Cooler_King

Hey all.

I have seen some Oz bashing threads and although (offensively) funny they are not helpful to the potential emigrant. The MBTTUK forums seemed to be filled with horror stories or homesickness.

What myself and my wife are looking for is a genuine pro/cons of a married couple with a child in Oz. I understand that location, location, location will determine answers and certain areas are better than others.

I would like this to avoid become Oz cheerleaders versus Oz haters though as seems to happen on most threads. Just honesty is all we are seeking.

Can any parents please give an honest appraisal of the Oz school system compared to the UK? Does the great outdoors, active lifestyle replace some elements of formal education? Is this a benefit or a drawback?

Is the weather really all it is cracked up to be? I can imagine that constant heat must have downsides (clothing change, lack of sleep, food spoiling?)

All claims that Oz people are ignorant will be ignored. I have met and lived with Aussies and they have been great. Banter is give and take. I think a bit of British self-parody goes a long way in someone elses country.

So please can we keep it adult. House ownership prospects, health, education, quality of life etc.

I guess what I am asking is...if you could integrate any part of the UK life into Oz, what would it be?

livinginreality

Ok I lived in Oz for a long long time,my kids are aussies and we left Australia when they were aged 7 & 9.School wise,no difference.Same type of curriculum,probably did more sports in Australia than the UK.I don't dislike Australia but I feel my life is better in the UK(where we live now).Why?The climate suits us better,we do alot of walking in the countryside and more outdorsy type stuff than we did in Australia,we also travel o/s alot more(never went o/s when I had kids in Australia,could'nt afford it!),I feel connected to the land here(I was born in the UK),we like the pubs,festivals,lots of live music,theatre,ect.I guess Australia was fine when the kids were small.I stayed at home back then and yes had a good life,but later wanted more.The UK called and here we are!

Cooler_King

I appreciate that. Completely what we were looking for. Thankyou.

Where in the UK are you? On the coast?

livinginreality

No not the coast!We live rurally in a village on the Wilts/Somerset border.

quoll

My kids say they had a great childhood here in Australia but one of them has taken himself back to UK for better career prospects. He would like his kids to grow up in Australia but realizes his career needs to come first so he can support them. As his gf is a Londoner born and bred I suspect that crop of grandchildren are going to be Poms pure and simple! My other son has a daughter and they are in the process of leaving a self sufficient life in the bush because they want their daughter to be able to play without being at risk from ants and snakes and so she can play on grass of some kind (she adored the English grass on a recent visit, once she realized that it was something to play and roll around on!) and that she can get a more varied social interaction than her bush life allows her at the moment.

Education is probably on a par by the time you leave university - an Aus honours degree is considered comparable to a UK one (some universities on both sides are better than others of course). UK has one more year in school and one less year in uni to reach that stage. The states differ in the degree of rigor of their final years' assessments with a range of exam/continuous assessment processes.

There is less emphasis on testing here - although that is increasing with SATS like assessments becoming entrenched (yrs 3, 5, 7 and 9 but not to the same degree as UK - and nothing much happens as a result of them either to the kids or the schools). Personally I find the Aus system less rigorous and I see more kids falling through the cracks. I dont know whether there is a correlation between the more laissez faire approach to education and the higher levels of adolescent mental health issues here including youth suicide but adolescent mental health problems do seem to be epidemic.

My kids had good sporting opportunities and we certainly have good facilities but whether they could have got equally good opportunities in UK I dont know - I suspect those things are more due to the commitment of the parent than anything else, UK churns out good athletes in the same way that Australia does, just that it spends less on the elite ones than Aus does. It was certainly more expensive and more of a hassle to meet the needs of a national level sportsperson here - further to travel to high level competitions and the need to stay for a week or more for some things.

There is a downside to constant sunshine - melanoma looms in your future if you dont slather with sunscreen and cover up the exposed bits (I heard somewhere reasonably recently that there was an increase in Vit D deficiency conditions in Aus because kids werent encouraged to expose their skin to the sun! Go figure!!!) As a parent I agonized over one incident when I failed to cover my son's back totally and he ended up with a very nasty burned bit which has subsequently got a worrying crop of freckles! However it was nice that they could usually make plans for outside play without the risk of them being rained off.

There is less opportunity for Aus kids to get that varied cultural experience that most UK kids take for granted - not every kid can head off for the Japan visit whereas pretty much every UK kid gets the French trip in their school career at least.

One thing both our boys have commented on is the isolation factor - there was just the 4 of us here (DH's family are a 10 hour drive away, and I like it like that!). My son's partner's family has been here for generations and she has thousands (seems like that!) of friends and rellies whereas we were a very small close knit family with a small group of friends. I know that he feels overwhelmed by her family and now really enjoys his own little mob. The other one in UK is much more gregarious and is happy with the fleeting friendships rather than the long term entrenched ones - he likes his little family as well and gets on well with my parents and aunt and uncle. I have found Australian friendships to be very transient - there seems to be much more mobility here and apart from a few friends who all happen to be long term expats, I havent really formed those strong and close friendships that I made in UK. I dont think either of my kids formed those sorts of friendships as they were growing up - they havent stuck anyway.

ABCDiamond

In a nutshell, if you can get the right location, and want to integrate into Australia, rather than find a copy of the UK in Australia but with warmer weather, then Australia can be pretty good.

