LKC

Hi Libbye, it's a spam post which will have been reported and removed I should think, if there are any moderators around. It happens from time to time, but they're usually removed pretty quickly.

My husband and I separated about a year after we returned from nine years in Australia. That was about eight months ago, and things are good now. Please PM me if you want a friendly ear to talk to. We have kids too, but honestly they’ve been fine (and one has autism).

The Shire for sure. We lived in Woronora Heights (next suburb over to Engadine), and were very happy there for the most part. Kirrawee I would probably avoid (very busy with traffic), and Cronulla you might find a bit out of reach on your budget, but Engadine and around that area (Loftus, Heathcote, Woronora Heights) are all lovely. There is a sticky post that I wrote aboiut Sutherland Shire at the top of the NSW page. Feel free to ask if you have any questions - I've been back in the UK for a couple of years, but I still know quite a bit about the Sutherland Shire area.

Similar to Amber Snowball. Relief, calm and peace. I will never forget how the man at Edinburgh airport, on explaining that we'd move back for good, looked at our (expired) UK passports, made a little joke about us needing to get them renewed, and then said "Welcome Home". It was the best feeling in the world, and almost 2 years on, having gone through quite a time separating from my husband, I am still 100% sure that we did the right thing. This is home, and I love it!

Not sure how I missed this thread, but I absolutely agree with the others. If your relationship isn't 100% solid, please give it some serious thought before moving to Aus. We moved out in 2009, loved it at first, but after a few years the shine wore off and we moved back in 2017. Husband and I are now separated, and the kids only see him two nights per week. I shudder to think about what would have happened had we split when we still lived in Aus and he'd refused to let me and the kids return to the UK. In fact it would probably have killed me. I'm not saying this to put you off or anything, just to illustrate that two international moves is a massively stressful thing to do, and it broke what I thought was a very strong relationship.

We had no trouble at all when accessing the NHS in Scotland. Just filled out the forms at the GP surgery, I think we may have provided our tenancy agreement, and that was pretty much it. The NHS were pretty quick to remind us about things like smear tests and vaccinations for the kids, so we must have got back into the system pretty quickly.

We moved to Scotland from Aus almost two years ago, despite having never lived in Scotland before (we were from England) and it is absolutely the best thing we've ever done! We have found a really lovely village, near to Kinross, where we have settled well and made heaps of friends. We're all really involved in the community, and despite OH and I having separated since we moved back, I am so happy we moved here! The kids both settled really well, made loads of friends, and are both doing well at school. We've enjoyed exploring our new home, we love the weather, come hail, rain or shine, and have really made a home for ourselves here! Any questions, just ask!

That’s what I heard. I’ve a slight tan at the minute, we’ve had some absolutely beautiful weather up here in Kinross!

Pleased to hear you're settling back in! We've been back 20 months now, and I don't regret coming back for a second. That's not to say that I regret moving to Australia at all, we had a great life there in the main, but Scotland is the first place I've felt truly at home.

When we first moved over we thought we'd be at the beach every day, but the reality is, when you have work, school and so on, you really only go at weekends anyway, and even then not every weekend. We really loved the beaches in the Royal National Park, and also a bit further down the coast towards Wollongong and beyond.

You could also have a look at Sutherland Shire. Rents (and house prices in general) tend to be a bit lower, particularly if you're away from the beachside suburbs. Even in the more inland parts of Sutherland Shire you're still only 25 minutes or so from the beach. It's a nice area, easy to commute to the CBD by train, family friendly, good schools, all services and so on that you'd need. We lived near Engadine, and really enjoyed our time there.

I got my Aussie insurance company to write a letter stating that I'd had no claims in the five previous years, and my UK insurance accepted that as proof of no claims. Could you do something like that with the company that your work went through? ETA: We were with AAMI in Aus and are with Aviva here. No problems for either company to do this.

I’d echo what Marisawright says about the climate/humidity in Sydney. The air isn’t really fresh at all, particularly inland, and it can feel a bit like trying to breathe soup if it is humid. I have never had respiratory troubles until I lived there, turns out I’m allergic to mould spores of which there are plenty, being a damp place. I used to get two to three colds a year, and would be plagued with a chronic cough for weeks on end after each one. That said, we were slightly inland and surrounded by bush. As far as I can see, yes you would have to pay school fees. You need to look carefully at the schooling, because the curricula between the UK and Australia aren’t directly comparable, which may cause difficulties with your eldest son in particular, given that he would be starting year 11 on your return. Our girls grew up in Australia, we moved to Scotland when they were 11 and 9. Scottish children start school slightly later than English children, so ours went into P5 and P7 - in England eldest would have gone straight into secondary, where here she had almost a full year of primary first. This gave her time to fill in any gaps in her knowledge (of which there were many - simply because the two countries are out of sync with each other, not that one is better than the other) before she hit high school. With year 11 being a very important year, I would very carefully consider your choice of schooling and so on. We left Aus 18 months ago, so I don’t really know what the rents are like now, but finding somewhere decent for $700 per week would most likely be a bit of a challenge in many parts of Sydney. If you look at some of the southern suburbs, for example those in Sutherland Shire, it might be doable, but you’d probably struggle to get anywhere on the coast for that. Sydney became extraordinarily expensive in the years we lived there. We were in the Engadine area, which is a nice family-friendly part of Sydney, about a 20 minute drive from the coast.

