Been away for a long time, home at last!

[Guest treesea]

I'm British and left the UK with my family when I was seven. I grew up in NZ and Australia, and have lived most of my adult life in Australia, first Sydney and then Melbourne. I grew up without grandparents, aunties, uncles, cousins. It was awful, being pulled away from a big extended family to a land of strangers. Sure, we adapted. We had to, but for sure it wasn't our choice to leave.

 

Now we are home, thirty some years on, and my Mother, who is still over there, moans to me on the phone how she is missing out on seeing her grandchildren. Well, unsympathetic this may sound, but now she knows how we children and her parents felt, missing out on each other, because of a stupid, selfish decision on my parents part to move us to the other side of the world.

 

It took us a long time to decide whether or not to come back, years rather than months. For a start, my last visit home (London) was 1985, we didn't even think about coming home (for me, but not my partner, who as he says, is an immigrant whichever country we live in so isn't all that fussed) until the 1991/92 recession and didn't actually make it back until 2004.

 

My land is now beneath my feet, and I wouldn't swap that feeling, of being native to my land, rather than a second class immigrant, for quids. But I wouldn't say Australia is backward compared to here. Prior to coming back, I had fully decided to live in London. I am half English, half Welsh, and would have preferred Cardiff to London, but I knew I wouldn't be able to stand the rain.

 

Well, what a shock. The air in London was so dirty I could see it. One day in Bayswater and all our eyes were streaming. You can see the pollution in Melbourne too, if you go up into the Dandenong hills and look back across the city, but it is a bit different walking though it. Think Australia in a dust storm for anyone who has ever been through one. The tube was jam packed - it wouldn't matter how often they ran trains in London there still wouldn't be enough space, let alone seats, for everyone who wants to travel on it. We couldn't get our children into schools where we wanted to live, out in West London. The flats we could afford were not what I would call 'value for money'. It was so dilapidated compared to what I remembered. Things like, on the North Circular road, there was this huge metal fence, completely festooned with thousands of plastic bags. On the road that goes up through North East London to the M11, it looked like the Bronx. Houses, that should have been beautiful - three storey terraces, - with broken windows and holes in their roofs. Shops with metal shutters, mostly covered in graffiti. Walking around the city, there were beggers everywhere. Paddington, Bayswater, Hammersmith, Hounslow... And drunks.

 

The public drinking is hard to get used to, and the drink driving. Booze buses don't exist. People drink everywhere, on the bus at 8pm at night, on street corners, in parks, morning, noon and night. If you live in Britain you possibly don't notice, but coming back from Australia, where the blood alcohol limit is .05 rather than .08, and where drink driving and drinking in public are really frowned upon and heavily targeted by the police, - well put it this way, in some respects Australia is way ahead of Britain, and this certainly heads up the list.

 

We moved then up to Cambridge. Beautiful place but no schools with places for miles and not much work. "Go north", people said to us, "the education and infrastructure get better the further north you go." So we moved again, up to Manchester. Good schools, still ten miles away, but the terrace housing we could afford was quite poor. Things like open drains from the kitchen to the back yard - waking up to slugs covering the kitchen was not exactly a welcome experience. Asking our neighbours why there were so many cats - we had seven who regularly visited us, we were told "they control the mice".

 

There were other things that took some getting used to - no Milo or vegemite, though we eventually located both - thank you local Pakistani merchants and Sainsburys. The Chinese takeaways are the way they were in Australia and New Zealand 30 years ago - chow mein, chop suey and not an authentic Chinese vegetable to be seen. If you like authentic Chinese food, 21st century Britain isn't really the place to be. Same with tropical fruit, though I have bought durian and custard apples in Edinburgh.... Superb Indian food though, if you fancy switching your tastebuds :-) Good things on the food front - the fish is how it is "meant to be" - cod, haddock, halibut and plaice. Australians we met recently, on their way back home after a few years in Britain, made the same comment - they miss flake, flounder, ling, king crab and king prawns. At least we both have salmon! Mushy peas. People over here know what these are, even in Scotland. Tizer. Dandelion and burdock. And, amazingly, chinotto, in full size cans and bottles, not those tiny pellegrini bottles you get in Oz. Italian food isn't that good over here compared to Melbourne. Fresh pasta shops don't exist. Decent coffee and New York bagels exist, but not on tap like in Australia. They're not expensive but they took us a while to track down.

 

Technologically, I would say Britain isn't as advanced as Australia. Things like having your current, savings and credit card all linked to the same card, so in Australia you just do a transfer at an ATM to pay your credit card. They still don't have that here. Also, the broadband is really slow, even cable like we have, compared to both Melbourne and Sydney. We pay for 20Mb broadband and it never gets much above 2Mb. And the pay TV is pretty poor compared to Optus/Foxtel. The BBC is abysmal compared to ABC/SBS.

