BackToLife

Apparently Lindt are opening an Australian factory, so I guess their chocolate will also be impregnated with that horrible anti-melt stuff so we might have to read our labels very carefully indeed. Even though I lived in the UK for nearly 35 years, I can't say there is anything in particular I miss. I just get on with buying aussie brands of whatever I want. Having lived in quite a few countries has probably meant I have needed to be more adaptable in taking what is on offer than I would have been otherwise. However, that is not to say I don't occasionally buy British stuff, e.g. Hobnobs or Chocolate digestives. Coles also sell Wispas, so sometimes they leap off the shelves into my trolley. :wink: However one thing I just can't stomach are beef sausages. Gross! I have however found some very decent pork sausages from local butchers, but also from Woolies - B.E. Campbell cumberland sausages - and Coles - Outback Spirit with kakadu plum.

I loathe that Kleenex Cottonelle rubbish. Shredded badly and was, quite frankly, rubbish. Quilton is good, as is the Coles own brand 3 ply ($9 for 24 rolls). In fact, that is my preferred option. If there is an Aldi nearby, their Confidence 3 ply loo paper is also very good. I think the moral of the toilet tissue saga is: go for 3ply and you can't really go far wrong.

You are a really, really lucky boy! And yes, I am very envious. The history! The architecture! The gardens! The churches! The outstanding rural scenery! And of course, the charming olde-worlde pubs! If ever I return to the UK - not in my plans, but one never knows - then that is the area I will be heading back to. I love it!

Moi aussi. They currently have an offer of USD $39 a year (approx AUD $54). Not that many servers, but enough to make TB a good VPN. Plus the bear theme running throughout is brilliant....:wink:

Do you want to live in Worcester itself (including the suburbs) or are you happy to live in an outlying area? Worcester and suburbs: The St Peters area of Worcester (reasonably new estate) is very nice, as is the St Johns area - older, mainly terraced houses, but very charming. As mentioned above, Warndon is very, very rough, but most of Warndon Village is fine. One thing to be wary of ...Worcester floods badly, so before buying anything, ring the council's engineering department and ask if the street you are buying in is above the flood line. Outlying Areas near Worcester: Kempsey has some nice houses, but it stands in the shadow of the motorway, so is not the best choice. Avoid Powick, as this area is quite rough. Further afield: If you are prepared to move further out from Worcester, some of the towns/villages are lovely. Evesham (approx 30 mins drive) is beautiful, as is Pershore (a lot of Georgian architecture), but again, both of these towns are subject to flooding. Wyre Piddle to the south of Worcester is also another lovely little village, but very, very quiet, particularly since the opening of the bypass. However, avoid Pinvin. The Lenches (east of Worcester near Evesham) are an absolute delight. BUT...very very expensive. Again, if you don't mind living further away from Worcester, the Malverns (to the South west) is a really lovely part of the world. Only real issue is the weekend traffic due to all the tourists. Note: I lived in Worcestershire for nearly 15 years. However I have been back in Australia for 3 years, and as everything changes so rapidly these days, these views might now be seriously outdated. All in all though, you are moving to an outstanding part of the UK, one which it is difficult not to fall in love with.

Update: I took Ken's advice and applied online on October 6th. I had to provide proof of income from all my UK pensions/annuities, as well as verifying my ID. Like a vulture, I kept going onto the Centrelink site almost every day - wishing and hoping and praying! I don't know if you can stalk a website but that is what I was doing. :biglaugh: Anyway, today I received a phone call from Centrelink. They still need a little bit more info which I hadn't previously been asked to provide - a bank statement to prove the balance. But the good news? I am entitled to a part pension and will be receiving the first arrears payment (Oct 6th - 17th) on Friday. I will also be receiving a Pensioner's Concession Card, so I hope the concessions in this part of NSW are the full monty, so to speak.:jiggy::jiggy::jiggy: I am over the moon. This will make such a difference, as the tanking pound has really hammered me.

