British Expats - Our 4 month/5 year update

I thought I'd do a quick update. No reason, really, I just have time and this is filling it for a few minutes. :)

Mr GG and I originally made the move to Sydney on 12th March 2005. We managed to set ourselves up within a few months; did the usual TFN, medicare, house to rent, new job, stuff that you do. We quickly settled into Sydney living and really enjoyed life here - we spent time exploring NSW and beyond (taking trips to QLD, VIC, WA and the NT) and completely fell in love with Australia. But before we'd even come to Aus, we'd decided that it would only be a two year move. It made things difficult in some ways, as we'd not fully committed to being in Aus but had to live day-to-day life as though we had. And it meant that the question of if/when we should return to the UK was always at the back of our minds.

We eventually decided that we'd move back to the UK in July 2007. But we decided to make that move knowing it would only be a temporary one: we fully intended to move again at some point and suspected we'd be back in Aus in future. We were lucky that our stint in Sydney had allowed us to become Australian citizens, so we had good options.

The move back to Blighty was hard. It was wonderful initially landing and catching up with people again. I remember that everything seemed very green after the brown landscape of Aus. We easily found new jobs and bought ourselves a house. And we'd been back in the UK a whole 2 weeks before I found out I was pregnant with our first child. :eek: Settling back into UK living was strange. It was familiar, but different. We'd had two years out and everyone else had moved on. They welcomed us back, but their lives and our lives weren't in sync. Living overseas had changed us. And other people had changed too. We'd expected that, at least, so it made it easier to deal with. But it was strange to feel an outsider in the country that you'd lived in for most of your life.

By November 2007 the decision to move back to Aus again had already been made. We just waited for the time to be right - for Bub to be born and for Mr GG to get some work experience in his new role. The decision was eventually made for us when in November 2009 Mr GG came home early from work to say that his plant was closing and manufacturing redundancies were expected. We knew that looking for a new job for him would involve a move within the UK, so we took it as a sign that we should broaden the job search. DH contacted a few recruitment agencies and contacts he'd made in Sydney and had a couple of telephone interviews. But he ended up being offered a job back at the same company he worked for in Sydney before. :eek:

So, on 8th March 2010 (almost exactly 5 years since moving for the first time) we moved back to Sydney. It felt different this time; this is a forever move. Emigrating is expensive, and we can't afford to keep sending us and all our stuff across the globe. :rofl: We had a little more trouble securing a rental this time (I blame having a two-year-old in tow), but we got there. I walked back into my old job (I wasn't on the lookout for a job, TBH, I didn't work in the UK since having our DD). I'd only popped into the place to say hello and came out with a part time position that is very flexible and suits our family perfectly. We've been very lucky. So four months after arriving back here, we're set up again. Oh, and I'm pregnant again - 14 weeks now. :o Being homeless and discovering you're pregnant once is unfortunate, twice is just stoopid. :rofl:

It's been harder settling in this time than last time, in lots of ways. I think having Iris makes it harder in some ways - we can't easily accept an impromptu invitation to after work drinks, for example. And I definitely found it hard for the first few months being stuck at home with DD while DH was at work - I knew homesickness would hit, despite having lived here before and it being familiar. I just wasn't expecting how hard it would hit. But we'll get there. And the homesickness has gone and this has definitely been the right move for us. Australia is definitely home. :)

Crikey, that's long. Sorry.:o