rinkerdink

Hi,



I have been planning on returning to Oz with my wife, if i'm honest, since our working holiday in 2000, we have only just (Nov 08) come to start the visa process.



I have been doing a lot of trawling of BE and have spent a lot of time in the returning to the UK section, I'm not really sure why, I am dead set on going but have actually found the tales of woe encouraging as the common reasons for returning that are proclaimed would never be a problem for me. As I have been thinking about this for many years and boring people stupid with my plans I have received lots of welcome as well as some less welcome advice, I have provided my fair share too.



I have put together some of my thoughts below so they may help others come to terms with making a decision, these are based on my own thoughts and personal experiences,I will take any comments in good heart and won't get offended so feel free to be frank.



Family

While I have a loving extended family, I see my parents probably every fortnight for a few hours during the summer, this extends to monthly during the winter and crucially my wife has relocated 200 plus miles away from her family and while we both have a good relationship with hers we are not what anybody would call conventionally close. I don't think we will find distance from our families a crippling issue and nor to I see our children missing the grandparents very much after 6 months to a year of adaption.



I have read many stories of family heart ache caused by a separation and I can say personally that if I had closer family ties and a great deal more contact I would probably find this a problem following migration, when I read about parents/ grandparents being such an integral part of expats lives it is no surprise to me that that feels like a big enough wrench to return for, in my opinion women find this detachment from their relatives that much harder to come to terms with than men.



Lifestyle



We enjoy a range of outdoor activities and see Oz as a far better outlet or us in this respect, from memory the facilities were better and far more accessable to the average joe. If we didn't like a combination of walking fishing swimming and spending time outside generally I can't see what the big draw would be in this respect, the sunshine while great is not enough imo to drag yourself halfway around the globe for. On the flip side, the other great weekend activity of shopping is never going to be as good as the UK. With food alone we have the choice of amongst others, Aldi, Lidl, Tesco, Waitrose, Sainsbury, Morrisons, M&S etc etc. In Oz there is a choice of 2-3 from memory so coice and variety of food will be limited, although we found fruit and veg to be more varied. The situation with other shopping, clothes, electronics etc is similar. Therefore if we enjoyed shopping and looked forward to walking around Bluewater or the Trafford centre for some window shopping on a Saturday afternoon we would always be disapointed with the choice, we found the CBD's of all the major cities we visited surprisingly small too.



Job's

It's unfortunate but I think you need to be prepared to start again, if you have developed any kind of career imagine starting again from the beginning with no contacts, it doesn't matter how good you are it takes time to impress and opportunities to arise to make any promotions a possibility. Some may be more fortunate or in the right place at the right time but I think you need to prepare yourself for a slow slog to get parity with your UK postion. Getting up for work is crap wherever you are in the world and while sunshine may make this easier for some. You still have to drag yourself out of bed when the alarm goes off and work hard, I don't think work in Oz is any easier, possibly a little more relaxed but the hours are as long and demanding. Some occupations will obviously have better perks but being prepared for the worst is always best, you will most likely not be working a 35 hours week and knocking off at 2pm on a friday afternoon!





As I have now run out of breath I would like to recommend an extended holiday or preferably an initial 2 year stay to see how you feel, this will make it easier to tear yourself away from any commtiments as it is a fixed term trial initially and will take a massive amount of pressure off and allow some pingponging if thats what you need to make your mind up. Upping sticks and buggering off around the world is fine for a youngster with no commitments but a get a out of jail plan is handy as you mature, just make sure you really want to give it a good go to save wasting thousands unnecesarily.



I make no apologies for my massive generalisations (everyone does it after all) as I have already made it clear these are personal thoughts based on personal experiences.



I cannot wait to go!

Vash the Stampede

You won't be able to get Bisto in Australia. I hope you've taken this into account. It comes as quite a shock to some people.

rinkerdink

haha,

No disrespect to anybody but that's the kind of thing i'm talking about.

"What... no Bisto... sunburn! no wonder you'd had enough"

Hutch

Indeed. In some people it induces frothing at the mouth, gnashing of teeth. They never quite get over it.