 

We moved up to Scotland, where I had never been, by chance. We went there on a holiday. The second shock. England seemed kind of dilapidated. Home it was, but the infrastructure is in quite a poor state of repair, and really England deserves better. Not so Scotland. It was like going from the third world to the first world. Housing went from small and poky to big, just in the space of a few miles over the border. So we decided to move north. After all this was the general consensus of the people in england - the further north you go, the better it is. I remember my Yorkshire based grandfather saying the best places to live in England were Cumbria and Northumberland. We found an older style flat in Edinburgh for about half the price a similar sized and located flat would have cost to rent in Melbourne. 12 ft high ceilings, a kitchen big enough to fit an 8 seater table in it, and then some. Then we went looking at schools. What a surprise! State schools in Scotland are equivalent to private schools in Sydney and Melbourne. The local secondary school has an indoor swimming pool and a dedicated pottery room, complete with wheels. And a kiln. A kiln??!! 21 students to a class. I couldn't get my head around it - how could the Scottish Executive afford it? We are on six bus routes (why we need so many, goodness knows, but the whole of the inner city is like this) which run every five to ten minutes even on a Sunday. Apparently the bus company is profitable, but goodness knows how because at £1.15 a day, on a monthly ticket, that's cheaper than the equivalent daily ticket was in Melbourne 15 years ago. And if you get sick of it all? No worries, - its £20 return to Belfast and Dublin, £39 return to Amsterdam, and £110 return to Prague, - and the airport really is literally "just down the road", all of seven miles away. As to the hospitals, they don't need private hospitals up here because the state hospitals are just like private hospitals. The local one looks like a five star hotel. The doctors and nurses up here look happy. And little wonder, with those sorts of facilities.

 

So no more school fees, which has done wonders for our finances, because we do want a decent education for our children, but in Australia that is something you have to pay for. I wouldn't have sent my kids to a local state school in Melbourne unless it was selective.

 

Not having to endure the creepy crawlies has been magic. I have yet to meet a Scottish mouse, or ant for that matter, in any season. They don't seem to do cockroaches up here, large or small. The odd slater bug seems to be it. As to flies, I've seen more wasps outside than flies anywhere, let alone inside. The odd spider here and there, but not the big kinds you get in Oz. Little pathetic specimans, for the most part.

 

The weather here is very good, which was a bit of a surprse. I had been prepared for bitter winters - apparently that's a phenomenon confined to the moors, north west Scotland and The Highlands. We don't have central heating, it's late November, and we are all in bare feet in the house. So much for "the cold". Same with rain. Being in Australia for so long, we appreciate, rather than hate, the rain, but I saw more in drought stricken Melbourne than I have seen up here.

 

Clothes are expensive here. It is probably better to stock up in Australia before you come back, especially if you want larger sizes. No "My Size" shops here. Not shoes though. Heaps cheaper over here.

 

I would say, if you are thinking of coming back, look at all the UK as a possibility for settling in, especially if you come from England. From what I can see now I am here, most of the taxes are collected in England, but spent in hugely disproportionate amounts in Scotland and Wales. The net movement of people from England to Scotland each year, net mind you, is around 20,000 people per year in Scotland's favour.

 

If you come from a poorer part of England, where the infrastructure is poor, crowded hospitals, broken schools and poor public transport, then you may well have a better life in Australia. While I wouldn't personally leave somewhere like Wales or south west England for Australia, I could understand people making the move because they may be swapping the rain for sun. But if you live in Scotland, and especially if you are a health professional, I would have to say you are start raving mad to leave all this for Australia.

[Guest earlswood]

I'm British and left the UK with my family when I was seven. I grew up in NZ and Australia, and have lived most of my adult life in Australia, first Sydney and then Melbourne. I grew up without grandparents, aunties, uncles, cousins. It was awful, being pulled away from a big extended family to a land of strangers. Sure, we adapted. We had to, but for sure it wasn't our choice to leave.

 

Now we are home, thirty some years on, and my Mother, who is still over there, moans to me on the phone how she is missing out on seeing her grandchildren. Well, unsympathetic this may sound, but now she knows how we children and her parents felt, missing out on each other, because of a stupid, selfish decision on my parents part to move us to the other side of the world.

 

It took us a long time to decide whether or not to come back, years rather than months. For a start, my last visit home (London) was 1985, we didn't even think about coming home (for me, but not my partner, who as he says, is an immigrant whichever country we live in so isn't all that fussed) until the 1991/92 recession and didn't actually make it back until 2004.

 

My land is now beneath my feet, and I wouldn't swap that feeling, of being native to my land, rather than a second class immigrant, for quids. But I wouldn't say Australia is backward compared to here. Prior to coming back, I had fully decided to live in London. I am half English, half Welsh, and would have preferred Cardiff to London, but I knew I wouldn't be able to stand the rain.