Marisa, that is why I am querying it. I have looked very carefully at the form (CI006) which outlines all the requirements, and it states quite clearly: "For Australian social security purposes, income from any source in a country other than Australia is generally assessable under the income test. Pensions from a country with which Australia has a social security agreement may be treated differently..." As Australia/UK no longer have a SSA, I should - theoretically - fall into the category the first sentence outlines. Unless the fact that I have the UK State pension means different rules. Sometimes I think government departments operate a multiple choice system as to what they tell you .....I have certainly encountered this in my dealings with the UK Pensions department. :mad: I am not going to bother going through the rigmarole of a call again. Instead, I am going to take Ken's advice and fill in the relevant forms (SA002/SA369 are the ones I believe I need), send them in online, and see what happens.

The minute the girl (she sounded very young) heard my income was from the UK, that was when she told me I was effectively entitled to nothing. We didn't get to the stage of discussing the exact amount of my income. Regarding the residency requirements: if childhood is included, then I pass with ease. Otherwise if I count from 16, then I have 7 years + the last 3, so I just scrape in.

Apologies for resurrecting this thread, but I wonder if anyone can help me here. I receive the UK state pension, as well as some other annuities from the UK, but nothing from Australia. Unfortunately, I am not very well off, so I contacted Centrelink to see if I was eligible for a part Australian pension. I have looked up the Centrelink website, and according to the level of my income, I should be eligible for a small top-up, as well as a pensioner's concession card. However the girl I spoke to advised me that as my income was from foreign sources, I would not be eligible for any help unless my fortnightly income fell below $870 fortnightly. However....I am Australian, I lived in Australia from birth until 1974, I worked for five years before I left to go abroad (no super paid that I am aware of) and I have now been back for 3 years. So I would have thought that I would be entitled to something. Does anyone have any thoughts on this?

To be fair, BB61 was simply passing a comment on the weather, not the consequences.

Re Coffs.....Saturday night was brutal. No brolly would have been strong enough, and you could have drowned if you had wellies on as you would have become permanently waterlogged! And unfortunately the house took some storm damage to the roof so have just had that fixed. :sad: I went for a drive on Sunday and it was as if the storm had never been, except for considerable damage around the Marina/Jetty area. Yes, in other areas there were a few trees down, but no water on the road or anything. Weird. And today (Monday) was absolutely glorious. Warm and sunny with cloudless blue skies, and in the town centre, people were wandering around in t-shirts and shorts, enjoying the absolutely beautiful sunshine (1st week of winter no less). BUT...I shouldn't get too complacent, as we are due more storms on Sunday, so I won't be throwing away the brolly/wellies just yet.

Why did the car cross the road? To get to the other side without causing a crash. :laugh: Actually, that rule makes perfect sense. When you pull out, you join the traffic flow, instead of having to cross lanes to join it, which is why there are so many near misses in the UK, which doesn't have that particular rule.

I am horrified at the rates here in Coffs Harbour - my rates for a 3-bed house are nearly $700 per quarter. Due to a council which doesn't understand - or chooses not to understand - that Coffs has one of the lowest socio-economic ratings in the entire country, and the majority of ratepayers living here simply cannot afford to pay for the council's grandiose schemes for the city via the exorbitant rates we are being punished with. That said, the council tax for my little 2-bed end of terrace in Redditch was approx GBP1300 yearly, with a 25% discount for single occupancy (2013). So perhaps not much difference overall.

Hi Cherries, will you be working at the CH Base Hospital? Just be prepared for wild and woolly weather. Coffs can get very, very humid, very very hot, and very, very windy, particularly in the afternoons. And then there are the very heavy thunderstorms which often come out of the blue. However Coffs is sub-tropical, which goes hand in hand with weird weather. You are coming to a very beautiful part of Australia, so have made a wise choice and hopefully will garner some wonderful memories to take back to the UK (if/when that happens).

