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Moving to Australia
haha did you think I was? No not me, but I have been watching the programme on BBC 1 at 9.15am when families contemplate moving there and spend a week there trying it out, looking for homes and trying out jobs.
Today a family wanted to move from Wales and they have such a fantastic house here set in beautiful countryside. I'd stay here if I had that house! The wife was really cut up about leaving her mum and the mum was crying because she'd never see her daughter or grandchildren again , well only rarely when they could afford the trip.
I was nearly crying myself. What I'd like to see is a programme doing a follow up on all these families, to see if they make it. It says at the beginning of the prog that a third of families that emigrate there from the UK come back.
Another thing do they have similar programmes in Australia with people who want to move to the UK? :)
Today a family wanted to move from Wales and they have such a fantastic house here set in beautiful countryside. I'd stay here if I had that house! The wife was really cut up about leaving her mum and the mum was crying because she'd never see her daughter or grandchildren again , well only rarely when they could afford the trip.
I was nearly crying myself. What I'd like to see is a programme doing a follow up on all these families, to see if they make it. It says at the beginning of the prog that a third of families that emigrate there from the UK come back.
Another thing do they have similar programmes in Australia with people who want to move to the UK? :)
Comments
I love the history and (most of the) geography of this country.
this sort of thing makes me wonder if emigrating is all that worth it.
seems a shame to split up families for want of a bit of sunshine
I just got an email yesterday from a recruitment agency about a job in Barcelona. Of course, I already live abroad now so it'd be a very small step for me and I've always wanted to live in a warm country. Ireland is many things but certainly not warm or exotic. haha
Yep!
Also saw jobs in Madrid. I'll just apply and see how it goes. I love Spain. The culture, the people, the language.
I did an exchange at school when I was 15 with a girl in Barcelona and we still meet up and keep in contact. Saw her last in May when we were staying in Lloret de mar for a week.
But yes, it's family that keeps me here in Coventry. Saving up though, brick by brick, for my seaside cottage retreat!
Yes hope to see you at Swanwick again. I am just working on my children's story for the comp as it would be nice to win a place again and a lot cheaper!
Every time I think Australia is soon going to be full of heartless bastards. The woman this morning's mum has just lost her husband. The woman's dad. The two grandchildren involved are her only two grandchildren. Who could even contemplate it?
They have done follow-ups actually. Really boring the programmes they are, as I can always remember the families quite clearly and of course they go through the whole kit and caboodle again, until the end when you find out if they are happy or not.
You have to like sport, open plan houses with no privacy (the bedrooms are rarely big enough for a teenager to hide in) and not mind a garden covered in shingle. (It is illegal in Australia to water your grass.) you also have to be aware of the fly problem in many areas (this was only touched on once) which you can only get away from by living up quite high.
Moving ANYWHERE without understanding the language (and therefore the culture) is very foolish. So many people expect everyone to speak English and, of course, they don't. Signing things you don't fully understand can lead to all sports of problems and this has happened to a lot of English people, particularly in Spain. All official documentation will be written in the language of whichever country one is moving to. Even though you may have an interpreter, they cannot always get across the shades of meaning to someone to whom this isn't a native culture. Nuances of meaning and expression are very often lost in interpretation.
Possibly they assumed that everyone is fluent in English.
Unfortunately that is often the case - and they are ENTIRELY wrong
Which was mentioned in a book about someone who lived in China for umpteen years, well over 20, as I recall. She stopped to talk to someone who did not answer her. As she walked away she heard the man say to his companion 'I could have sworn that English devil spoke to me in Cantonese.'
On the other hand, when we went into a shop in Bilbao and began to talk, they hushed us, asked us to wait and rushed out, bringing back a very elderly man who had been evacuated to England during the Spanish Civil War, as he liked to practice his limited English on all visitors who came in!
And here we are, in NZ (decided Oz wasn;t for us for many reasons), and finally happy after nearly a year of struggle.
BTW, we lived in the UK for 5 years having moved from Poland, so we sort of knew what it's like to move countries. but the first move, despite problems with language felt easy-peasy compared to the second one.
I now live part of the year on the opposite side of the world to the UK and the other part in France. I lived in Spain for many years too.
It takes me two days of flying time to get from Fiji to England.
It used to take me two days by road and sea to get from Spain to England.
Obviously it costs more to travel to Fiji or Australia, but these days it's not super-expensive if you shop around.
And - like I say - if you try a new country then change your mind, so what? It's not a failure - it's an adventure!
An aunt who lived in NZ for many years, her husband was a government official, her son the chief architect for their bridges, came back to England with her husband who wanted to die here. He did (leukaemia) and she wanted to go back. Her sons had to sponsor her and even with that, it took forever to get the permission for her to return. (she returned just in time to see her son before he died of cancer.)
Dorothy's experience doesn't reflect how things are now. The entry requirements for EU countries are much more straightforward these days and if like me you dont live in one place for more than six months, you dont have to apply for residency anyway.
