevertheless he and his wife are constantly on holidays to other countries, so I don't think a little drive to South Devon would be untoward. I suppose the English Riviera isn't as warm as Tenerife, Majorca, Italy and Greece etc, and nowadays doesn't have the same boasting appeal.

Amaike

Have had same experience. My mum has lived in Australia most of her life. She has made nearly 40 trips to the uk. Her brother has not visited once.

mikelincs

I sympathise with you, but it's not only people moving from the colonies. We were living in Spain, and had regular visits from family (free holidays), but since we have been back in the UK we have seen them just once in 4 years, and that was because they wanted our spare TV, they wouldn't have come otherwise. We did move back fairly close to them, but as they just didn't seem to be bothered we moved to an area we felt better in, they are happy to holiday only 20 miles away (we usually find out about that on FB once they have returned), We did make arrangements to visit them, 3 train changes, and bought the tickets and organised accomodation as their spare bed hace 'been broken'. The day before, we contacted them to remind them, and got an e mail saying they couldn't really do with us at the time, and could we make arrangements for the future. Fortunately we did get the train ticket money back, and didn't have to pay anything for the arranged accomodaation. Since then we have hardly heard from them, they did send a card at Christmas.

dunroving

I like the saying "Your friends are the family you choose for yourselves" much better than "Blood is thicker than water".

aries

I had marvellous friends in Melbourne, but once I moved back to Adelaide and needed to care for my mum through bowel and breast cancers, heart attacks and then Alzheimers, my sisters (one of whom was extremely nasty) didn't want to help, and life for me became solitary until she went into a nursing home.

During my caring role I faced discrimination by social workers, and their antagonism (with the help of my estranged sister) became so bad, I enrolled the Ombudsman for an investigation. This took 23 months, and at the beginning the investigator said that when things become difficult, most people give up. After this I took legal action and received compensation.

I then became an ongoing target for abuse which never stopped. However I am not someone who gives in to bullies, so took every step possible to fight them. It is amazing how arrogant officials can be hiding behind the lawyers of their Government departments. Without properly addressing a problem they would say there will be no further correspondence, and really did believe it would close me down. It didn't of course, things simply became more heated.

Apart from this I liked Australia.

sallysimmons

Because we were the ones who left. They made lives without us. Making room for yourself in those lives takes time, patience and a willingness to be the one who makes the effort. One of the prices we pay for having left.