It never ceases to amaze me how many people move to Australia without first having visited the place.

Did you visit first?

If not... do you think it was rational behaviour?

It took us 4 visits (1999, 2000, 2003, 2006) and 10 years from deciding to finally making the move in 2009

Why would it amaze you? Do you think my grandparents visited Canada before moving there 90 years ago? Or that the early settlers in Australia visited before moving 150 years ago? What's irrational about it? Is it more "rational" to go somewhere on holidays and decide you want to live there?

We moved to 3 countries without visiting first. We must be completely irrational!

Sold the house/made arrangements/passed the medicals/sorted flights/turned the gas off here we all are.
Crazy cats that we are

I came without having been before. Yes it was rational.

Both of us had lived in foreign countries before now so knew that they do things differently in foreign lands.

Pre-determined that we would try and stick it out for at least 2 years and then if we didn't like it we would come back. If there was something seriously wrong we could come back sooner. Using the money not spent on the reccie trip.

We had no plans or desire to move back to where we were living when we left.

We would use the money saved from not doing a reccie to pay for the return trip. If no return trip then we would spend the money otherwise.

Reccies are just holidays and don't give enough of an impression of living somewhere to be useful.

Planned and budgeted for at least 3 months to set up. For us this was better than doing it as part of a reccie trip.

For us it was definitely the best decision. A reccie would have been a waste of time and money. I found the internet thing to be very handy.

Obviously each to their own. Different people different requirements and rationality.

Yep, I followed my now wife out here without ever having been before

Nah - just decided to migrate to a place we'd never been, sorted everything out, sold the house, booked the flights, packed up & shipped out, got on a plane and voila.

That's either very sweet or Stockholm syndrome.

Looks like we were the only crazy and irrational ones...

I had been to QLD twice and Adelaide but never to WA. We got State sponsorship for WA and just moved without having been here and havent looked back.

I can not imagine living anywhere else to be honest, best decision we ever made.

Yes it was rational, well thought out and our reccie was our initial immigration which was to last a minimum of 2 years, by which time we would determine if it was for us, or return home.

If a holiday would give a person a reality check of what living in a new country was like there wouldnt be as many returning to their homeland after weeks, months or years.

Nope, didn't visit first! Sold house, everything we own, packed suitcases and jumped on the plane. Now after 1 month we are struggling to adapt to our new life.
Homesickness has set in and its a daily battle to not buy the return tickets home
Visiting first would have been more like a holiday and not reality.

Was that in question?


Visited Perth with a view to moving about 26 years ago. Hated it with a passion. Decided to move to GC on the spur of the moment and love it.

Nope we visited first, that way we could decide where we wanted to live.