They hated all the things they now love? Why do people marry when they know there's a forty per cent chance they will divorce?

Well, wait until you hear my story and please anyone who thinks Australia is the land of plenty while England is a waste of space, I hope my own experiences will reflect a bit more of a balance.

I came here, to the Gold Coast, because of my Australian husband. We'd been married for quite some time and happily living in the UK (I NEVER wanted to give up my life, I had a successful business, beautiful home, loads of friends, family, social life and I was very, very happy).
Now, stupid or what, because I am a very loyal person, I stood by my husband despite my friends and grown up kids asking me if it was what I wanted (it wasn't) and I agreed to move to Australia in support of my husband to whom I had been married for 10 years. I cried my heart out when that plane took off from Heathrow and I knew that there was not going to be a happy ending. My friends were devastated, my kids were shattered and my family hurting.
Yet, I was of a generation where a wife stood by her husband. Even though I knew my selfish partner had made an outright decision for himself not all of us as a family.
There was my first hint of what lay in store but I didn't take it.

Without doubt, you cannot miss the fake, false, plastic highly corrupt nature of life on the Gold Coast. It's built on debt, greed, deceipt, dishonesty and the reason it's called the Gold Coast is because it's run by crooks with a handful of honest, decent people trying to survive thrown in for good measure.This is where he brought me.

Literally, within a few months I saw him changing from being the polite, courteous man who pretended so well to be in his work and at home in England, to becoming an arrogant, opinionated, lazy and chauvinistic individual once back on his home turf.
I couldn't believe the change in him but soon realised this is who he really was.

He began finding fault with me and I soon realised that he was looking for an excuse to end our marriage. That was OK, I could live with this, we would just split everything in half and I'd go back home to my old life in England.

Imagine my shock when he had secretly changed bank accounts in preparation for leaving and that he had been signed up to internet dating sites soon after we arrived in Australia!
He started going out and staying out and when I told him to get his head sorted (not realising the extent of his deception and fooloishly thinking we could save our marriage), he left.

10 days later I received a letter from his lawyer informing me that he was taking me to court for 70% of our joint assets.
Anyway, I realised he had planned all of this from the start. Getting me onto Australian turf, he thought he could isolate me, break, and leave me in a position where I'd be begging for 10% never mind the 30% he thought I deserved.
Hell he even spouted off that i only deserved 20% and he honestly believed he was going to get it. This is where I witnessed the smug, over inflated, self opinionated arrogance typical of Australian men. Regard for women is minor and even the women have an unusally different regard for men (visualise cell block H)

To cut a long story short, I got myself a good, homegrown Polish lawyer from a Brisbane firm (totally brilliant but still cost me $32,000, never mind though cos it cost the other side far more). It took a year to get settled and I got just less than 50% plus a third of his pension. He screamed and yelled all the way out of court but who cares.

That was in November 2006. During the time I had to live on nothing (because he'd emptied the bank account) and while he tried to recruit a neighbour (who was equally a thug) to frighten me into conceding to a much lower settlement) and while he tampered with my car (trying to make me have an accident), and while he approached my family, friends and children telling them I was all kinds of terrible things and that i'd left him, etc, etc, I wondered how I was ever going to be afford to get back to England.
With less than half my orginal assets, I couldn't afford to go back to a reasonable living standard.

So i made a plan. I am a designer and i have no end of skills I thought (bolstering myself up because if I thought about the actual reality I'd crumble). I bought a house in a top growth area and renovated it. I also designed a product that started selling back to the UK to start creating an income ready to go back to.
Today, I have now increased my asset pool to the amount i need to go home so guess what I'm doing next??

I AM GOING BACK TO ENGLAND, YESSSSSSS!

And the best news is that through such a terrible time and seeing both the best and worst of people in this place, I met and married a lovely English man who is coming home with me.

You can keep Australia. Like someone said, the corruption, the me first attitude, the harsh nature of some people, the blindness to their own shortcomings and the unwillingness to self improve along with 'I'm right, you're a nobody' has been an eye opener.


Please have a back up plan if you're thinking of moving here because whatever you think is so bad in England that you want to leave it, is usually not the place but inside your own head.
I have read every post on this thread and I was jumping for joy that it's not just me who thinks this way, I am not alone. And I'm not mad for wanting to return to a country that yes, for sure, it has it's problems but I know about those and it's nothing I can't live with.

Gotta dash, off to pack. Anyone know a reliable removal and shipping company that doesn't nick all your good stuff while it's in a bonded store?

good luck, tks for sharing and as i have always done regardless of emigrating .......always have a back up plan!!

I reckon that's a book waiting to be written!

Hiya Mike
That's where I am at this very moment............came back to Hyde (from Canada) just over two weeks ago, and loving it.
Good luck with your return....Hyde needs ya!

Well done Cricket! Good luck, and hope everything goes well fro you from now on.

Funny you should say that. I've been offered several opportunities. And I write too. On renovation mostly but hey, any topic will do.

Brilliant...and what's the product you devised for the UK market (clever thinking by the way, am very impressed that you had such foresight whilst under such pressures from Aussie jerk)

Top post Cricket and RESPECT!

Clothes to fit plus sizes. I worked in a boutique to support myself during the legal wrangle. My lawyer had advised that I get a job that only paid me just enough to survive because in such a situation, a fair result is based on who looks like the most likely victim.

I saw fuller sized ladies upset and angry because there are no clothes here to fit them. It's not that they are unusually big, it's more that everything is based on the size of an Asian woman's size, which is very small.

Anyway, I just thought that there isn't much difference between sewing a cushion or a skirt (I was a home designer in the UK) so I started my own label.

Great I thought, but more obstacles soon arose because I couldn't get anyone to sew, (all sat on a beach). Those who did sew couldn't sew to the standard I needed.
Anyway, refusing not to be beat and always seeing that plane ticket home in my head, I now know how to operate 9 industrial sewing machines. I did the job myself in the end.

It will be easier to get workers in the UK, I know this much.

Cricket, great to read your posts. You are an inspiration

Isn't she just! Brilliant. But then so are you Rabsody!

I need more skills, i need more skills, i need more skills...............

[QUOTE=ezzie; the smell of stale beer down at the pub and to be called 'luv'....and I NEVER thought I'd hear myself say that!!!!!:eek


Elo luv.

[QUOTE=Australia_bound?;6564920] we'll head straight back to North Yorks, as is a really great place :thumbsup


Eeeh dont they talk with a funny accent up there.

Well done cricket1.