Originally Posted by Gags
I grew up in England and moved to Oz with my Australian girlfriend after I graduated . I lived in Melbourne for the next 3 years and had a great time, but towards the end of the 3 years realised that better weather wasn’t everything in life. I had reached a bit of a dead-end career-wise (due in no small part to Aussie bureaucracy) and decided to move home about a year ago.
Coming back to the UK felt like waking up from a deep sleep. The speed with which things happen was really refreshing and things that I’d taken for granted previously suddenly became really appreciated.
Some of the people on this website (and in general) strike me as incredibly naive with regards to Australia, making comments about the place either without ever being there or having just arrived and blinded by sunshine. They seem to think that moving to Oz will result in one big beach party, one never ending barbeque and talk about the place as if it was the garden of eden. Sorry, it isn’t.
Being realistic, you will do essentially the same things as you do here: commute to work, work, commute to home, eat, watch TV, go out, sleep, repeat, repeat, weekend. Having held several jobs in Oz, I worked with a vast number of different of local people, primarily in a similar age bracket (20-30) and of a similar background (relatively middle-class and mostly degree-educated). This pattern generally holds true.
Unless you live in London you are likely to spend longer on your commute in Australian cities. Many of my friends thought nothing of travelling an hour each way to work, in fact several even had longer journeys combining driving to their local train station, catching a train into the city and then tram to their office. Very concentrated CBDs and virtually unchecked suburban sprawl means that people often live huge distances from their place work. I now live on the edge of Leeds, 5 miles from the city centre. In Melbourne this would be classed as an inner suburb. Where I live now is walking distance from rolling hills, cows, sheep, literally a couple of miles to the Dales.
The unemployment rate is higher in Oz and depending on what industry you work in, you are likely to find more job opportunities in the UK and likely to get paid more for the same work, especially if you are a skilled professional. If you don’t live in the South-East of England, the cost of living is very similar. Coming from the Yorkshire, I actually found Sydney expensive and Melbourne comparable. There are overs and unders, sure, but averaged out across a ‘Basket of Goods’ prices were very close – its certainly not as cheap as the States and not nearly as cheap as smug locals would have you believe.
You seem to get more public holidays in Australia but less annual leave. 4 weeks is standard, where many employers in the UK now offer 5 or even 6 weeks (even if it is salary-sacrificed into flexible benefits packages). The holidays are all bunched up around Christmas – that’s also their summer holiday because of the reversed seasons. Apart from Afl, nothing seems to happen there over winter (actually most of the year round come to think of it).
With your time off their is infinitely more things to do in the UK, or at least from the UK. Generally 2 hours travelling time is what you want to arrive at your destination of choice. Within 2 hours I could be in Paris. 2 hours from Melbourne and i’d be driving through never-ending nothingness, on the way to Wolf Creek probably.
Having been back in the UK for about 12 months, I have had a much outdoors lifestyle than in Oz. It may be warmer there, but you seem to spend your life in an air-conditioned cocoon. Since being back I have played more golf, gone walking in the dales and the lake district (there is nothing that I saw in Oz that can compare to these in terms of beauty). From where I now live, I can go on day trips to York and Harrogate and go to lovely country pubs for Sunday dinner. I have only been back a year but have already been for weekends away to Prague and Paris, worked in Chicago for a fortnight and am going to Tuscany in June. These sort of opportunities simply do not exist from Australia. Once you are there, it is very long way to anything else.
Don’t get me started on Australian TV (non-stop American reality show imports littered with adverts). The music scene is awful. The food is strictly Greek/Italian or Viet/Thai. Nobody has heard of Tapas. Curries are almost impossible to find. And French food might as well not exist.
A lot of people cite their children as the prime reason for emigrating which I find quite strange. As if a bigger garden and a bit more sunshine is all kids need!
Did i think my friends and colleagues were any happier or more rounded individuals as a result of growing up in Australia? Certainly not. For most of the people I know in Australia, many have rarely been outside the state of Victoria. The vast majority have only been outside of their home country once or twice, generally on a year out working in a bar in London, ‘doing’ all of Europe in a 3 week contiki tour.
Whilst, I count many Australians amongst my best friends, I have to admit that on the whole, the geographic isolation and inward-focused media leaves them relatively uncultured, often quite narrow-minded and occassionally extremely bigotted when compared to people of similar socio-economic backgrounds in the UK. Those that don’t believe me should have been in Oz when the Shappelle Corby case was in the news. The way people I knew (and the country as a whole) reacted to it made me embarrassed to be in the country at the time.
There is massive problems of drug abuse (especially Crystal Meth and Heroin) and gambling is seen as socially acceptable, normal even. People who think that anti-social behaviour is purely a British problem are absolutely deluding themselves. My ‘neighbours’ in Melbourne used to use our stairwell as a urinal. Fights in pubs and on the street are commonplace, often much more violent than in the UK. My girlfriend’s cousin recently had a freind die in her arms from stab wounds inflicted after a fight out in Perth. Another friends of mine has permanent damage to his eyes after a gang jumped him in St Kilda and kicked and scratched and gouged at him, completely unprovoked. Young people get involved in illegal drag-races out in the suburbs every single weekend. If you keep an eye on the local news you may also have heard about the Cronulla race riots, Premier Brack’s daughter recently being taken to A & E after underage binge-drinking and yobs defacing the ANZAC memorial. People who think this stuff doesn’t happen in Australia are, frankly, living in cloud cuckoo land.
Because of the nature of the work I do, most of the people I worked with had been to University. Because of the financial constraints of tertiary education in Australia, the majority of people I knew had both lived at home and worked part time to fund their studies. University was 3 of the best years of my life, mostly as a result of living away from home and being completely immersed in the student way of life. The Australians I know have a massive void in their experience as a result.
I grew up in a small village in a rural area. As a result we had big a massive garden. Did this make my childhood more enjoyable? No. The things I enjoyed most were trips abroad or knowing that I would be able to do what I wanted in life, going away to University and having the world at my feet.
I used to go on holiday at least once a year either with my family or with school. The furthest kids go in Oz is on school camp to Maloooonlongatta or somewhere else completely irrelevant.
For people like myself, young, ambitious and cultured, Australia has very little to offer. From England I may not have the time and money to do everything that I want to do. Trapped in Australia, however, there simply weren’t enough things to keep me occupied. The world is an amazing place, I couldn’t be removed that far removed from it again. People contemplating a move to Oz should really look beyond the beaches and shiny office buildings before they decide to sacrifice all the things they take for granted.
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