Fly Away

I heard of somebody who went on a reccie and decided not to make the move as they couldn't get the right type of pasta sauce... so be very careful if you are picky about your pasta sauce too.

slackbloke

You seemed to have put forward well reasoned and well thought out arguments that address your personal circumstances.
A lot of people it seems don't do that.........and then wonder why they migrated.......

My wife probably won't find such good shopping.........that is a definite plus for me :-)

rinkerdink

Well thanks,

It might be a disaster (can't see it) but I do wonder how a whim can be sustained throughout the visa process!

But it seems it can be

Nice, I consider the lack of shopping a +ve too

iamthecreaturefromuranus

All good stuff... none of which means one jot until you actually make the move and migrate. Only then will you really know what will and won't work for you. If you were to arrive today its perfectly feasible that you wouldn't find any employment for months, quite possibly twelve months. You ready for that?.

TakenThePlunge

God God, a year off, bliss

Of course the bills might start to pile up ...

MartinLuther

Good post. Just a few opinions. Good to hear that you won't get offended.

On grandparents. I saw less of my parents in the UK than you so thought that it wouldn't be a huge deal. I think no matter how much you prepare yourself it does come as a surprise how far away they are and how much shag and hassle it is to go back and visit. That said my parents have visited us a couple of times and we've probably seem more of them in the last 5 years than if we'd stayed in the UK. The bizarre thing is that after their recent visit, it's the Aussie born kid that misses them the most. I suspect that's be cause she is the youngest. We were fortunate as skype was just getting off the ground when we arrived. So as well as cheap calls to the UK we can also do a video link. (How long ago did they promise us that on Tomorrow's World?) I too believe that generally women find the separation harder than men. This didn't apply to us but I think a lot of people don't realise how much the use their parents as a free or convenient baby sitting service.

I have a much better lifestyle than in the UK. My main thing is cycling and there is much more provision for this in Melbourne than in London. The 1000 miles of cycle lanes in London was a joke. Here it's a reality.

Not people's normal idea of lifestyle but I find doing things like reno/diy much easier here. Working in the sunshine is so much easier and more pleasant than working in the rain.

I know people complain because they say that too much sun is as bad as too much rain (i.e. you have to hide inside because of the sun as much as you would the rain in the UK). But I find it much easier to protect myself from the sun than the rain. And I no longer feel guilty about staying in and "wasting" sunny days.

Shopping. I don't find it limiting as others. Maybe this comes down to location. There may be fewer supermarkets but in reality my choice in London was Tescos or a long drive (timewise). Here I have 2 different supermarkets about 100m from each other and a lot closer than Tescos was. There are things that I can't get here, but there are also things that I get here that are unavailable or not very common in the UK. When people ask me what I miss, I find it hard to think of anything. Easy access to Scotch Eggs is the main one. Where we live there are a lot more smaller shops (i.e. butchers, bakers, candlestick makes, scrapbook suppliers, etc...) than where we lived in the UK. As for shopping malls, we have Chadstone about half an hour away which to me is the kissing cousin of Bluewater.

I think you're right with jobs. In most cases you have to take a step back but if you're any good then you should progress quickly back to where you were. Unless you're in a profession which is generally lower paid here than there.

We came without visiting first. Our plan was that we would aim to stay 2 years and save the reccie money for the return trip. So you could say that we came for a 2 year reccie and decided to stay. Even if we came back after 2 years the cost of moving there and back would have been less than the cost of a 2 week holiday in the Caribbean. (In fact if we went back after 2 years we would have made money because of the exchange rates - but you can't rely on that.)


Good luck with your decision.

James516

I would make just one point - many people move to Australia when all they really needed to do to make themselves happier was move within the UK.

Hutch

And some people are incapable of being happy anywhere.

wullieb1

We can get it in Brisbane. It's expensive but you can get it if you really want it.

Three Legs

In answer to your original question, "Why migrate in the first place?"

The response in my case is simple ... Why not?

You get one chance to do what you want to do in this life. I try to live everyday as if it's my last ... I know it sounds like chronic cliché but it's so true. Why look back on life with regrets ... ?

3

Did I just give a serious answer?

rinkerdink

Wow,

Thanks for all the replies the funnies are as welcome as the serious ones, I can relate to what the majority of you have said. Being a Londoner man and boy, MartinLuthers post was almost like i'd written it myself, Uncanny at times.