British Expats - Perth…Our 1st Yr Anniversary …The trials and tribulations

Grab yourself a cuppa and a bickie cos' it's a long one!!!

Well flipping eck’… a year has gone by already.

Our decision to emigrate to Oz was a simple one…whilst hubby was flicking through the paper one day he came across an advertisement for skilled welders in Canada “Fancy moving to Canada?” he asked. “Go on then” I replied. I did a quick ‘Google’ on living in Canada, saw the snow drifts and thought maybe not for me, so I turned to hubby and said “Fancy moving to Australia?” “Go on then” he replied. The rest is history………

1 year ago exactly on 8th March 2006, Andy, Heather, Holly, Emma and myself arrived at Perth Airport after a surprisingly stress free and pleasant flight with Emirates.

We had pre-booked a Nissan X-trail in preparation for all the luggage (14 bags to be precise) but still only half would fit in so I, along with the 3 kids, drove to our furnished holiday let accommodation in Connolly then drove back to pick up hubby and the remaining luggage.

We stayed in Connolly for 3 weeks, during which hubby found a job, we found a rental in Mindarie, put Emma into Clarkson ABC Centre (she had never left my side in the UK!!) Holly enrolled into Mindarie Primary school and Heather into Clarkson High, saw our first redback, saw a cockroach crawl into my pants, thankfully I wasn’t in them at the time!! validated our Westpac bank account, got our tax file and Medicare numbers, clocked up 2500kms on the hire car, bought a satellite navigation system...lol, transferred our money over on a poor 2.28 rate, bought 2 cars, 4 beds, a sofa, TV, fridge, washing machine, tumble dryer, dining table, patio table, microwave and kettle etc.

Our rental in Mindarie was fantastic, it was split level with a huge upstairs balcony for the ocean view and the sunsets were awesome. Now we had a permanent address we could tell Seven Seas, our removal company, to ship off our 14 cartons. We had sold all our furniture before we left, shipping only the kid’s toys, DVDs, sentimental's and extra clothes.

After a couple of weeks in the new rental I got a long term contract with BHP Billiton as a document controller , something I hadn’t done since 1990!!! I would usually leave the house just before 7am, drop ‘M’ off at her ABC, catch the train from Clarkson, get into Perth at 7:45 then get onto the terrace for just before 8 (slow walker, little legs!!).

Come May we were living the good life… 2 good incomes, kids were all happy, Heather had friends stopping over every weekend, Holly had made some good friends at school and Emma had stopped screaming every morning when I dropped her off.

We were in the position to start looking for our own house. On our reccie last year we had loved Mindarie and Iluka but prices were about $100k out of our reach, so we starting looking in Carramar, Tapping and Butler as the homes their were and are still more affordable. We looked around a few home opens but none did anything for me, some were very basic with horrendous tastes in Kitchen & Bathrooms and they were asking around $500k. We decided to have a look at some display homes as building was an option. We went to the “Kestrels” in Tapping to have a look and one of the displays happened to be for sale. Within 1 hour we had put an offer in, the next day, which happened to be my birthday, our offer was accepted. I had fallen in love with the house at first sight, it had never gone to full display as the builders had gone over budget so there was no other type like this...it needed a few things finished like outside lights, alarm & cooker fitted which the builders were going to do, we would need to fit carpets and air con, we still had the rental until September so we had plenty of time to do these.

Forward to July….Our cartons arrive. Everything is finalised with the house and we move in, I still cannot grasp how much property costs over here. The costs of buying and selling are extortionate.

August: This is where things go a bit Pete tong!! The aircon has gone buy buys cos’ all the associated costs have wiped out our savings. I still travel to Mindarie in the mornings to drop off Emma because there are no child care places in Tapping. Holly is now in Carramar School which she loves.. Heather refuses to go to school, she won’t get on the bus.

