nambour

Thanks for all your responses. its been a great help. In answer to some of your questions, despite my parents really loving Australia they will never move over here. They have a good social life and my two bothers who live in the UK and one with two children. I would not ever want them to uproot everything they have to live here. Plus my 96 year old grandmother is still alive and relies on my father. I think they will come over as much as they can whilst they are still fit to travel. My husband works in IT as a soft wear developer. I think he would like the opportunity to live in the UK and see some of Europe. I haven't told him of my recent feelings. We spent 3 years in Canada, living in Edmonton near his family and friends. It was only meant to be a year. Edmonton is a real dump and a very boring place to live. Its nicknamed Deadmonton for a reason. I cant believe i made it to 3 years there. It was everything that i didn't want in life and i am so glad we didn't get stuck there. I had to leave eventually anyway as my visa ran out and i didn't want to apply for residency. I did not want my son growing up in that environment. I enjoyed our weekends away in the Rockies, but getting jobs in interior BC was not as easy as getting jobs back in Australia. Anyway i had belongings and an apartment in Sydney to deal with, so whatever i did i needed to to return to Australia. Don't get me wrong, i feel lucky to have had the opportunity to live and work in Canada, but it was always a temporary thing for me. Like i said before i said before we did have the option of coming back to UK, but my parents discouraged it as at the time jobs were on the line....plus we would never been able to afford to buy a house or even rent in London and would have had to live with my parents for a while. There was and has been many positives of returning to Australia. I am happy here and day to day life is good. Making friends is hard when you get older, but i knew that would be the case. i am patient about that now. I just miss my family and feel that my son would really benefit from living closer to them. My son starts school in 2016 so we have close to two years before we would consider moving again. I love my house here and wouldn't want to part with it just yet. I don't think living in Scotland would work as it would defeat the purpose of being near to aging parents. I am waiting to see if my parents will move out of London (once my grandmother has passed on) as they could change everything for everybody. Whatever happens i will never regret anything of life in Australia. Its been a great experience.

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/laws-moving-australia-tougher-235100775.html?vp=1#QBNvdAL its tougher to get jobs on 457 these days and it can bankrupt you.

I have read a few posts here now and again over the past year, but today i have decided to post something. My mother and brother are coming out to see me very soon, which is great, but i always feel more homesick near the time of visitors. Plus its getting closer to Christmas, which is always hard. So that being the reason to write this. I have no problems with Australia what so ever. Its a great country to live and as a citizen i benefit in many ways. We are completely debt free and live a very simple life. We live in a smallish town on the sunshine coast, in a nice smallish house with chickens and a vegetable garden. We are far from wealthy, but our circumstances mean that i am fortunate to be a stay at home mum for my 2 year old. My husband enjoys his local job and only has a 10 minute commute. I am currently getting back into my art projects which i am selling locally, which is delightful. When my son starts school i will return to work and the possibility of owning a small acreage is becoming realistic. Everything i have ever wished for really. However as a mother i feel that my child is missing out on precious family experiences. I feel sad that his grandparents, uncles and cousins are so far away. My family are in the UK and my husbands are in Canada. My family love him dearly and my dad really benefited from spending time with my son, when they came to visit. I also feel that i am missing out on special time with my family. I miss my old friends too and after 35 years of a very full and lucky existence, i cant help feeling that i am learning a huge life lesson of love for family and friends and what it all really means. I feel like as my parents get older, i should be there to help them out. After all the spent a good 20 years looking after me and my brothers. Plus i want to help them. They are not at that stage yet that i need to worry as they are still active and able, but it will come. I would love to spend more time with my father in his garden and vice versa. Plus my mother and i get on really well and i miss spending time with her. I also know that spending too much time with my family does my head in, but thats normal and just like any other thing, family should be in moderation too. After travelling the world and living in Australia, it is nearly a decade since i lived in the UK. I am out of touch of the reality of living there. I am from London. Now we have a child its harder to get back for visits, and flights have gotten more expensive. We are planning a trip back next year, but if i get pregnant again, then it wont happen and it could be another two years before we get to go overseas. That scares me a bit. I am not saying that i want to go back today...or tomorrow or even next year. I just worry that another 10 years will go by and i will have not spent hardly any time with my family (apart from visits here and there). My son will have missed out on holidays with the cousins and christmas with his family. By that time my child will be settled in school and its harder to pull them away from their life. The sensible side of me has decided to re-evalute the situation in 3 years, before my son starts school and in the mean time, continue to enjoy my life here. The biggest question is, can i have what we have here, in the UK? Obviously i cant take the weather, but that doesn't bother me. But i have difficulty thinking that we could ever afford to buy a property in the countryside, live without hugh debts and not have to deal with traffic and long commutes. You can't have it all and something would have to be sacrificed! Thanks for reading my ramblings.