There are things to learn, and old habits to change. If a person is not prepared to do that, then the MBTTUK forum will get another convert.

I am speaking from experience of this, as I was one of the angry people in my first migration, but learnt that I had to change to be able to enjoy Australia, and to be able to see what it could really offer.

I have a 13 year old daughter in school here, and I have a 13 yr old niece in the UK.
Do I think that going back to the UK would benefit my daughters education ? No.


This will depend on your location, there are some areas in Australia that I couldn't live in due to the heat, but there are others that in my opinion, offer better overall weather than the UK.

What would be perfect would be to select the best UK summer weather, and the best Australia winter weather, and create a climate based on that.
But until that can be done, I am happy with what I have here.

Rudi

I think a lot of how people settle is based on their own personal attitude. Australia is NOT the UK and things are different here. The food it different, the culture is different, people's attitudes are different, schooling is different etc etc. However, the emphasis is on "different" not better or worse.

Just on the heat issue - it certainly isn't hot hot hot all year around. Even in sunny Brisbane, we get very cold days in the winter, and we have our open log fire burning!! Yes, some days can be very hot - but it's not so much the heat as the humidity that is uncomfortable.....bit it doesn't last forever....and their are always fans and aircon!

Hope that helps a bit

Love

Rudi
x

Fleaflyfloflum

Errr... can you please explain why someone who has a horror story is no less genuine and honest than anyone else?? The way you have worded your post is that somehow, if a person isnt sitting in the middle ground they are not being honest.
Always puzzles me this kind of post. It also applies to the people who are extremely happy. Just because they say they are doesnt mean they are lying does it?

mohogony

Theres plenty of good schools in OZ and private schools are cheaper becasue the government gives them alot of money , l think the international comparisons show Aussie kids get higher grades then British kids. Becasue the OZ education system is different from the UK some say its inferior but l don't think thats the case.
Regarding " the constant heat" as you say, it only gets hot a few months during summer, it gets cold in winter, most of the year its not hot, but it depends on what part of the country you live in OZ has different climates becasue its such a large country.
Some people love OZ and say moving was the best thing they have done in their lives and some people hate the place and move straight back to the Uk,
It all depends on individual circumstances .

ABCDiamond

I got the feeling they wanted to avoid the 'over the top' replies, seems like they have read all that somewhere else, and don't need to read it again.

However, they haven't said not to give bad examples of the country, just keep it sensible and adult, and not "Oz bashing" for the sake of it.
They did say "All claims that Oz people are ignorant will be ignored", and that seems reasonable to me.

Fleaflyfloflum

Please note that i incuded the exemption of "oz lovers" in my post.

Still doesnt answer the query. Just because You or anyone else sees an experience as OTT does not make it any less genuine than yours does it? Or are you that arrogant you see yourself as more right than they are?

ABCDiamond

I got the feeling that he wanted a nice adult sensible topic, without people going off and insulting people.

I repeat, they did not say: "not to give bad examples of the country" just keep it sensible and adult.

What is wrong with them wanting that ?

Cooler_King

By avoiding horror stories I meant the sort of story that goes like this...

"I knew I had made a mistake when I set foot from the plane......I have tried to make friends but they don't want to know me...the only UK families we know live 15 hours away...I can't buy decent marmite out here...I would have liked Oz but our house was burgled 8 times, a Tsunami swept away my dog and it was Australia's fault"

A genuine criticism is different from some of the posters on here who clearly would struggle to live anywhere in the world that was not Britain. They stand out a mile away and I have seen plenty of them in Germany to.

As I said, I will take on board all criticism. For instance, in Germany all the banks close between 12pm and 2pm weekdays. Possibly the most unhelpful aspect of German life. That's a criticism. Saying German people don't like me is not a genuine claim. I hope this clears it up.

Thanks to all who have replied. My wife was quite surprised as some of the answers so far. Log fires??

ExSmoggie

Yes - really log fires!! I remember arriving for the first time in Sydney at the beginning of July. I knew I was arriving in winter but still honestly thought it would be hot. In hindsight, I don't know why but I had that perception that Australia was just hot all year round! Well, day one I realised that my case full of shorts and Tshirts wasn't going to cut it and had to go and buy ugg boots and a fleece - I was freezing! THEN I saw ads for skiing - I thought these must be ads for foreign holidays and was absolutely gobsmacked that you could go skiing in Australia!!

Seems comical now 8 years on but I'm thinking you may have the same initial perception as I did!

Dorothy

That's hilarious. We did the exact same thing. Arrived in August in Adelaide and were shocked by how freakin' freezing it was! For some reason we thought it would be summer all year 'round, too. We very quickly learned that it gets really cold here.

I'm neither an Australia lover nor an Australia hater. Lord knows my family has had its share of hard times here; unemployment, interstate moves, illness, a child being diagnosed with a disability; but at the end of the day we made the decision to come here and to stick it out for 5 years before we decide what we want to do long term. More and more when we talk about our future it's with reference to a life here in Australia. I've always been rather pragmatic about things and have come to realise that Australia is not better and not worse than where I came from. It's simply different. Yes, I miss family but have also come to realise that siblings and parents are adults and can take care of themselves. My focus at this point in time is my husband and our children and right now Australia makes them happy.