 

Well, what a shock. The air in London was so dirty I could see it. One day in Bayswater and all our eyes were streaming. You can see the pollution in Melbourne too, if you go up into the Dandenong hills and look back across the city, but it is a bit different walking though it. Think Australia in a dust storm for anyone who has ever been through one. The tube was jam packed - it wouldn't matter how often they ran trains in London there still wouldn't be enough space, let alone seats, for everyone who wants to travel on it. We couldn't get our children into schools where we wanted to live, out in West London. The flats we could afford were not what I would call 'value for money'. It was so dilapidated compared to what I remembered. Things like, on the North Circular road, there was this huge metal fence, completely festooned with thousands of plastic bags. On the road that goes up through North East London to the M11, it looked like the Bronx. Houses, that should have been beautiful - three storey terraces, - with broken windows and holes in their roofs. Shops with metal shutters, mostly covered in graffiti. Walking around the city, there were beggers everywhere. Paddington, Bayswater, Hammersmith, Hounslow... And drunks.

 

The public drinking is hard to get used to, and the drink driving. Booze buses don't exist. People drink everywhere, on the bus at 8pm at night, on street corners, in parks, morning, noon and night. If you live in Britain you possibly don't notice, but coming back from Australia, where the blood alcohol limit is .05 rather than .08, and where drink driving and drinking in public are really frowned upon and heavily targeted by the police, - well put it this way, in some respects Australia is way ahead of Britain, and this certainly heads up the list.

 

We moved then up to Cambridge. Beautiful place but no schools with places for miles and not much work. "Go north", people said to us, "the education and infrastructure get better the further north you go." So we moved again, up to Manchester. Good schools, still ten miles away, but the terrace housing we could afford was quite poor. Things like open drains from the kitchen to the back yard - waking up to slugs covering the kitchen was not exactly a welcome experience. Asking our neighbours why there were so many cats - we had seven who regularly visited us, we were told "they control the mice".

 

There were other things that took some getting used to - no Milo or vegemite, though we eventually located both - thank you local Pakistani merchants and Sainsburys. The Chinese takeaways are the way they were in Australia and New Zealand 30 years ago - chow mein, chop suey and not an authentic Chinese vegetable to be seen. If you like authentic Chinese food, 21st century Britain isn't really the place to be. Same with tropical fruit, though I have bought durian and custard apples in Edinburgh.... Superb Indian food though, if you fancy switching your tastebuds :-) Good things on the food front - the fish is how it is "meant to be" - cod, haddock, halibut and plaice. Australians we met recently, on their way back home after a few years in Britain, made the same comment - they miss flake, flounder, ling, king crab and king prawns. At least we both have salmon! Mushy peas. People over here know what these are, even in Scotland. Tizer. Dandelion and burdock. And, amazingly, chinotto, in full size cans and bottles, not those tiny pellegrini bottles you get in Oz. Italian food isn't that good over here compared to Melbourne. Fresh pasta shops don't exist. Decent coffee and New York bagels exist, but not on tap like in Australia. They're not expensive but they took us a while to track down.

 

Technologically, I would say Britain isn't as advanced as Australia. Things like having your current, savings and credit card all linked to the same card, so in Australia you just do a transfer at an ATM to pay your credit card. They still don't have that here. Also, the broadband is really slow, even cable like we have, compared to both Melbourne and Sydney. We pay for 20Mb broadband and it never gets much above 2Mb. And the pay TV is pretty poor compared to Optus/Foxtel. The BBC is abysmal compared to ABC/SBS.

 

We moved up to Scotland, where I had never been, by chance. We went there on a holiday. The second shock. England seemed kind of dilapidated. Home it was, but the infrastructure is in quite a poor state of repair, and really England deserves better. Not so Scotland. It was like going from the third world to the first world. Housing went from small and poky to big, just in the space of a few miles over the border. So we decided to move north. After all this was the general consensus of the people in england - the further north you go, the better it is. I remember my Yorkshire based grandfather saying the best places to live in England were Cumbria and Northumberland. We found an older style flat in Edinburgh for about half the price a similar sized and located flat would have cost to rent in Melbourne. 12 ft high ceilings, a kitchen big enough to fit an 8 seater table in it, and then some. Then we went looking at schools. What a surprise! State schools in Scotland are equivalent to private schools in Sydney and Melbourne. The local secondary school has an indoor swimming pool and a dedicated pottery room, complete with wheels. And a kiln. A kiln??!! 21 students to a class. I couldn't get my head around it - how could the Scottish Executive afford it? We are on six bus routes (why we need so many, goodness knows, but the whole of the inner city is like this) which run every five to ten minutes even on a Sunday. Apparently the bus company is profitable, but goodness knows how because at £1.15 a day, on a monthly ticket, that's cheaper than the equivalent daily ticket was in Melbourne 15 years ago. And if you get sick of it all? No worries, - its £20 return to Belfast and Dublin, £39 return to Amsterdam, and £110 return to Prague, - and the airport really is literally "just down the road", all of seven miles away. As to the hospitals, they don't need private hospitals up here because the state hospitals are just like private hospitals. The local one looks like a five star hotel. The doctors and nurses up here look happy. And little wonder, with those sorts of facilities.

