Sydney West at 6ish Months in

[seraphim]

Well, I've now been here just shy of 6 months just outside of Sydney, and as the family is now here and we're in the process of buying a house, I can say we've started the settling in process! We did a reccie/holiday of a lifetime Bris to Sydney last year to validate/see where we might like, came back, managed to find work, resigned, sold the house and now we're all here!

 

 

The forum has been very helpful to me in prepping my application, sorting out the hard graft in getting here and other advice, so if I can help anyone with advice I'm hopefully going to pop on occasionally to see if there's any threads where I have experience and give my 2 pence, sorry cents now!

 

 

However, in the mean time, here is a rundown of the initial thoughts on being here o nPR: Some may offend, hopefully some will amuse, and some will be home truths about life here: Please don't be offended, it's mainly tongue in cheek, but there will inevitably be someone outraged. I'll tell you now “no worries mate”! These are my thoughts only, my family is slightly more sane than me.

 

 

 

 

 

 

$10 for a BEER?!?!What's it made of, unicorn wee?!?!?! Oh, hang on, the 'Real' cost of living isn't the exchange rate, is it? When you earn here in a like for like job, it's around 2.5x (at present). Err on the side of caution and you'll be pleasantly surprised. £4 for a beer then?Expensive but then again from my old local I couldn't see the harbour bridge!

 

 

The wine is HOW cheap?!?!?! Dan Murphy, you are the older brother my liver wishesI'd never had!

 

 

I'm sorry, you want insurance on your insurance? Cars here are Yes expensive and Yes,old and pretty beat up and Yes, everyone who drives a Subaru think sthey are classy until you show them Autotrader where they are £1500 all in! Getting it 'roadworthy', something of a chortle in itselfseeing the bombs on the road, costs an arm and a leg...and a kidney.It's OK, you have 2 sir, just step this way! Hard lesson number 1, DO NOT TRUST CAR DEALERS just because the Australian accent sounds friendly! You will end up buying a lemon sight unseen from a big name dealer to have a steaming turd delivered which you then have to return on a 12 hour road trip/bus ride because you would NOT want it to be used to ferry your children/plow into a line of other peoples children!

 

 

Oh My God people of Australia SPELL IT HOW IT'S PRONOUNCED! You can't laugh at me calling Wagga Wagga the wrong name if you don't spell it Wogga Wogga! Strewth!

 

 

Will you PLEASE walk your dogs! Or at least fuss them? OK, then, how about letting them inside so they don't bark and keep me awake through 1mm thick walls? No? Better join them and get ourselves a dog then!

 

 

On a similar note.There is no such place as Staffordshire in the continental US. Adverts for “American Staffie bull terriers” are for, lets face it, pit bull's. Yes it's a 'bit' like a staffie with longer legs.And it will kill your dog/child/significant other. Australians have no control or care as far as we have been able to work out so far,those who do we've never seen! They must exist!

 

 

Driving skills. I can only assume that the australian driving test local involves the examiner pointing at a car, asking 'can you tell which end is thefront', and allowing 3 guesses. Even when travelling though La Paz in peak hour I was not as horrified as I have been here!

 

 

“Groceries are expensive”. No, actually, they are not. What you might want to say is that IF you want to shop like you did in the UK, then groceries ARE expensive.

However, buying seasonally, buying fresh, and yes buying from Aldi, or in bulk when coles/woolies do their weekly offers, means you will spend less buying better food than you will in the UK. Sorry people in WA there is not Aldi for you, but you did chose to live there!

 

 

If you think buying good healthy food here is expensive you may well simply be comparing it to buying junk in the UK. Junk seems more expensive here but homemade stuff isn't really, and some stuff is very cheap.

 

 

 

 

Activities areexpensive. Yes this is true. However, lots of things arefree/relatively cheap, and for Sydney families Sunday Funday $2.50 onthe trains is a godsend!

 

 

There is somethingcalled crossfit. It involves sweating while being shouted at in a'cube'. I am fairly sure this is what happened to POW's in the lastwar. I will not be trying it. I will get out in the fresh air andcycle to work instead, killing two birds (figuratively) with 1 stone,and losing 1 stone into the process!

 

 

Australians are either total hung up 'a' holes needing ego boosts about being australian, or very chilled and cosmopolitan whilst still being proud of being Australian. Or drug addicts. Yes it's nice here, that's why we came.No it's not the only nice place on earth. The earth is beautiful (or will be until the next war!) They also tend to be proud of relatives that died in wars, whilst avoiding actually signing up themselves. Also proud of their UK heritage, and strangely the fact they have travelled (if they have) or that they haven't travelled (if they haven't because didn't ya know mate, Australia's so great!). They swear a lot, it's part of the language, you get used to it.

