Was the day you left home the best or worst day/decisioin of your life? (25 Oct 1978 was mine)

[MARYROSE02]

Did it make or break you, or somewhere in between? I always think about this around this time, up until Xmas, and into the New Year, thinking about the various "mile stones" in the first few months of my Aussie adventure. 3rd November arriving in WA at Freemantle, a month in Perth, then the bus to Adelaide for a week, then on to Sydney, first Xmas away from home, finally getting my first job after three months of looking in three states, and running out of money at least once. (Some people tell me I couldn't have picked a better time to come to OZ too!)

 

If you could have picked the "perfect" candidate to fail (or fall) in Australia, it would have to be me too. Zero experience of looking after myself, zero cooking and domestic skills, zero D.I.Y. skills (still zero, too), and in fact, close to zero actual working skills. Yet I never had any intention of going home, though, ironically, if that is the right word, I did eventually go back home for twelve years, after eighteen years here.

 

Both my brothers followed me out here in 1979, and both have done well, I guess, though Mick moved on to the USA, and now Asia, but he still retains his links with OZ, and I'm hoping he will come back eventually.

 

It could have been worse. Imagine if it had been 1939 not 1979!?

[Que Sera Sera]

I wish I'd made a better job of it and gone further afield. Apart from a brief trip to Paris, France at age 13 to visit my Sister and family, I had never ever been abroad. I left home at 17 and moved a mile down the road.

 

I never ever even for one moment thought of travelling, it's something my parents never did. Exotic to my parents was a 2 hour drive to Weymouth to their caravan for a week.

 

Weve done most of the typical holiday destinations , in Europe and Florida etc. but wish I had travelled on my own before. I have to wait until my son is old enough now to do it, but I will, it'll come but with my OH as well.

[JockinTas]

Maryrose, I thought you meant leaving home as in leaving Mum and Dad and the family home and becoming independent. I was 16 and 3 months when I left home - just turned 19 when I went to work in Belgium and France. Nearly 21 when I went to work in America. 24 when I went to work in Switzerland and 30 when I migrated to Australia.

[Quinkla]

I was 18 and left home to go to university. I remember that day being very lonely, especially that night, going to bed and there was nobody to talk to about the day I had had or wish me good night. Looking back, it was the best day of my life and the start of my adult independence - but it didn't feel quite that way at the time.

[Johndoe]

15 for me to join up. I'd never been outside Blackpool but by the time I was 21, I'd been to Cyprus, Aden (Yemen), Malta, Libya, Ulster, The French Pyrenees, Sicily and Bognor Regis :-)

[Quinkla]

15 for me to join up. I'd never been outside Blackpool but by the time I was 21, I'd been to Cyprus, Aden (Yemen), Malta, Libya, Ulster, The French Pyrenees, Sicily and Bognor Regis :-)

[Quoll]

18 and off to Uni - I always appreciated independence. Don't know that it was a particularly good or bad moment, it was life being lived.

[MARYROSE02]

I wish I'd made a better job of it and gone further afield. Apart from a brief trip to Paris, France at age 13 to visit my Sister and family, I had never ever been abroad. I left home at 17 and moved a mile down the road.

 

I never ever even for one moment thought of travelling, it's something my parents never did. Exotic to my parents was a 2 hour drive to Weymouth to their caravan for a week.

 

Weve done most of the typical holiday destinations , in Europe and Florida etc. but wish I had travelled on my own before. I have to wait until my son is old enough now to do it, but I will, it'll come but with my OH as well.

 

I did go to Norwich for three months on a government training course when I was nineteen, which was something of a drunken debacle. I'd been on a few holidays on my own, to Europe and the USA/Canada, but nothing like this. I was coming with my mate Steve but he dropped out because he met a girl. He should have come with me just the same, not for a year, but just for a few weeks to say he'd been to OZ. I had six weeks holiday from my job anyway so I'd probably have agreed to go home with him.

[MARYROSE02]

[ATTACH=CONFIG]31687[/ATTACH]

 

I bet you regret Bognor too? (Like, allegedly, George V?)

[JockinTas]

Maryrose, I thought you meant leaving home as in leaving Mum and Dad and the family home and becoming independent. I was 16 and 3 months when I left home - just turned 19 when I went to work in Belgium and France. Nearly 21 when I went to work in America. 24 when I went to work in Switzerland and 30 when I migrated to Australia.

 

I forgot to say whether it was the best/worst day. I was homesick for a couple of weeks when I first left home but I was sharing a cottage with 3 other girls and they soon cheered me up. Friends with them to this day. One of them came to visit with her husband before I left Sydney. I'm godmother to her eldest son.

[MARYROSE02]

I was 18 and left home to go to university. I remember that day being very lonely, especially that night, going to bed and there was nobody to talk to about the day I had had or wish me good night. Looking back, it was the best day of my life and the start of my adult independence - but it didn't feel quite that way at the time.