I end up late for work every morning because of arguing with Heather or I have to take her to school which makes me very late. The boss pulls me in one morning, he already knows Heather is a little sod…like when she spent $3000 on the phone bill to her ex-boyfriend who lives within walking distance....grrr. So anyway, the boss agrees to let come in at 10am every morning so I can take her. We have now got her into St Stephens so she can walk to school, no bus, no problems. Wrong!!!

She starts refusing to go to school again….I ended up having to give my job up at BHP.

September: Heather has been to school for 2 weeks…yippee, I do a few temping roles then I get offered a full time permanent job in Malaga preparing tenders for a construction group. I frigging hate it, I only stay there 3 weeks. Heather has now stopped going to St Stephens completely (You may all be thinking well there must be a reason... I know the reason why she won’t go and part of it is of her own doing...I’m not going to go into full details but 3 letters might give you a clue…MSN) I go and see the school and explain everything and they are really helpful but Heather still refuses to go.

Heather misses her best friend in Mindarie, Holly misses her friends in Mindarie, Andy misses Mindarie. Heather at least went to school when we lived there. We think maybe shouldn’t have moved from Mindarie. The house goes back on the market:(

November: Heather has now stopped going to St Stephens completely (You may all be thinking well there must be a reason... I know the reason why she won’t go and part of it is of her own doing...I’m not going to go into full details but 3 letters might give you a clue…MSN) I go and see the school and explain everything and they are really helpful but Heather still refuses to go.

We have no choice…we book her a flight back to the UK . She will stay with Andy’s Mum and Dad and hopefully go back to school there.
Ironic really, she won’t get on a bus on her own to Clarkson yet she’ll fly across to the other side of the world on her own!!! Albeit she did get upgraded to 1st class so it can’t have been that bad.

I get a full time contract working at City Farmers head office in Bedford doing simple data entry, great though, I don’t start until 9am. House still on the market.

December: Andy’s dad calls, he’s just had to drag Heather to school in her PJ’s. They book her a flight back to OZ.

Heather arrives back just 1 month after leaving and confirms in her own mind that the UK is shit and she never wants to go back after comparing it to Perth. Andy’s dad has flown out with her and as it is now the school holidays at least we don’t have that to worry about.

Christmas was very quiet, we had the traditional turkey dinner, and just relaxed inside. I must admit it didn’t feel anything like Xmas and I only started buying things a week before. It was overshadowed by Andy’s dad coming over, home opens and the whole Heather episode. So to say I really enjoyed it would by lying. We got a sub sale on the house.

January: Jesuuuus it’s hot…Everything I do, I do sloooowwly. For the past 3 weekends I have got up on a Saturday and gone to bed on a Sunday. All my cleaning gets done through Saturday night ready for the home open cos’ it is just too hot during the day. Can’t put damn air con in cos’ we have a sub sale.
My weight has rocketed and I’m considering changing my name to Mrs Lardarse. Sub sale fell through.

February: Tapping School gets finished and Holly starts Yr 7, Heather surprises everyone by announcing she’s going to go back to Clarkson High School. It's still hot but we just about cope with lots of fans although none of us can hear anything we say to each other. My contract came to end at City Farmers, I managed to pull off a great working agreement though. They didn’t want me to leave so I put in a proposal and now I do 2 days from home and go into the office on a Friday..couldn’t be better. Accepted another sub sale then a few days later accepted a subject to finance sale.

March: Heather has been to school everyday since she started back at Clarkson:thumbup:, I have so more freedom since cutting back on my hours, I can drop all the kids off at school now, I no longer have to stop up all weekend just to get my jobs done, Andy still works for One Steel and is in the process of setting up his own business. Holly is about to go to camp with school, ‘M’ is moving into the preschool class at ABC and we’re looking forward to renting a place with AIRCON!!!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xgeminix (Post 4495988)

Thanks for being so honest about the ups and downs and fingers crossed that there are lots of ups to come....

Best of luck

Claire