Originally Posted by clougherty family

My only experience of Kiwis is my friends OH who now lives here in Perth. He's got British Citizenship and when he is eligable for Oz, he is going to get it and drop the Kiwi one as you can only have two and he wouldn't want to lose the British one!

Originally Posted by JAJ

Just bear in mind that if your children return later on and you want to join them, you may not be able to do so. Parent visas are expensive and have other requirements too (balance of family, health criteria etc).

And even if you don't want to move to Australia to join them, you may find your ability to spend extended vacations in Australia is limited if you are not a citizen.

Also, if you plan having more children born in the UK later on, they will not be eligible for Australian citizenship if you don't take out citizenship yourselves. It is a very bad idea to have siblings with different nationality rights - can cause all kinds of problems.

You appear to be very confident about your future plans, despite the fact that circumstances and intentions can change greatly.

Originally Posted by clougherty family

Hi all,

Just wanted to write down how we are feeling at the mo and see if anyone else is the same. We have been in Perth since May 05 and are now thinking of maybe renting the house out here and going home for 6/12 mths to see if we want to live there again. That is my idea to safeguard our money/future and not be ping pongs with no money!

Mark has been homesick since we got here and really missed his mates/pub/football. Typical bloke really! He has got better and better in the last few months but in November he hurt his wrist at work and hasn't been able to work which has been his downfall. He keeps talking about wasting time here because he knows he doesn't want to live here forever and says we are just prolonging the inevitable.

I absolutely loved it when we got here, Mark's sister lives here and introduced us to a few people. I got a bit disillusioned when after a few months I realised we weren't really being included, obviously these people already had a life here and friends here and we would have been better off trying to get our own friends. I then got pregnant in Feb this year and suddenly started feeling homesick. I think it was a mixture of hormones and also the fact that some friends moved here in Nov last year and went home in April this year. They didn't like it from the start, despite doing a 3 week reccie and taking nearly 4 years to get their visa due to having a baby mid way through. I had an answer for all their negativity about Perth, but I think now that maybe their feelings for the place had some effect on me. I found myself worrying about the children growing up and having no job opportunities, or them going to the UK to travel and us ending up here on our own without the funds to return. I also started seeing the arguements against coming here in the first place like isolation/no family/no culture etc. in a different light. I had the baby and was fine. Got sad because my Mum came over for 3 weeks and my brother and new wife came here as part of their honeymoon. Not great timing as the baby was a week old and I was getting no sleep/crying/trying to breastfeed. I think they thought we would all be sitting outside drinking massive amounts of wine and having a laugh every night like we used to!

Anyway, the bottom line is, we don't really know what to do. I miss the things I didn't think I would like the buildings, the town, the river (we lived in Maidenhead in Berkshire), friends and family obviously and just familiarity I think. Mark just says it's boring here, which I used to argue with and talk about taking kids to beach/park etc. but now I can't be arsed to argue because I'm bored with it too! I could quite happily never have a barby again and have gone to the beach with our 3 year old and the baby once (never again until he can walk, it's just no fun). I realised last night that I haven't been out for a drink since New Year's Eve last year, how sad is that??? I know I was pregnant for most of the year, but still! The main problem is that we still know why left the UK but don't know if we want to live here, so our dilemma is that we feel in limbo. I am totally realistic about the UK and yet I hanker after walking out of the house into the town and seeing people I know. The trouble is, I'm not sure that after a couple of months back in the UK we won't want to return here. This scares me because I know we're not happy here, so what does all this mean!!!

Somebody help me! I suppose we should just think of it all as an experience and rent the house and go home for a bit and re-evalute the situation. This is what I think is a sensible option, but the thought of the organisation involved to move again fills me with dread.

Jo

Originally Posted by Rascal

How long have you got?
Weather: crap mostly.
housing standards: Crap
Education: Crap and way behind UK
Roads: Crap, no proper road network to anywhere
Employment: Totally crap, longer hours than UK, less holiday entitlement
Wages: Crap
Taxes: High
Attitude: Mostly insecure and insular and nowhere is as good as NZ!
Cost if Living: High
Choices: few
Cost of Power Bills: High, way too high, learn to be cold indoors or go outside for a warm
Driving standards: Totally shite, boy racers, etc
Now thats just for starters, I have to go shopping to the local supermarket, has about the same choice as the Uk Kwik Save but double the price. There's no "buy one get one free here, its more like buy one pay price of two" Lol
Valitus, I am now convinced you are a Kiwi!

Originally Posted by denver

Why do people think the UK education system is so great? All you ever get in this forum is over-generalised statements without any real hard proof to back up these claims. The UK newspapers are full of articles about the dire educations system and that heaps of kids are not meeting literacy and numeracy targets. These articles are not just in the Daily Mail either. I teach in schools in the Uk that are falling apart, and have rude, lazy kids and demoralised teachers. Please stop sprouting this nonsense.

Originally Posted by denver

I teach in schools in the Uk that are falling apart, and have rude, lazy kids and demoralised teachers. Please stop sprouting this nonsense.

Originally Posted by denver

Why do people think the UK education system is so great? All you ever get in this forum is over-generalised statements without any real hard proof to back up these claims. The UK newspapers are full of articles about the dire educations system and that heaps of kids are not meeting literacy and numeracy targets. These articles are not just in the Daily Mail either. I teach in schools in the Uk that are falling apart, and have rude, lazy kids and demoralised teachers. Please stop sprouting this nonsense.

Originally Posted by iamthecreaturefromuranus

From my own kids experience of schools in the UK and Oz, the UK schools were in far better physical condition. My youngest had just started at a $40million brand new school in the UK.

Originally Posted by esperanza

That's great, but sadly not typical. On the plus side, there does seem to be a wave of new contruction for schools, which is great, but unfortunately there are still many schools with old buildings that lack facilities and cannot seat large classes. I am sure that schools like this exist in all countries, but it would be wrong to say that all, or even most, UK schools are great.
The policy of inclusion has been a disaster - to the point where the govt is now talking about throwing money at bright kids as they have been failed so badly.

From a teaching point of view, I have heard very positive things about Australian schools - obviously all schools are individual, but the overall impression seems to be that behaviour is less of an issue there than in the UK.

Originally Posted by paulrachel

Same here, i can only comment on the schools my kids attend, but compared to the level of education they had in the UK, the OZ system sucks.!!!!
Sorry if that dissapoints anyone, but even the teachers here from England say the same thing.