 

So no more school fees, which has done wonders for our finances, because we do want a decent education for our children, but in Australia that is something you have to pay for. I wouldn't have sent my kids to a local state school in Melbourne unless it was selective.

 

Not having to endure the creepy crawlies has been magic. I have yet to meet a Scottish mouse, or ant for that matter, in any season. They don't seem to do cockroaches up here, large or small. The odd slater bug seems to be it. As to flies, I've seen more wasps outside than flies anywhere, let alone inside. The odd spider here and there, but not the big kinds you get in Oz. Little pathetic specimans, for the most part.

 

The weather here is very good, which was a bit of a surprse. I had been prepared for bitter winters - apparently that's a phenomenon confined to the moors, north west Scotland and The Highlands. We don't have central heating, it's late November, and we are all in bare feet in the house. So much for "the cold". Same with rain. Being in Australia for so long, we appreciate, rather than hate, the rain, but I saw more in drought stricken Melbourne than I have seen up here.

 

Clothes are expensive here. It is probably better to stock up in Australia before you come back, especially if you want larger sizes. No "My Size" shops here. Not shoes though. Heaps cheaper over here.

 

I would say, if you are thinking of coming back, look at all the UK as a possibility for settling in, especially if you come from England. From what I can see now I am here, most of the taxes are collected in England, but spent in hugely disproportionate amounts in Scotland and Wales. The net movement of people from England to Scotland each year, net mind you, is around 20,000 people per year in Scotland's favour.

 

If you come from a poorer part of England, where the infrastructure is poor, crowded hospitals, broken schools and poor public transport, then you may well have a better life in Australia. While I wouldn't personally leave somewhere like Wales or south west England for Australia, I could understand people making the move because they may be swapping the rain for sun. But if you live in Scotland, and especially if you are a health professional, I would have to say you are start raving mad to leave all this for Australia.

 

Jesus.....I have read shorter novels than this.....did the bad guy die in the end.

[The Ozcans]

What`s the matter Earlswood?

Don`t you like to hear that the old country isn`t all you think it is?

[Guest earlswood]

What`s the matter Earlswood?

Don`t you like to hear that the old country isn`t all you think it is?

If you read it you will see that she prefers the UK over Australia.

[The Ozcans]

If you read it you will see that she prefers the UK over Australia.

 

Yes, and I think she expressed it brilliantly without any moaning.

I was just mirroring your sarcasm.:wacko:

[Petals]

I was a child migrant too and know what you mean about family.

 

I went back to live when I got married and have to agree with all you say.

 

My oh is a Scot and he did not want to stay in the UK so we came to live in Aus.. Even though I am in touch with my family and cousins its not the same having been isolated from them for so long so I do not miss UK now.

[Guest kevin747]

Well said treesaa. I'm a health professional and I'm returning to Scotland

 

I would say, if you are thinking of coming back, look at all the UK as a possibility for settling in, especially if you come from England. From what I can see now I am here, most of the taxes are collected in England, but spent in hugely disproportionate amounts in Scotland and Wales. The net movement of people from England to Scotland each year, net mind you, is around 20,000 people per year in Scotland's favour.

 

If you come from a poorer part of England, where the infrastructure is poor, crowded hospitals, broken schools and poor public transport, then you may well have a better life in Australia. While I wouldn't personally leave somewhere like Wales or south west England for Australia, I could understand people making the move because they may be swapping the rain for sun. But if you live in Scotland, and especially if you are a health professional, I would have to say you are start raving mad to leave all this for Australia.

[Guest earlswood]

Thats another storie with the scots getting thousands more per head that England due to some stupid formula....this will be sorted I have heard by the nest election.

[Guest kevin747]

Thats another storie with the scots getting thousands more per head that England due to some stupid formula....this will be sorted I have heard by the nest election.

 

 

 

It's the Barnett formula. Always comes up so that politicians can play the english nationalist card.

I noticed that house prices in Scotland haven't dived like the rest of Uk.

The village where I have a house has lots of English people.Some,but not many of the locals don't like this but I just think it shows people with good judgement and we all get along fine.

 

I love England but not their football team.