 

 

Best one liner on a prime time radio show driving home, “she had a face like a dropped pie”. I cried laughing!

 

TV here is dire. And it's also TV that was on in the UK 8 years ago. grand designs 2006 anyone?

 

 

You will never miss a brummy accent until you move here. Then, well, you still don't, but at least you know what one was!

 

 

You will be horrified when your child starts using vocal inflections just like an Australian! You will know they have become one of 'them'!

 

 

Good curry is impossible to find. I almost stole the lunch right from our of our doc's just because she'd brought in last nights channa dhaal!

 

 

Salt and pepper squid is amazing!

 

 

They have never heard of electric showers, require a sparky to, get this, change a plug socket, and yet licensed sparky's still burn down houses because they are generally useless! Find a UK trained sparky and sleep well!

 

 

Houses are a nightmare of expense! To buy, stamp duty, and build quality. They consider a 23 year old house here to be 'old'. I have yet to be shown around a house that would qualify as anything other than an 'outbuilding or lean to' under the UK building code (bearing in mind I've just dropped an amount with more zeroes after it than I even want to think about, on one such house!) 'modern' Australian houses are single skin brick, requiring large energy inputs to keep hot/cold, and cracking is normal. The argument, is that it's the heat. Well, the UK has roughly the same variation of around 45 degrees between hottest and coldest conditions, and has more freeze thaw, and our houses often'don't fall apart'! It's called insulated properly built houses! I am sure the elderly lady in the detached house next door is very sweet, but the romance is gone when you can here her flush the nuggets after a good old sit down and strain!

 

 

I enjoyed writing that,it was very cathartic! Believe it or not, I actually like it here! Both my partner and myself (she's on PR too, as she is at least as skilled on the CSOL as I am, but why pay twice for assessments!) have worked hard and thought Australia would be good to try and although we didn't have a burning need, we could afford to try it and see, as living with regret about 'what ifs?' may well have been worse!

 

 

Australia is definitely not (for us) a financial choice, it cost a lot and we have a lower income here than in the UK. That's not why we came. If you're young,and seeking your fortune, you might be able to get down the mines,but only if you're both lucky and skilled and a grafter (guess which PIO poster THAT excludes! Lol). Generally, you will have the same standard of living if working in a similar job in a similar town than you would in the UK. Stuff is more expensive for most of the necessities (electricity, cars, houses) but cheaper for the luxuries(ipads toys etc). I'd like to get residency, to avoid renewing visa's as much as anything, and to give my child options as an adult,but I'd say it would be harder if I had not have gotten job offers before coming out and had not started work the week after landing!

 

 

 

 

Lets end on the goodpoints:

 

 

 

 

It's been very warm recently!

Australia is beautiful.

It's quite hard to get into now, so those that make it permanently are very determined and hard grafters!

It's enough like home that you don't feel lost, but different enough that you have to think about things.

This rather nice bottle of cabernet sauvignon looks very inviting.

I should really have another 'winter' 22 degree BBQ Tomorrow!

[Guest The Pom Queen]

What a great update, it made me chuckle :laugh: Glad you are enjoying it.

Ps Your weather is freezing down there, if you want proper warmth head to Cairns :wink:

[MARYROSE02]

Glad that you have settled in so well, with the usual ups and downs. Where are you living in Sydney? I don't think you mentioned it in your post? If you can see the Harbour Bridge, you could be on the verandah of the London hotel in Balmain? There must be lots of pubs where you can see it though? $10 is steep. Is that for a pint?

 

I don't know what to do about curries. I was talking to a Scottish bloke who explained something to me about the special quality of Glasgow/Indian cuisine. I was never that into curry when I lived in England, so the ones I get in Sydney taste OK to me - Chicken Sagwala, Chicken Lahori, and the guy will always add things to it for me. I did used to get a 'Biryani' over the road in my village in Hants which was not much different to what I get here.

 

I prefer Thai curries anyway, green and red chicken usually, and I guess Thai is as ubiquitous here as Indian in UK? And of course there is always plenty of chillies and chillie sauce to add if it's not hot enough.

 

I found this new restaurant here in Sydney that is a curious mixture of Turkish/Chinese 'Uygar' perhaps, yes that is the name, with 'Sydney' and 'Cuisine' before and after, on Cleveland St. There are some hot dishes there.

 

Anyway, you are 'off and running' which is the main thing!