When I left the UK, I left the stray cat who had adopted me behind. Although I loved her to bits, she was a killer, and anything she could kill, she did. Even the two bells on her collar did not help, as she learned how to hold her head still while hunting. So as much as it hurt me, there was no way I could bring her to Australia. She is now living the high life on a farm in Wales, catching rats and mice in the barn during the day, and is a much loved housecat at night. Once back home, I desperately wanted a cat, but was very worried about the impact on the wildlife, particularly as the house I live in is not conducive to building an outside cat run, due to its construction. But having had cats for the best part of 40 years, I finally gave in, and the rescue cat I now have is an absolute delight. She has no interest in wildlife at all. She will sit quite happily on the lawn in peaceful harmony with the magpies, kookaburras, and lorikeets, and not even blink. She has NO interest in them at all. But those wretched mynahs have an interest in her, and will chase her relentlessly if I am not around. She spends most of her time inside, sleeping in the sun on the back verandah, and when she does goes outside during the day, I am usually with her. She is always inside at night, and to those who say I am delusional, as she is probably off hunting and gathering while I am not looking, I will re-iterate once more. She has NO interest in chasing after and catching wildlife at all. My brother has a banana plantation, and so many people simply dump their unwanted cats and dogs near their property. Strangely enough, the dogs seem to last much longer than the cats, possibly because the cats fall prey very quickly to the goannas and snakes, while the dogs eventually take longer to starve to death. It is truly dreadful that some people see this as a solution to getting rid of unwanted animals, as those that do survive end up adding to the enormous feral problem endemic in Australia. This is a problem that urgently needs to be addressed, otherwise the feral cat/dog population will continue to grow unabated. Finally, I just want to add my thoughts to the following comment: The question is, why do you keep a cat? For the selfish pleasure of having a sweet furry animal for company. Is your selfish pleasure worth the death of even one native animal? This is a spurious argument, as humans also play a very important part in the destruction of native animals. Increasingly we are encroaching on habitats that once were exclusively native habitats with our housing estates, roads, industrial waste runoff, etc. The human race is anything but blameless, and one of the major dangers to animals is the car. So ask yourself. Is your selfish pleasure worth the death of even one native animal?

Not sure how old you are, but I would avoid Coffs if I was young and looking for any type of decent night life. It really is God's Waiting Room, so if you are over 50, and retired, there are a lot of daytime activities to engage in. There are some very reasonable restaurants in the surrounding districts, but otherwise it seems to be the pubs - The Plantation, The Hoey Moey, The Coffs Coast, just to name a few (this info is courtesy of my youngish niece/nephew). The town may have grown in size since I originally lived here back in the sixties, but underneath it is still the same - a very beautiful town, situated in a very beautiful region, but still very very dull, with a small town mentality that it just can't seem to shed. It suits me at the moment, as I had a very high pressure job in the UK before I retired, so the peace and quiet is a balm for my soul, but I can see myself in a few years thinking 'Is this all there is to life?"

If you renew your Australian passport within two years of its expiry date, you don't need a face-to-face interview, and can do everything through the post. If however, you go past the two years, then it really is a farce, as I found out the hard way. My GP couldn't sign my passport renewal application (surgery policy), so in the end I got the vet to do it, and thought I was good to go. But when I turned up for my appointment, they needed another form of ID. I didn't have a driving licence (suspended for medical reasons), but I did have the foresight (so I thought) to bring all my old Australian passports with me, but that cut no ice with them. Even though they had issued me with every single one of them, from 1980 onwards! They were insistent that an Australian citizen in a position of authority had to sign a form (which had my photo) declaring I was indeed that person. I hadn't lived in Australia for the best part of 40 years, and I no longer knew anyone in a position of authority. Or at least, those I did know when I was a kid - doctor, dentist, butcher, baker - had long since met their maker. I wish I could say the High Commission saw sense, but they stuck to their guns. Finally, I managed to track my teacher friends down in the Philippines, where they were taking long service leave, and got it signed. But before that happened, there were tears at bedtime for quite a few weeks, and I dread to think what would have happened if I didn't have that particular friend. So my advice is: keep your Australian passport current (within the two year deadline) and you shouldn't hit any of the hurdles you might otherwise.

When someone posts on a public forum statements such as: 'My family are so much to me and I cant believe I ever gave them up for him..' then they have to expect that responding comments may not be as supportive as they would like - or, it appears, as you demand. To me, that statement is grossly insensitive, and disloyal, and should never have been made public.

Regarding her marriage...very true, we don't. Also, if you really are that close to your birth family, then emigrating to the other side of the world is surely not something to be even contemplated, as the move is more than likely doomed to failure from the start, taking with it your relationship.

Status quo then....both of them value living in either the UK (wife) or Australia (husband) at the expense of the happiness of the family. (Edited...ooops....getting confused with another post. Removed the bit about 6 months). As for the children wanting to return....it is possible some of the unhappiness and negativity in her Opening Post has filtered through to them, and mothers have a very strong influence on their children.

