Dear Forum,
i so miss my country and so regret leaving all those years ago but at the time i took the easy option but now wish i had tried a lot harder,about 20yrs ago i made my way to Australia and at that younger age i had so much energy i felt strong enough to take the challenge but sadly i never felt settled in all those years and the only thing that kept me going was having a regular job with regular wages as a van driver and i guess i was content that i had thing to do and i had money in my pocket but now ive had to stop work because of health reasons after so many years loading and unloading my van and carrying heavy goods my back has been damaged so i cant do manual work anymore,im getting close to 50yr old and am lost its been difficult as without work i have been so bored,ive been wanting to return to the UK for many years now and now that i am jobless i decided that this is a good time to make plans but i have some issues that i never had last year that have caused me to really worry about the future and now just cannot relax,just recently i met the girl of my dreams and we plan to marry though i have told her that i dont want to live in Australia anymore and wish to return to the UK we discussed this and she has agreed to follow me and give up her job.After researching all the necessaries i see many difficulties in our plans:i havent works in the UK for years and have no exceptional skills to offer and although i really want to work even for minimum wages as i need to be able to prove to UK authorities that i am able to support my new wife before she will get a visa ive become petrified with what the future may hold but i know i cant live in Australia for much longer and if i dont try and sort myself out before i hit fifty then maybe it will be too late for me and the thought of being locked out depresses me.
I will be heading to London to live as that is where my family all live it would be easier if i had somewhere to live but everywhere that i have researched online only want renters if they have jobs so that counts me out,my soon to be wife will stay behind and carry on working while i go to set things up but i just dont know where to start ,reading many of the posts on B.E. with many saying there are no jobs things are tough it all just sounds so negative.
Could some one who has been in my position please say something positive my worrying head needs to smile

If I look at that and slightly defocus my eyes I can see a picture of a beaver.

I feel sea sick......

Ok im smiling

Honestly Panhandle, I wanted to read your story, but gave up about 3 lines in, its just too difficult without punctuation.

You're scared to come home because IT IS scary if you have been away a long time.

That gung ho spirit that made you emigrate in the first place has probably diminished over the years??

It is going to be hard, no doubt about that, just as it was hard when you emigrated but you probably didn't see it like that when you were younger.

I have been back here 9 weeks after 30 years in Australia, I can't tell you how many jobs I have applied for and have had 6 interviews so far with no job yet, but it will come.........

So be scared but also be positive that you are doing the right thing.........for you..........you have family here and that is not something everybody has.

I do personally, but I didn't plan on staying with family for quite this long..........

Perhaps you and your fiancee are going to have to be apart a little longer than you would like whilst you establish yourself.

Edited to add: When I returned to Australia last April after a year here, I was unemployed for 3 months and had worked there with almost 30 previous years of Aussie work experience........

Panhandle... just go. Find a way to make it work, like you're finding a way to get by in Australia now. When you're settled, your fiance can follow. Maybe a good idea to do some further studies to help your job prospects. Good luck.

Yes, it is indeed scary to contemplate returning after being away for so many years. I have the same problem, having been away for 25 years. The old get up and go has got up and left. My mind is nostalgic for the old days in England, but the reality is different. Society has changed there, both on a human and financial level. I thought three years ago, when the economy hit the skids, that it would have probably recovered by now. But, it hasn't. If anything, it's gotten worse. So many cut backs. For me, library closures and the huge increase in Uni fees speaks volumes; along with England being one of the worst European countries regarding pension payments. It also looks as if the NHS has deteriorated too and is facing more cutbacks

As the saying goes, "Getting old is not for sissies".

I think any move becomes more of a challenge as you get older. We tend to accept that we can't run as fast, lift as much, or take longer to do the gardening, but what is harder to accept or recognise is that we also don't have as much mental energy (as described, "Get up and Go"). Also, concern about health problems and age affecting employability make a change harder to consider.

If there's any consolation, though, I think it's that moving to the UK from overseas is probably a less daunting prospect than the other direction - NHS, welfare system, familiarity, social support (for some, anyway) are all there to make the move back to the UK in many ways a lot simpler.

For all the Daily Mail ranting on how crap the NHS is getting and how low pensions are, at least these systems are in place and you won't end up on the side of the street waving a cardboard sign saying "Will work for food".

p.s. As others have alluded to, please use short sections and break up with spaces - a block of run-on text is hard to read and you start to lose the will to continue by line 5 or so.