No, not too far from there though. Crook of Devon area.

We felt a bit like this in Aus, even with children. It wasn't that people weren't friendly, but we were continually held at arms length, even by the parents of our kids friends. I thought that there was something wrong with me, and then I just stopped trying. Since we moved to Scotland, where we've not lived before and have no family, we've all made a great group of friends, many of whom I would consider to be '3am friends' - the ones you could call at 3am in an emergency (and who you'd be happy to have call too). It may well have just been as simple as the fact that we were in Sydney (albeit an outlying suburb), where here we're in a village, but I really did struggle with the lack of friendship.

Completely agree with Marissa! We weren't close to our parents, and we didn't move back because we missed them, but if this is a worry for you now, then I wonder if migrating is for you. I saw my mum (dad died 20 years ago) twice in nine years. My ex's parents (we separated when we got back) came out to see us about every other year, so we saw them a little bit more often. We certainly didn't see them often.

We looked at Bath and Bristol as an option before we moved back, and liked what we saw. We ended up moving to Scotland though, so I can't be more help on the Bath/Bristol front!

Completely agree with the couple of people who've mentioned not trying to go back to your old life. It's easy to forget that whilst you were away, people moved on, so your old life doesn't exist any more. I would definitely explore the possibility of moving somewhere else. We did this when we moved back, moved to Scotland, where we'd never lived before, and it is honestly the best thing we've ever done!

Well we ended up in Scotland, and absolutely love it here. We are a bit to the west of Kinross, in a lovely village, and have it all! Great friends and neighbours (we've not lived here before, so they're all new), great community, great schools, easy transport links to Edinburgh, Glasgow, down into England, up north into the Highlands, reasonable housing costs (there are houses in our village worth almost £1million and houses worth £150,000 - everyone just mixes together), great facilities in nearby towns...you really do feel out in the countryside, but so near to everything that Edinburgh and Glasgow have to offer. We looked at what we didn't want first (near London, Kent, Midlands, East Anglia, South West, Wales) and then looked at what we did want (in terms of job prospects, housing affordability, transport links, good schools...), and then looked at actual areas and narrowed those down based on our criteria. I did a HUGE amount of research, and it seems to have paid off!

Sounds similar to where we are, in terms of facilities, VS! We have a village hall, and I have spent a good few nights drinking and dancing frantically there! I'm actually on the village hall committee now, because I've loved how welcome we've been made to feel here, and feel like I want to give back to the community that has taken us in its arms. My OH and I have actually separated since we moved back to the UK, but I wouldn't consider moving away from our village for a second, even though my family are down in the Midlands. It has been the best move I've ever made. The kids are settled and happy, I'm settled and happy, ex is settled and happy, and life couldn't be better

Completely agree with Bunbury61! We moved to rural Scotland, which is absolutely perfect for us, but we are in easy reach of good transport links (roads, buses, trains) to both Edinburgh and Glasgow, and of course beyond by air. Work out EXACTLY what it is you want (in terms of lifestyle, jobs, affordability of housing etc), do your research, and you will find the perfect place.

We're near Kinross, so a bit north of Edinburgh, and honestly don't find the weather a bother at all. It is glorious again this morning, and I'm looking forwards to having a nice long walk down to the river. I suppose we're all different, like different things, and find different things enjoyable/a bother. The evenings and mornings are noticeably lighter now too

Thank you

I literally mentioned the Beast from the East in my first post! I haven't forgotten about it, and neither have other people I know. We just treat it for what it is - an unusual, once every eight years or so occurrence. I also mentioned that it could still snow, which it might. It's my birthday on Wednesday, and I can think back to quite a number of birthdays in my 44 years where we have had bad weather. But spring is coming, then summer, then autumn, and then winter again, and with those seasons comes all sorts of weather, good and bad. THAT is what I like about the weather here! The good days are SO much better because they are contrasted with the bad.

When we told people we were moving to Scotland, the overwhelming opinion was that it'd be grey and drizzly the whole time, but I can honestly say that we have plenty of beautiful bright blue skies with sunshine days. Sure, we have rain and wind and snow and everything else in between, but on the whole it is fine. We've got the kit for whatever the weather throws at us anyway, so even the odd days of bad weather don't stop us going out.