Pingpong planning

[Guest alx]

Hi All

 

I am considering moving back to UK after five years here in OZ and three years in Asia. I am here with my wife and two kids.

 

Every year since I have been here I go through one or two months depression (usually just as it gets to be summer - as I hate hot weather) and wishing to move back - constantly watching location location location whets my appetite as well. Then usually I bounce back and start accepting that I am here in Melbourne and I have all the trappings I could never afford in the UK - big house, nice car, well paid work, private schools. The trappings were the only reason I moved to Australia (I am not an outdoors, sports or sunloving person).

 

I haven't been back to the UK for five years and I miss it. I can't afford a family holiday, so for me the only way to go back is to move.

 

I remember always wanting to leave the UK (even as a child), and leaving as soon as I could with no intention to go back to live. I never felt I belonged. I don't have family there as I am an only child and both parents have died. I have a handful of old friends, but my closest friends are spread across the world. We don't have family or really close friends here in Oz either.

 

I think I miss the travel opportunities from the UK and I definitely miss the countryside and the history and culture. I miss the buzz of London. I don't know if the reason to move back is substantial enough to spend thousands on moving back.

 

The oddest thing is I never felt at home in the UK (son of immigrant parents, I moved to UK when I was four months old), and yet my whole time away from the UK I have become more and more proudly British. The more I am away, the more I am considering UK as 'home' - namely West Sussex - despite having no family around.

 

We are planning to move to the UK just for three or four years and decide whether we want to stay for good or not. My wife (who is not from the UK), is very keen to experience life in Europe. We are not making a move until we get our Australian passports (as contingency) - but the second we get our Aussie passports we will put our plan into motion. If it doesn't work out we will consider ping ponging back to Oz.

 

I would love to just go on a family holiday to UK to just see how things are, but frankly we can't afford it. Not sure if I should just go on my own back to the UK for a trip to see how I feel or just make the plunge. Perhaps a holiday will not even give me an accurate view of how things are in the UK.

 

I wonder if anyone has moved back to the UK, even if there is no family there.

 

Well enough of my ramblings... I welcome comments.

[Guest treesea]

We moved back to the UK to be closer to my extended family, but, as things turned out, we now live in Scotland, and they are nearly all in Wales and England. The few who were here have all long since emigrated, mostly to the States. I'm from London originally, which is where we were moving to when we came back. But instead we toured around Britain, and discovered what 80% of the population here already knew, i.e. that there other places to live which are just as nice, and certainly less polluted and expensive, as London. If not quite as interesting.....

 

I know what you mean about all the trappings. We also had a nice house, private school, nice cars etc. I got sick of the heat and the rat-race, in equal measure. We probably don't live as well in Britain as we did in Australia - we certainly don't have as much income, and we can't afford to travel the way we could from Australia. But the pace of life seems a lot less intense. It's stuff like going for a ride on the bike, or a wander around the Botanics or along the river. Even just down to the seafront. Everything is right there, almost on our doorstep. The bike paths are a block away. The Botanics just up the road. Likewise the river. And the sea is a 15 minute walk away. Likewise a great indoor climbing venue. Sometimes I think the whole working population (Edinburgh) seems to be walking to work. Plus the state schools here are superb, and very well resourced.

 

I could have organised my life differently in Melbourne, lived in South Yarra, up next to the Botanics, and been a 15 minute walk to the CBD one way and a brisk half an hour, if that, walk down to St Kilda and the foreshore the other way. And had we stayed there, that is probably what we would have done. But at the end of the day, I missed my land. And I couldn't stand the weather. I'm fairly certain, dare I say hopeful, that 40 degrees C and Edinburgh are unlikely to meet up in my lifetime. In the end, it really didn't matter how nice Australia was - it was either live up at somewhere like Falls Creek, or move.