Home and Happy

Yes and that feeling never left us.. The moment any of that missing home feeling comes is a seed which plants and grows itself. You sort of feel it in your gut. After a few weeks stuck away out there we already knew it wasn’t what it was made out to be. We stayed a number of years but the feeling and desire to return never went away. It was all just a bit too remote and cut off from everything away out there. We love it back in UK.

Naw....we bought a modern country home with land on it, we have animals, growing our own food, next are chickens, pigs some goats and a few sheep quad bike and trailer once fully retired. Want to get into cheese making. We’re up on a hill overlooking a beautiful village gently rolling landscape of green fields hills and a pineforest. Not a tower block in sight.

Yes the NHS, the state pension and free bus travel....plus your right in the middle of the world, It’s great back here !

Very exciting times. The free movement thing between Canada, Aus, NZ & UK looks like it will be happening under this CANZUK trade deal. All your old UK buddies and family from home will be joining you sometime soon down under without all that visa grief and money we all had...be just like being at home again. They reckon soon as it happens, most of U.K. will be hotfooting it down to Oz !

Ho ho ho...yes all that quaint concrete and quaint colourbond fencing ...I almost forgot just how quaint it was to live in a garage with a tin roof with a tiny cramped burned out garden in a quaint sprawling concrete suburb of nothingness in baking heat, isolated so far away from the whole world.

Totally relate to this. The street we lived in, the only people who spoke to us were other poms and other foreigners.

No we were young, seeking adventure. We both wanted it, and were rather excited. The Internet was poor then, in its infancy, not much info online apart from pretty pictures over a slow dial up connection. We totally bought into all the glossy brochure hype from the migration agents. And started planning our way out. It was not a waste of time by any means, we didn’t like it, but it was not an unpleasant or bad place or anything. Moving there and back set us up well in life. No complaints there. I totally get why young people starting a family and raising children love it and why old retirees love it. It’s very quiet.

Moving costs money. Ask any Ping Pong Pom how much life savings they have left as a result of poor planning and emotion led knee jerk random moves to places they’ve never lived in before.

Well let me help explain it generally. It’s called an exit strategy we had ours and we stuck to it. We also had an exit strategy from UK when we first migrated to Perth too. Emotions don’t play any part in it. We may not have liked it in Perth suburbia, work wise it was fine, no issues, but when you invest in anything like a home or anything else like shares, gold, oil, currency, etc, most people will plan and choose when to sell and when to buy. So you watch and wait...and wait and watch etc, then make your decisions.

If you have to come in on your Oz passports, bring your birth certificate and you’ll get stamped indefinite leave to remain then renew your passport at home if pushed. Best way and easier way is renew them there. When we got into LHR the immigration officer said “Welcome Home” to us. That felt so GREAT to hear him say that.!

Hehe....not a grey colour bond fence by any chance ? Many an evening we spent out on the patio, stewing in that baking dry heat....plotting our exit from 4x2 suburbia.

Our summers seem to be getting longer and hotter. This year round our way, it has been warm and quite humid most of the time from May to October.

Good advice. You will be fine back here.

Gosh..that’s a tough one that. Even Craig Hamilton Parker would struggle to help. Many experts predict the housing market to take a hit in places like London and South East, if it does, you will be quids in. Get sold up and sit with the cash ready to pounce on your dream UK property. It’s all about the timing.

Pretty quickly...we never gelled with the place from day one. We stayed thinking it just may get better but it never did. We felt just too cut off from the whole world and we found far too quiet compared to U.K. like some big retirement town. The slow quiet conservative way of life wasn’t our thing back then and we weren’t ready for it, quite a culture shock really. That said we do like the quieter life now that we are in our 50s, but would never want to live away out there again in that burning dry heat.