 

I can tell from looking at the websites for all three universities that I've studied "at" with the OU, this year. Macquarie, (NSW) Griffith (QLD) and Murdoch (WA), that they all take student experiences of being away from home, and studying in higher education much more seriously than when I did my BA at UNSW. I did not live away from home but I faced all the other pressures of study and coping with a new environment.

 

I did stay at two of the residential colleges at UNSW just after I first arrived in Sydney, in December and January, 1978/1979, and I made some friends in both places. Most of the students went home for the holidays but there were guys from the country, overseas students, people doing courses - missionaries doing a linguistics course I seem to recall. One of them put a chocolate bar under my door on Xmas Day which touched my Mum when I told her about it.

 

There is no shame in living your whole life in the village you grew up, or staying in the one job - excellent pension usually. It's a strange feeling with conflicting emotions comparing myself to the guys who did stay in that village all their lives. I envy them and I don't envy them!

 

When I went back to live there, actually in a different village seven miles away, I had to re-learn everything, like emigrating all over again. My brother Neil was angry when he went back, for a holiday, because he could not relate to anything there any more. He knew he had lived there but he remembered nothing, perhaps like me reading something I had one and written about in my diary, but not actually remembering it?

[JockinTas]

I can tell from looking at the websites for all three universities that I've studied "at" with the OU, this year. Macquarie, (NSW) Griffith (QLD) and Murdoch (WA), that they all take student experiences of being away from home, and studying in higher education much more seriously than when I did my BA at UNSW. I did not live away from home but I faced all the other pressures of study and coping with a new environment.

 

I did stay at two of the residential colleges at UNSW just after I first arrived in Sydney, in December and January, 1978/1979, and I made some friends in both places. Most of the students went home for the holidays but there were guys from the country, overseas students, people doing courses - missionaries doing a linguistics course I seem to recall. One of them put a chocolate bar under my door on Xmas Day which touched my Mum when I told her about it.

 

There is no shame in living your whole life in the village you grew up, or staying in the one job - excellent pension usually. It's a strange feeling with conflicting emotions comparing myself to the guys who did stay in that village all their lives. I envy them and I don't envy them!

 

When I went back to live there, actually in a different village seven miles away, I had to re-learn everything, like emigrating all over again. My brother Neil was angry when he went back, for a holiday, because he could not relate to anything there any more. He knew he had lived there but he remembered nothing, perhaps like me reading something I had one and written about in my diary, but not actually remembering it?

 

When I go back, it's as though I've hardly been away. Old friends haven't changed much and the village is basically the same - a few new houses and that's about it. Love it!

[Johndoe]

[ATTACH=CONFIG]31687[/ATTACH]

 

Good 'un of Bognor Regis there. Ah the memories.

[starlight7]

Just a relief to put the family and its problems behind me. I was 18 and went North to university. Never went home again except for visits.

[newjez]

Sitting in a flat in Winchester. Broke and hungry. Pack of chedders for tea. My only domestic possession was a teaspoon. Because of a nightmare of catch 22 situations I hadn't been paid for three months. Finally got it sorted and it was the making of me. I wish I'd never left Perth, but I had to leave to grow. I couldn't be the shy awkward self loathing person I was in Perth. I had to do something, and travel seemed a much more sensible option than suicide.

[Guest241083]

............first left home and travelled with a younger sister.......when I was 8.....

............a fixed wing from sandakan to KK....

............proper plane to KL.....then on to Singapore to overnight before flight to London....

............train to Newbury.........taxi to school.....

............and have been travelling with and without family ever since.....

............didn't see my parents for 6 months the first time.....it made me very independent.....

 

............and the best decision.....though not only mine.....it made me who I am...!

[MARYROSE02]

I'm at Clovelly now, one of my fave Sydney beaches, bit of a cool wind so I don't want to hang around. If it's calm, I'll sit for an hour or two after my swim.

 

In and out in two minutes. Ten Min ago I was chatting to a girl and she is off swimming somewhere with her Dad

 

I've just been talking to them. Her Dad was trying to tell me how to do proper stroke breathe out underwater. I've never learnt how.

[bunbury61]

Did it make or break you, or somewhere in between? I always think about this around this time, up until Xmas, and into the New Year, thinking about the various "mile stones" in the first few months of my Aussie adventure. 3rd November arriving in WA at Freemantle, a month in Perth, then the bus to Adelaide for a week, then on to Sydney, first Xmas away from home, finally getting my first job after three months of looking in three states, and running out of money at least once. (Some people tell me I couldn't have picked a better time to come to OZ too!)

 

If you could have picked the "perfect" candidate to fail (or fall) in Australia, it would have to be me too. Zero experience of looking after myself, zero cooking and domestic skills, zero D.I.Y. skills (still zero, too), and in fact, close to zero actual working skills. Yet I never had any intention of going home, though, ironically, if that is the right word, I did eventually go back home for twelve years, after eighteen years here.

 

Both my brothers followed me out here in 1979, and both have done well, I guess, though Mick moved on to the USA, and now Asia, but he still retains his links with OZ, and I'm hoping he will come back eventually.

