Moses2013

Maybe you are right, although there are people on BE who don't have family anymore and still feel homesick. I suppose another issue can be lack of job opportunities and while some would question why anyone would leave NZ, very different for those who can't find a job or are struggling financially.

rejc86

I’ve lived here since 2009 (mostly down in Queenstown in South Island) and met my now husband here (also from the Uk). Never felt homesick until we went back to the Uk for a year in 2016 with the idea that if we had kids we’d want to be near family…but a few months in (and not having kids yet) we were missing our NZ life and sorted life out to come back before a year was up. Fast forward to now and we have a just turned two year old and we haven’t stopped talking about returning to the Uk pretty much since we got back. By the time we left early 2017 we actually felt quite settled so was hard coming back here. Now we have a dog, a house, a whole life (and the two year old!) and we’re discussing it in earnest again. I think my husbands parents being here for a couple of months and watching our son really bond with them has made it so much harder. We don’t feel we have roots here. We have friends but no big group as such. My husbands has lots of friends back home, close family, and is from the Lake District which is lovely. I don’t know who yearns for home more him or me. I hate the idea of our son growing up without extended family. I hate the idea of aging parents and missing time with them. I still feel so very English and miss a lot of the history, cultural bits, old buildings, cold Christmas. But I also love living here. I love our house, how simple life is, how no one is overly bothered about having all the latest stuff, or what people look like, I have friends here but not really in the Uk as I left straight out of uni when everyone went their seperate ways (mostly to London from my lot). So it’s scary to think about moving back and the sheer weight of having EVERYTHING here. But the family pull for connection is huge. So I have no answers I’m afraid other than I totally get the homesickness.