Fine form, keep smiling, good luck

There is good and bad everywhere, you must stop reading the Daily Mail for information on UK, they will just fill you with doom and gloom.
My son took just over 3 months to find a job in UK (summer 2010) during those 3 months he worked here and there for a temp agency, he had no UK work history and short work history in US, he was fresh out of a US Uni, the job took him on and he started a month later. So all isn't lost.

i feel a bit better now i have had a can of beer-sorry for my bad grammar i never really learned a lot at school due to my upbringing, one of the reasons i took off oversea's was to escape my situation and at the time the near impossible task of ever owning a house,i see some things there have'nt changed.
Anyway thank to everyone for there posts-and yes i have noticed with age i have lost that ability to make things happen,when in my twenties i could talk my way into a job and 8/10 times i would get a start but now i lack that kind of confidence not to mention the energy levels.
All my time in Australia i never went to get any government assistance just didnt see the point as working was well rewarded,so i dont really want to go looking for government assistance in the Uk especially if im looking for a Visa for my partner-i have some money to help fund a purchase of a house my life savings and i would like to take advantage of the currency swap rate, i fear i will have no job,this is my biggest fear so im really worrying,my family aren't much help so i doubt i will be banging on there door but i know i will have to get this right because i will need to satisfy the authorities if im going apply for a visa for my partner.Ive read on various sites about applying for settlement visa's and some scary stories .
I feel like ive got to jump through to many hoops now, wouldn't be so bad if i was alone i can take the ups n downs, but now i've got two to think about i dont want to mess up.

Beedubya i only wish i knew what jobs to apply for but i just cannot think,all my life ive been use to doing manual work to earn a living and i was happy, never had any experience in any particular field and Australia always had plenty of manual well paid jobs, but this back injury was unexpected and now im lost as to know what kind of work i should do , i didn't want to spend much time going to learn new careers but except this could be the option although who wants to employ a nearly fifty yr old with a crook back and little experience in his new career,i know i'm getting negative .

Many years of living in Australia have shielded me from the harsh realities that i left behind many yrs ago, as most would know it is so much easier in Australia although its is harder than it use to be.

All i know is i want to finish my working life back in the UK living the simple life enjoying the people i miss,not too fussed about the size of the pay packet or the weather im over all that along time ago .

Anyway as you may have noticed i have attempted to make it easier for you to read my post without sending you all too sleep

dunroving please let me know if my new grammar is acceptable

Mummy in the foothills if only i went to uni

Thanks all .

You said it all there. You know what you need to do and now you just have to get started on it.

I think when we start researching, we can get overwhelmed by it all. I know I do.

I think: how will I manage to get my cats through the quarantine process and time that with selling my house and finding a rental back in the UK? I don't need a job as I work for myself, but what if business starts to slow down because most of my clients are in the US and I'm in the UK? And how will we manage to afford all the initial moving costs and paying 6 months rent upfront because we don't have credit. And will we find a place to rent that accepts pets?

It goes on and on and on, and it can get you to the point where you just think 'oh bugger it I'll stay where I am.' But I think the answer is to try and just take baby steps. A lot of the things we worry about never happen, so we wasted all that energy worrying for nothing. And then, like as not, some other bad thing will happen that we never even thought to worry about!

We might not have the 'get up and go' we had in our twenties, but we do have more wisdom than we had then and that counts for something.

So I hope you go for it - remember, baby steps

You can look about on here and see what kinds of jobs are out there
http://jobseekers.direct.gov.uk/home...759f8cab&pid=3
Don't right off the rellies just yet, they may well be thrilled to bits to see you home.

I can handle bad grammar (I think someone else commented on that), I just find it difficult to read through huge solid chunks - need little spaces to break up the content. Maybe that's an age thing, too.

I was just chatting with my neighbour (he's been redundant for about 8 months now). He can't find anything. He was a tradesman but then got a job with a surveying company and because it was such a specialist job he now can't find anything similar, but his former skills are out of date (no recent experience).

He is taking some courses, funded by the government, to "upskill" as they say these days, but I could tell by talking with him that his confidence has taken a knock through so many rejections.

I'm not trying to scare you, just giving one perspective from one person's experience of the current situation. He (neighbour) was saying the local tradesmen are finding the work has dried up - people aren't even spending on home improvements.