[Guest treesea]

Thats another storie with the scots getting thousands more per head that England due to some stupid formula....this will be sorted I have heard by the nest election.

 

- Earlswood

 

Well, this I have to see to believe. We English don't even seem capable of electing an English Chancellor of the Exchequer, let alone Prime Minister. But you are right about the reason health and education are so much better up here - Westminster provide so much more money to Scotland per head on both counts.

 

I do prefer Scotland to Australia. Australia is a great place to live if you are child free, but once kids come along, it is so expensive compared to here. But would I live in London compared to Melbourne? Probably not. If London had been the only choice (thank goodness, not the case) I would have stayed in Australia.

[Guest kevin747]

Education is generally better in Scotland also.

[kernow43]

If you read it you will see that she prefers the UK over Australia.

I felt she preferred Scotland to Australia, not England.

I know of people who are leaving England to go to Scotland for the cheaper & better nursing homes

[Guest kevin747]

True,also frre university education,fresh air,less overcrowding,traffic.I've lived in both England and Scotland.Scotland and England are generally better than Oz

[Guest treesea]

What I have liked about coming back is that I no longer feel like I am an immigrant. But it was hard to settle in England. After a while the poor infrastructure got us down. I don't remember anywhere flooding in Melbourne, in all the years I was there. We wouldn't have given flood potential a thought until one day, in Manchester, we got heavy rain and within two hours we had a six inches of water in our street and were putting towels at the base of the doorway because it was stating to come in. And this was living up a hill from the city. "Oh, it floods two or three times a year here," our neighbour told us. "It's the drains. They haven't been fixed in years." I suppose living in Australia has left us with certain expectations. I prefer to live in a country - Scotland - where infrastructure isn't an issue and where excellent schooling, housing and heathcare are taken for granted.

 

One more thing to keep in mind if you are thinking of coming back. If you have been living near the coast in Australia, you might find it hard to live in an inland city when you come home.

[Wishful]

I'm British and left the UK with my family when I was seven. I grew up in NZ and Australia, and have lived most of my adult life in Australia, first Sydney and then Melbourne. I grew up without grandparents, aunties, uncles, cousins. It was awful, being pulled away from a big extended family to a land of strangers. Sure, we adapted. We had to, but for sure it wasn't our choice to leave.

 

Now we are home, thirty some years on, and my Mother, who is still over there, moans to me on the phone how she is missing out on seeing her grandchildren. Well, unsympathetic this may sound, but now she knows how we children and her parents felt, missing out on each other, because of a stupid, selfish decision on my parents part to move us to the other side of the world.

 

It took us a long time to decide whether or not to come back, years rather than months. For a start, my last visit home (London) was 1985, we didn't even think about coming home (for me, but not my partner, who as he says, is an immigrant whichever country we live in so isn't all that fussed) until the 1991/92 recession and didn't actually make it back until 2004.

 

My land is now beneath my feet, and I wouldn't swap that feeling, of being native to my land, rather than a second class immigrant, for quids. But I wouldn't say Australia is backward compared to here. Prior to coming back, I had fully decided to live in London. I am half English, half Welsh, and would have preferred Cardiff to London, but I knew I wouldn't be able to stand the rain.

 

Well, what a shock. The air in London was so dirty I could see it. One day in Bayswater and all our eyes were streaming. You can see the pollution in Melbourne too, if you go up into the Dandenong hills and look back across the city, but it is a bit different walking though it. Think Australia in a dust storm for anyone who has ever been through one. The tube was jam packed - it wouldn't matter how often they ran trains in London there still wouldn't be enough space, let alone seats, for everyone who wants to travel on it. We couldn't get our children into schools where we wanted to live, out in West London. The flats we could afford were not what I would call 'value for money'. It was so dilapidated compared to what I remembered. Things like, on the North Circular road, there was this huge metal fence, completely festooned with thousands of plastic bags. On the road that goes up through North East London to the M11, it looked like the Bronx. Houses, that should have been beautiful - three storey terraces, - with broken windows and holes in their roofs. Shops with metal shutters, mostly covered in graffiti. Walking around the city, there were beggers everywhere. Paddington, Bayswater, Hammersmith, Hounslow... And drunks.

 

The public drinking is hard to get used to, and the drink driving. Booze buses don't exist. People drink everywhere, on the bus at 8pm at night, on street corners, in parks, morning, noon and night. If you live in Britain you possibly don't notice, but coming back from Australia, where the blood alcohol limit is .05 rather than .08, and where drink driving and drinking in public are really frowned upon and heavily targeted by the police, - well put it this way, in some respects Australia is way ahead of Britain, and this certainly heads up the list.

