walkerfamily123

Today marks our 1 year anniversary leaving the UK for Sydney. Myself (28, with a petrochemical background) and my wife (27, with and environmental management background) sold our house in the UK for a loss, paid off our student loan debts, etc and applied for a 157 skilled migration visa with the plan of moving to Sydney and starting fresh. So we packed up a container of all our belongings and left the UK with our A$37k savings and no jobs to come too. We arrived in Sydney airport 06.00 on the 1st of September 2012 to warm 22 degree sunshine. The first few days where hard, coupled with jet lag and doubt that we might have made a mistake leaving our stable jobs in the UK for nothing in Australia. After the first 3 days we found that the weather, the people and the standard of living was fabulous and the homesickness had passed, we believed that we had made the right choice. The next few weeks consisted of setting up the rental property and buying a car, applying for jobs, etc. When we finally got settled we found that we could apply for 10-15 jobs a day and not receive much response.....anyway eventually i received a call on the 6th of October from QBE insurance company looking for a contract warehouse worker (great timing because our saving were starting to run out!), the money was enough to cover the rent, food and bills (Great! a start). Christmas came buy and my wife got a call from Weir Minerals looking for a Environmental manager on a 6 month contract (decent enough money....great! now we are not on a tight budget for everything). Now after coasting in daft jobs to see us through the first few months me and my wife have both gained permanent jobs working for Caltex and between us earn possibly 4 times what we earned in the UK, we have managed to save up and buy a 1964 1/2 for mustang convertible (car of our dreams) and we have made some amazing friends. Although we do miss our family back in the UK we have frequent contact with them through Skype and whatsapp, we are happier than ever and saving up to buy our own house and start a family here in Sydney. We would also recommend South Sydney as a place to live. We moved to Sans Souci, it’s a beautiful place to live, and it is a nice 40 minute walk to Brighton Le Sands which has nice restaurants Phil / Charlie