Why you left your country and moved to Australia?

[psuwara]

Many of us have left our original country of birth, or even moved between many countries over the course of our lives. 

Moving to a new country is an incredibly big jump of faith into the unknown. Having to learn a new language, meet new people and create new relationships, none of which is easy and can make you feel isolated. Yet, many of us, myself included, make the jump to move to a new country and take the chance.

I would love to know, and am sure many other too, what some of the reasons are why you made the decision to move to Australia, which benefits outweighed those of living in the country you left.

 

Thankyou

[Paul1Perth]

There is an advantage for English speakers in moving to Australia. We loved Portugal and some other places in Europe would have given us everything we were after. Trouble was the language difference and the affect that would have had on getting a job.

It's a bit strange that after the long flight we didn't feel as far away from the UK as crossing the channel to France.

The main reason we moved was we were sick of the weather and the feeling that 2 weeks in the sun was probably as good as it was going to get, once we had the first mortgage and our first son. We were both working full time, living in a very small end terrace, new mortgage, new child and that was the first year we hadn't been abroad on holiday. Just couldn't afford it. Highlight of the weekend was wrapping the youngster up in his pram and taking him to the local park that had a duck pond. The summer was crap that year.

Now we live in a place that has everything we used to pay a fortune to visit for a couple of weeks a year. I've seen a lot of posts saying being on holiday here is a lot different than living here. We've made sure we picked a suburb close to a beach we love, made the most of it weekends and most mornings before work. You can feel like you are on holiday even with the aggravation of having to go to work, you just get up very early, go to the beach before work and you feel like you've made a great start to the day. Work never felt so bad after that.

[psuwara]

1 hour ago, Paul1Perth said:

Now we live in a place that has everything we used to pay a fortune to visit for a couple of weeks a year. I've seen a lot of posts saying being on holiday here is a lot different than living here. We've made sure we picked a suburb close to a beach we love, made the most of it weekends and most mornings before work. You can feel like you are on holiday even with the aggravation of having to go to work, you just get up very early, go to the beach before work and you feel like you've made a great start to the day. Work never felt so bad after that.

Thank you for the detailed reply. Strange how living close to a country doesn't make it so easy to move to, like your example with France and England.

If you don't mind, which suburb did you choose to live in that is close to the beach? I suspect in Perth right?

[Bulya]

Parents had enough of Blighty especially after the winter of ‘64, and then an amazing position came up for my father.  Moved in ‘67.  Spent time in every state/territory, and it’s a must to find the right place to settle imho. 

[Paul1Perth]

13 hours ago, psuwara said:

Thank you for the detailed reply. Strange how living close to a country doesn't make it so easy to move to, like your example with France and England.

If you don't mind, which suburb did you choose to live in that is close to the beach? I suspect in Perth right?

We are about 30km North of Perth, near Hillaries boat harbour.

[ali]

We hadn't actually thought of migrating until visiting my brother who lives in QLD in 2005.  During that trip we also visited Cairns and Sydney.  We returned to the UK and my husband commented that he could live in Australia and we should look into it.  He was a little disgruntled with the UK but not overtly unhappy, we had good jobs and a good life.  We decided that we would like the opportunity to live/work in another country whilst we were still relatively young enough to do so.

4 months after arriving back from hour holiday,  I'd completed my skills assessment, we'd submitted our visa application and I'd got my registration with the then nursing board of WA.  We got our visa's 7 months after applying and moved 5 months later (having decided to allow our daughter to complete primary school and have one last Christmas with family).

We moved to WA (sight unseen) because we felt the climate would suit us and have been really happy here.  Biggest benefit for us was that we developed more quality time with the children, we found that little things of eating outside prolonged our evenings with them as we'd all stay outside chatting/playing games.  We work the same hours as in the UK, but our quality of family life seemed better - we did more things during our days off.  Financially, we've managed to save more than we did in the UK 

I think one of the things for us (and which is mentioned many times) is that we both wanted to take this opportunity and bought into it as a couple 100%.  We had no plans for returning, our only what if was if we didn't like WA then both it and Australia was a pretty big place and we'd try somewhere else.

[Rallyman]

I had been here 8 times on holiday before moving out , felt the GFC was going to be tough for us ( wife had a good job) but construction took a big hit in gfc which effected us so when opportunity to come over we decided to give it a go   Nothing ventured nothing gained . He we are nearly 11 years later , achieved far more in that time than would have stopping in uk , certainly enjoy weather more over here, 

 

[Toots]

i married an Australian.  We met when we were both working in London.  I visited Australia with him for 6 months a couple of years after we were married.  i liked it but didn't really think about living here.  After a fair bit of discussion we decided to give it a go and ended up in Sydney which we really enjoyed then moved to Perth where we built a house and had two babies.  Sold the house in Perth and moved back to Sydney where we lived happily for the rest of our working lives.  Over the years we went on many holidays all over Australia and Asia plus I went back to see my Mum in Scotland as often as I could.  Now retired and living on the north west coast of Tasmania.

[Bulya]

20 minutes ago, Toots said:

i married an Australian.  We met when we were both working in London.  I visited Australia with him for 6 months a couple of years after we were married.  i liked it but didn't really think about living here.  After a fair bit of discussion we decided to give it a go and ended up in Sydney which we really enjoyed then moved to Perth where we built a house and had two babies.  Sold the house in Perth and moved back to Sydney where we lived happily for the rest of our working lives.  Over the years we went on many holidays all over Australia and Asia plus I went back to see my Mum in Scotland as often as I could.  Now retired and living on the north west coast of Tasmania.

Damn good choice too 

[psuwara]

1 hour ago, Toots said:

i married an Australian.  We met when we were both working in London.  I visited Australia with him for 6 months a couple of years after we were married.  i liked it but didn't really think about living here.  After a fair bit of discussion we decided to give it a go and ended up in Sydney which we really enjoyed then moved to Perth where we built a house and had two babies.  Sold the house in Perth and moved back to Sydney where we lived happily for the rest of our working lives.  Over the years we went on many holidays all over Australia and Asia plus I went back to see my Mum in Scotland as often as I could.  Now retired and living on the north west coast of Tasmania.

Amazing story!