 

We moved then up to Cambridge. Beautiful place but no schools with places for miles and not much work. "Go north", people said to us, "the education and infrastructure get better the further north you go." So we moved again, up to Manchester. Good schools, still ten miles away, but the terrace housing we could afford was quite poor. Things like open drains from the kitchen to the back yard - waking up to slugs covering the kitchen was not exactly a welcome experience. Asking our neighbours why there were so many cats - we had seven who regularly visited us, we were told "they control the mice".

 

There were other things that took some getting used to - no Milo or vegemite, though we eventually located both - thank you local Pakistani merchants and Sainsburys. The Chinese takeaways are the way they were in Australia and New Zealand 30 years ago - chow mein, chop suey and not an authentic Chinese vegetable to be seen. If you like authentic Chinese food, 21st century Britain isn't really the place to be. Same with tropical fruit, though I have bought durian and custard apples in Edinburgh.... Superb Indian food though, if you fancy switching your tastebuds :-) Good things on the food front - the fish is how it is "meant to be" - cod, haddock, halibut and plaice. Australians we met recently, on their way back home after a few years in Britain, made the same comment - they miss flake, flounder, ling, king crab and king prawns. At least we both have salmon! Mushy peas. People over here know what these are, even in Scotland. Tizer. Dandelion and burdock. And, amazingly, chinotto, in full size cans and bottles, not those tiny pellegrini bottles you get in Oz. Italian food isn't that good over here compared to Melbourne. Fresh pasta shops don't exist. Decent coffee and New York bagels exist, but not on tap like in Australia. They're not expensive but they took us a while to track down.

 

Technologically, I would say Britain isn't as advanced as Australia. Things like having your current, savings and credit card all linked to the same card, so in Australia you just do a transfer at an ATM to pay your credit card. They still don't have that here. Also, the broadband is really slow, even cable like we have, compared to both Melbourne and Sydney. We pay for 20Mb broadband and it never gets much above 2Mb. And the pay TV is pretty poor compared to Optus/Foxtel. The BBC is abysmal compared to ABC/SBS.

 

We moved up to Scotland, where I had never been, by chance. We went there on a holiday. The second shock. England seemed kind of dilapidated. Home it was, but the infrastructure is in quite a poor state of repair, and really England deserves better. Not so Scotland. It was like going from the third world to the first world. Housing went from small and poky to big, just in the space of a few miles over the border. So we decided to move north. After all this was the general consensus of the people in england - the further north you go, the better it is. I remember my Yorkshire based grandfather saying the best places to live in England were Cumbria and Northumberland. We found an older style flat in Edinburgh for about half the price a similar sized and located flat would have cost to rent in Melbourne. 12 ft high ceilings, a kitchen big enough to fit an 8 seater table in it, and then some. Then we went looking at schools. What a surprise! State schools in Scotland are equivalent to private schools in Sydney and Melbourne. The local secondary school has an indoor swimming pool and a dedicated pottery room, complete with wheels. And a kiln. A kiln??!! 21 students to a class. I couldn't get my head around it - how could the Scottish Executive afford it? We are on six bus routes (why we need so many, goodness knows, but the whole of the inner city is like this) which run every five to ten minutes even on a Sunday. Apparently the bus company is profitable, but goodness knows how because at £1.15 a day, on a monthly ticket, that's cheaper than the equivalent daily ticket was in Melbourne 15 years ago. And if you get sick of it all? No worries, - its £20 return to Belfast and Dublin, £39 return to Amsterdam, and £110 return to Prague, - and the airport really is literally "just down the road", all of seven miles away. As to the hospitals, they don't need private hospitals up here because the state hospitals are just like private hospitals. The local one looks like a five star hotel. The doctors and nurses up here look happy. And little wonder, with those sorts of facilities.

 

So no more school fees, which has done wonders for our finances, because we do want a decent education for our children, but in Australia that is something you have to pay for. I wouldn't have sent my kids to a local state school in Melbourne unless it was selective.

 

Not having to endure the creepy crawlies has been magic. I have yet to meet a Scottish mouse, or ant for that matter, in any season. They don't seem to do cockroaches up here, large or small. The odd slater bug seems to be it. As to flies, I've seen more wasps outside than flies anywhere, let alone inside. The odd spider here and there, but not the big kinds you get in Oz. Little pathetic specimans, for the most part.

 

The weather here is very good, which was a bit of a surprse. I had been prepared for bitter winters - apparently that's a phenomenon confined to the moors, north west Scotland and The Highlands. We don't have central heating, it's late November, and we are all in bare feet in the house. So much for "the cold". Same with rain. Being in Australia for so long, we appreciate, rather than hate, the rain, but I saw more in drought stricken Melbourne than I have seen up here.

 

Clothes are expensive here. It is probably better to stock up in Australia before you come back, especially if you want larger sizes. No "My Size" shops here. Not shoes though. Heaps cheaper over here.