I believe you are saying that your family in the UK (mother? father? siblings?) mean more to you than the ties you should have with your husband? You appear to have no loyalty to him at all, and value him as less than zero. No wonder he is happier in Australia than the UK.

Over the next few days, I will post the second part of my return on whether or not I am finding living in Australia expensive. So although there may be a (slight) mention of sausages, there will be absolutely no mention of the price of lemons. However, have you seen the price of mushrooms recently? Yikes!!! :cry:

I absolutely adore hedgehogs. I used to feed them in the conservatory, which was not intentional, as I didn't know they could climb....boy, can they climb....so they used to come in through the cat flat and demolish the cat food. :laugh: Also, how can one small animal be so noisy?

I haven't posted my return story before, as I have just got connected to NBN in the last few weeks, so up until now, I was at the mercy of the local library. In a nutshell, my history is - I left Australia in 1974 on an around-the-world trip, then ended up living in the UK for the best part of 35 years, after having married a Brit (no longer with him). After much soul-searching, I returned home in September to my home town, to live in the house I grew up in on the mid-North Coast. Some of my family still live here, so the challenges facing me won't be the same as those facing someone who has no ties with Australia at all. However, there will probably be a common, underlying fear linking us all - will I be able to integrate into the Australian way-of-life, or will I be too European in my thinking/outlook to adjust to a country so fundamentally different to Europe/UK after nearly 40 years abroad? Because make no mistake, Australia is NOT the UK with sun, as has been so often re-iterated on PIO. It is an entirely different country, and requires an entirely different mindset. Australia has a different set of values to Europe, both in the way life is lived and in people's expectations of what life can offer them. Australia no longer considers itself a 'colony' of the UK. It has grown up and is forging closer relationships with countries in the immediate geographical vicinity. Europe is just another continent, with no real pull any more on Australia's development. Assimilation will be difficult unless you both recognise and accept this. Constantly comparing all aspects of the Australian way of life to what you have left behind will fuel your prejudices, and could mean you will never accept Australia for what it is, including the good, the bad, and the downright ugly. On a personal note, I find waking up to endless blue skies and sunshine energising, not enervating, although we do get the occasional very fierce storm which washes off the dust and the dirt and reveals an unexpected freshness. In fact, some nearby areas could well be in Europe, or the USA, or Canada, with lush green meadows, gently running streams, rainforests, cane fields of purest green, and flowers so vividly coloured they could have been painted in oils. And the foam-tipped green of the Pacific Ocean washing over the sandy yellow beaches will always have the power to stop me in my tracks. And even when the sun has scorched the earth to a dullish brown, I still find an amazing beauty in this very different view of nature's harsh mantle. Of course I still miss the life I had in the UK for many reason, including the fact that it was familiar, and safe. I miss the wild life, including the blackbirds, robins, coaltits, bluetits, etc, and particularly the hedgehogs; the richness of its incredible history; the architecture; autumn and spring (but NOT winter or the usual summer washout), and much, much more. But I want to be able to reminisce with remembered joy, instead of allowing those memories to become my constant companion which will then effectively exclude me from trying to forge a new life in a different country. In real terms, this means focusing forward on Australia, not backwards to the UK. Because the most important lesson I have learned since being back is - let go of your prejudices, otherwise you will always be prejudiced. All it takes is for you to open your hearts and minds to the differences.

My doctor explained there are three "B's" associated with hypothyroidism - blood, bones and brain. Bones - calcium absorption is impaired, so until the thyroid levels are normal, you may need to take calcium supplements. Brain - depression is a common side-effect. Blood - calcium in the blood, which comes with an entirely different set of problems, such as kidney stones. I had a parathyroid tumour, but when it was removed, the thryoid glands were removed as well, so I am now on levothryoxine. Took nearly two years to get the dosage right, to the extent that I could come off the calcium supplements, but tbh, I still suffer from chronic tiredness and the faint, lingering remnants of depression. However, on the plus side - I feel so much better than I did, and on a good day, I almost feel like the person I was before all this started. The hardest part is going to be losing the weight which just kept going on...and on... and on....no matter what I ate...or didn't eat. And that in itself is a depressing thought. But take heart...you will get better....and importantly....feel better...once everything is stablised.