 

It could have been worse. Imagine if it had been 1939 not 1979!?

 

For all those that leave home ,and consider it an achievement ,there is always someone who holds the fort .

I was at a family function yesterday .

Extended family who we don't see very often ....cousins who I grew up with have now died...as have some of the parents .

Do you know the common denominator of all those that have held the families together..

Paid for stuff ...organised funerals ....been the general rocks of their respective families..

....they were all ....THE YOUNGEST SIBLING ...

The youngest brother or sister ,almost insignificant during their childhood ...and cometh the hour ,the responsibility has fell to them .....

[Guest]

I left home at 18 for University but didn't think of it as 'leaving home', I was away from home at University and went back in the holidays. As it was I never lived at home again and I do remember being at home just before heading down to Kent where I started my first proper job - I was making the bed with my mam and she started crying, I didn't get it at the time but now I can see this was really when I 'left home' - within a year of that I bought a house, got married and it was the start of my adult life.

 

As some of you know my mam died earlier this year and that home is now up for sale - I guess when I locked the door there for the last time a few weeks back was my final time of leaving home. It's kind of weird to think after 50 years I'm pretty unlikely to go to my home town again. I could - it's only 180 miles away but I have no reason to.

 

I have lived in many, many places but there is only one other place that has felt like home and that is where I live now, where I returned from Australia to and I needed to leave to find that out.

[MARYROSE02]

For all those that leave home ,and consider it an achievement ,there is always someone who holds the fort .

I was at a family function yesterday .

Extended family who we don't see very often ....cousins who I grew up with have now died...as have some of the parents .

Do you know the common denominator of all those that have held the families together..

Paid for stuff ...organised funerals ....been the general rocks of their respective families..

....they were all ....THE YOUNGEST SIBLING ...

The youngest brother or sister ,almost insignificant during their childhood ...and cometh the hour ,the responsibility has fell to them .....

 

I left and my brothers left in order of age, but I did go back, "silver lining in the cloud", to help look after my parents in their old age, but I was the oldest not the youngest!

[MARYROSE02]

I left home at 18 for University but didn't think of it as 'leaving home', I was away from home at University and went back in the holidays. As it was I never lived at home again and I do remember being at home just before heading down to Kent where I started my first proper job - I was making the bed with my mam and she started crying, I didn't get it at the time but now I can see this was really when I 'left home' - within a year of that I bought a house, got married and it was the start of my adult life.

 

As some of you know my mam died earlier this year and that home is now up for sale - I guess when I locked the door there for the last time a few weeks back was my final time of leaving home. It's kind of weird to think after 50 years I'm pretty unlikely to go to my home town again. I could - it's only 180 miles away but I have no reason to.

 

I have lived in many, many places but there is only one other place that has felt like home and that is where I live now, where I returned from Australia to and I needed to leave to find that out.

 

I bought my parents' house, still have it, rented out, but eventually, I need to "bite the bullet" and make a decision about it.

[Guest]

I bought my parents' house, still have it, rented out, but eventually, I need to "bite the bullet" and make a decision about it.

 

If it doesn't sell soon it might get rented out! My dad has moved up to Scotland and he just wants it sold but long term it makes more sense to rent it out - my dad has more than enough money to live comfortably on as he isn't able to do much.

 

If it's paying you an income and you have good tenants then I'd keep it - the house my dad is living in now we used to rent out and I saw it as a nice supplementary income in retirement but hopefully it'll be a long while before I get that now!

[Marisawright]

I bought my parents' house, still have it, rented out, but eventually, I need to "bite the bullet" and make a decision about it.

 

You may have heard of Tommy Smith, Gai Waterhouse's father and a famous racehorse trainer. He made his money investing in houses and his motto was, "never, ever sell". When you sell, you get charged a huge amount of Capital Gains Tax, so he believed it was always best to hold on to property as long as you can, provided it's giving you an income.

 

Of course if you have no one to leave it to, you may want to sell it one day and just spend all the proceeds!

[flag of convenience]

Why or how could leaving home ever be the most wondrous day in ones life? Hardly the best I'd have thought as surely many more events through out a life, will be better than the simple action of leaving home. How can it not?

 

But to leave home, regardless of the context it is meant here is memorable as it suggests change and possible renewal. Out with the known and in with possibilities that will change us for ever. New horizons. Ways of thinking. New norms. The unexpected. It can also be fraught with angst and loneliness, questioning and searching. It will open up a world to the best and likely worst times.

[MARYROSE02]

If it doesn't sell soon it might get rented out! My dad has moved up to Scotland and he just wants it sold but long term it makes more sense to rent it out - my dad has more than enough money to live comfortably on as he isn't able to do much.

 

If it's paying you an income and you have good tenants then I'd keep it - the house my dad is living in now we used to rent out and I saw it as a nice supplementary income in retirement but hopefully it'll be a long while before I get that now!

With the present favourable FX rate, and making an effort to abide by my budget, my UK income is the major part of my income.