 

I would say, if you are thinking of coming back, look at all the UK as a possibility for settling in, especially if you come from England. From what I can see now I am here, most of the taxes are collected in England, but spent in hugely disproportionate amounts in Scotland and Wales. The net movement of people from England to Scotland each year, net mind you, is around 20,000 people per year in Scotland's favour.

 

If you come from a poorer part of England, where the infrastructure is poor, crowded hospitals, broken schools and poor public transport, then you may well have a better life in Australia. While I wouldn't personally leave somewhere like Wales or south west England for Australia, I could understand people making the move because they may be swapping the rain for sun. But if you live in Scotland, and especially if you are a health professional, I would have to say you are start raving mad to leave all this for Australia.

Very Jealous and very happy for you as well.... I came here in 1987 at the age of 18 and now have two australian children so stuck here for at least 8 years and then it will be so hard to come backwithout them ( notwith their dad anymore ) ....I live parts of Australia we live in the blue mountains and if I cant live in the dales then this is a great second best...but I dont belong here....My parents drageed me here in 1987 saying give it three months and we will give you your passport back so three months passed and they would not give it back...then I got a life and went to uni and got married etc etc....NOW !!! my dad is calling ME selfish becuase I want to go back " HOME" and take my kids as well...but unlike him I wont take them kicking and screaming. I resent him not for bringing us here but for now not speaking to me ( 5 months so far ) for saying one day I will go home with the kids....There are LOADS of things I love about this country BUT ITS NOT HOME !!!! Thanks for the post ....take care

[Guest treesea]

Good luck with getting home. I know exactly how you feel and unfortunately it doesn't ease with age. Just make sure your children have British as well as Australian passports. I got both kids passports soon after they were born and paid the fee to renew them until we came home. Yes, parents who drag their kids out to a foreign country have a lot to answer for. I think your Dad is selfish. He is just trying to bully you into doing what he wants by using silence as a tool. My Mum was the same, trying to bully me into staying by doling out the silence treatment and the guilt trips. Your dad has already ruined your life once when you were 18. Why let him keep on doing it nearly 20 years on?

 

One of the reasons we came back is that state education in Australia is dreadful compared to Scotland and we couldn't afford to put two children through private school down in Melbourne. Alas in England it's not so good, because the decent schools either don't have places or are not obliged to offer you a place just because you live in the area - catchment areas seem to count for nothing down south - and you end up having to travel miles each morning to send your kids to school. Also, I wouldn't live anywhere where they still have the 11+ exams. I think it's offensive to not offer everyone a decent eduucation at a decent high school. But up here in Edinburgh the state schools seem to be on a par with private ones in Australia, if not better.

 

What do your children think of coming home? My children are born in Australia but both say they prefer Edinburgh to Melbourne. They say school is more full on and entertaining and the Scots are swimming and skiing mad, just like them. I couldn't believe it when I discovered that kids learn to ski at primary school here, i.e. go to the local slopes and get intensive classes. This year they are learning to ice skate. It easier to come back with younger children. Mine were only four and nine when we came home. If I had waited another ten years, I doubt if they would have come.

[auntieswedie]

Hi treesa,

What a great post! I have just lost my brother, sister, sister-in-law and neices/nephews to Australia, all in the last year and I am very p~*s$ed off about it!! I live in the south of England where it is lush, and green and very close to the sea. I love it here and there is always something going on every day, and the infrastructure is fantastic. I am close to Devon, Cornwall, Brighton and London, and all the lovely flint-walled villages of Sussex and Surrey. I know its'grim up north' as have lots of relatives that way and it can be a bit drab, and you can stick London, I would never live there, its way too harsh!! The point I am making is, I feel this overwhelming need to think about going to OZ myself, and as a nurse, it would be easy. I feel I would miss out on all my family growing up etc, but I do love England and wonder if its really better there or not, and whether I would miss the culture, and being a first-class citizen like you say! Its very very hard, the beaches are calling me, and the sun, but thats all really.......

[Guest treesea]

Hi Auntieswedie,

 

My advice is to wait a bit. Brits are like New Zealanders; home stays home and most of us come home eventually. Would I leave a two up two down terrace in Salford or Reading (not to pick on these two places in particular - but we visited both when we were checking out where to settle once we came home, because they were close to potential places of work), some derelict parts of London, to move to Australia? Like a shot. Would I leave the rest of Manchester, Crantock, St Ives, (in Cornwall) York, Knaresborough (both Yorkshire) anywhere on the Devon Coast, Conwy Bay, Penarth, (both Wales), anywhere in Scotland (especially Edinburgh, Dundee, Skye and Thurso) to go and live in Australia? Not in a million years.

 

I know you miss the day to day contact, but the summer holidays in Australia go from mid December or thereabouts to late Jan/early Feb. Why not go down for a holiday for a few weeks during our winter? It's only a few hundred quid for a ticket. Then you will be able to do an experiment. When you are coming home, see how you feel as the plane comes in to land. If you are pleased to be home and you feel the sensation of your land beneath your feet as you hit the tarmac, you'll then know for sure where your heart is.

 

And yes, I know what you mean about green. When I stuff arrived that we shipped over, I remember digging out our Emerson Lake and Palmer CD and listening to Jerusalem (the "And did those feet..." version, you know, the real English national anthem) as a tribute to that green-ness. Yes everyone, if you think you will miss the colour green, don't go. Beautiful and stunning Australia for sure is, but green it most definitely isn't!

[auntieswedie]

I think your advice is most sund, and echoes what I feel in my heart. wish I was a lot younger, then would find it easier to adapt- although I did spend a year in Oz when in my twenties and at first thought it was paradise, but after 6 months or so, the aussies really started to grate on me, and i felt like i was in the twighlight zone as there were so many similarities that the differences really stood out, especially in sydney. I felt I was always comparing it to home for good or for bad, and I wonder whether that would ever go. And i really ate all the abbrievations and the fact that all the place names are ours!! Most Aussies don't know much about the outside world, and I felt they were constantly putting the UK down, even though they have never been, so I felt the need to go on about how its all happening here and about our beautiful history and culture...suffice to say i was not always popular...! Would have to curb that If I went back, and almost lose my Englishness, and become a bit of a Judas ha ha xxxxxxxxx Thanks though xxxxxx

[fantasia]

I know exactly what you mean re. greenness... After flying into Manchester and getting on a train to Llandudno in July I was almost moved to tears at how beautiful the Cheshire countryside is - never been there before! My mother lives in Deganwy near Llandudno and the view from her lounge is absolutly breathtaking - straight out to Angelsey and Puffin Island and just a short walk to beautiful Conway. It was very hard going back to Oz. Particularly as I had to catch 3 trains (flew out of Birmingham), changed planes at Zurich and then Singapore and then wend to Adelaide where they chucked us off the plane, made us collect our bags, go through immigration AND customs and catch a domestic flight back to Sydney (after a 2 hour wait) and then another train back home to Campbelltown - phew..... and when this smart arsed customs guy asked if I had any food to declare - even plane food - I said I had a small piece of unopened Swiss chocolate which I planned to split between my three dogs - he just glared at me and said "you do know that chocolate is poisonous to dogs"!!! Like vetenarian advice is in his job description - I find a lot of "know alls" in officious positions over here - I nearly went for his throat I can tell you.

 

But honestly, even though there are some spectacular places in Oz, nothing can compare with the British countryside, history, culture, etc. and M&S of course - I made a beeline there. And plaice, chips and mushy peas - yum!! The supermarkets are far far superior - Asda is a dream and you can buy wine at the same time!! Would I move back after 13 years - I have put a sealant on 3 more years and then I'm off to North Wales... dogs would love it too!!

 

p.s. I manage to get to the beach about once a year. See opera house, harbour and bridge every day though!!

[kernow43]

seems as though you haven't been to Queensland, a beautiful lush tropical green!

[fantasia]

Yes I have been to Queensland. Love Cairns - my garden here in Sydney is 'tropical green' too - after a lot of hardd work I hasten to add.

 

Partner applied for job in Cairns and we thought he'd got it and I was busily looking on Real Estate sites to see what was on offer house wise. Would have moved there in an instant. Unfortunately he didn't get the job!!

[Guest treesea]

seems as though you haven't been to Queensland, a beautiful lush tropical green!

 

Yes, Queensland definitely has its green and colourful moments, must so than the southern parts of Oz. I found the humidity was the shocker up in Queensland, and the constant noise at night. When do the frogs and cicadas actually shut up and let people get a good night's sleep? As to the geckos. Lovely to look at, but do they have to move in to the kitchen? What is it with geckos and kitchen cupboards?

[Guest treesea]

One thing that has really surprised me, coming back home, is how much people drink compared to Australia. I don't know if Brits actually do drink more - perhaps it is just so much more visible here than in Australia. I've walked through parks in the late afternoon and come across huge groups of high school students, some of them quite young, and they are just knocking it back. Alco pops, beer, vodka. Same on the buses around 8pm, - people just get on with whatever they are imbibing and carry on drinking it on the bus. By

[Guest Emmap]

If you read it you will see that she prefers the UK over Australia.

 

Maybe i need to put my glasses on but i think she preferes Scotland, not England to Oz....

How the UK was described upon here return is exactly how i remebr it and exactly why i wanted to leave!!....But i know you love it there Earlswood, not nocking you..!!!