Eeks! Perhaps I should leave the country right this minute, Liz! ;)
1. Students are obliged to participate in x amount of hours per week of PE and sport in schools. I'm defnitely NOT into sport and I've managed quite well so far, thank you. Although I do agree that if you're living in a verrrry small country town it would probably help to form stronger community bonds if you played tennis, netball or football. That's not to say it's an absolute neccessity though - we're very welcoming people if only you bring your smile with you. If you're a friendly person you will make friends no matter what your interests and I'm quite sure that applies to most countries - not just this one.
2. We do like to spread ourselves out and if we have the room, then yes, we prefer open plan living. I don't understand the need for segregating the kitchen, the family room, the dining room etc., unless it's to keep them heated, which, in our case is pretty much not needed. But each house is different - they're definitely not all open plan designs, as I'm confident to say not all UK homes are thatched cottages. I guess the average sized bedroom here is probably 4m x 3.5m - possibly larger than that in farm houses. How does that compare? I'm not qualified to say they're big or little as I haven't been to England and have nothing to compare them with but I do watch a lot of "Escape to the country" episodes with Catherine Gee and some of those houses have what I would call really teensy bedrooms. For an unbiased view I think a person would have to gain experience of seeing a wide range of 'real' places for themselves.
3. Illegal to water grass? A fallacy, I'm afraid. Sure, in times of severe drought councils impose restrictions whereby you can only water your yard every second or third day or suchlike, but that's fair, I reckon. Generally, we're pretty happy with our grassy yards. This is an 'outdoors nation' and as such, I couldn't imagine what it would be like if we didn't have grass to wriggle our toes into while sitting around the barbie. (That's a Q, not the doll :) ) Admittedly, we're probably not as green as the UK always appears to be. Ahh...all dem rollin' green hills. Lovely.
4. Lastly...flies. Yep, we gottem! Moreso out in country areas on sweltering days - not so much in towns. Can't say more than that.
I agree about the flies, but one can buy some terribly fetching headwear to prevent them crawling on the face, as Pete and I were obliged to when we went to the desert (only the very edges)
In freo the homes we saw weren't open plan and bedrooms seemed to be about the same size as english ones.The av size bedroom here varies depending on whether it is cram em in tight housing or lets spread out housing (for teh wealthier clients) Average seems to be 3.5 x 3.5 m and the small bed 2.2 x 2.2m The gardens were tiny compared to mine, but then mine is an older house. New houses here have gardens about the same size as those I saw. What most struck me about Oz houses is how few historic ones there were. Particularly in freo, the trend is to buy one, knock it down and rebuild on the same site.
As for sport we saw a few people jogging in freo/perth, but in Sydney they were manic about it, everyone seemed to jog in their lunch times, tea breaks, whatever!
But many of them DO decide to leave because of the outside life. However the one programme I saw where one of the daughters wanted to do something much more literary she was told that not much of that went on, it wasn't valued, and it would be easier to make friends if she was into sport. and every time they want to get the children show how much fun it is to be there, they only ever got to a soccer match, or surfing, I've certainly never seen a theatre trip. (But that of course may be the type of people going.)
I guess I am biased also because I can't imagine living in an open plan house - OH uses his computer in his music room (so we can't hear his music in the rest of the house) and i like to use mine in here in the study/library. I wouldn't want my computer to be in an open plan part of the house where I'd have to listen to whatever anyone else was doing - the TV is often in the open plan bit of the sitting area/kitchen bit in the Aussie houses we see, but what if someone wants to watch a different programme? Or didn't want the tV on at all, as my OH often doesn't? How would they get away?
I guess apart from that though they only get to show what's available to that particular family, which may include all the restrictions that they show for them but that may not be the case in all of Australia! And the bias of the TV programmes.
What gets me on ALL these relocation type programmes is that whenever they show bedrooms there is almost NEVER a wardrobe or dressing table in them which makes them look enormous - and no-one ever seems to have bookshelves or hobby equipment of any kind anywhere in the house. My eldest daughter had a 5 bed house till she went bankrupt, but the rooms weren't big and they had 4 cornets, a set of drums, tenor horn, violin, saxophone, flute and piano in the house, as well as two lots of cricket equipment, a wii and all the wii fit accessories, plus several bookshelves and bookcases, jammed with books and jigsaw puzzles. Where do they hide all this stuff on the telly?
Having hosted Australian's, visiting the U.K. and being informed by acquaintances emigrated to New Zealand, the general concensus is that average house accommodation is significantly different.
From Victorian terraced accommodation to private enterprise estate development, floor area of a U.K. three bedroom house measures an average eighty square metres (eight hundred square feet). Three bedroom accommodation in the Antipodes might be anything from one hundred to one hundred and twenty square metres.
U.K. planning legislation gives guidance on minimum distance between facing houses but that often results in miniscule private outdoor space. Fifty square metres might be the average in new estate housing but those Victorian terraces have little more than a ten square metre concrete yard.
"Yard" in the U.K. signifies a small paved area, the same in Australia and New Zealand refers to the outdoor plot which might be anything from one hundred to a thousand square metres or several acres of land.
Definitions vary and are potential minefileds. Our English "garden" is an Australian's cultivated border (for planting) within their yard. English "lawn", "patio" and "driveway" become the collective "yard" of an Australian's outdoor space. Indoors; Australian's identify individual spaces as "rooms". Thus an English "study" "parlour", "lounge" etc all gain "room tacked onto them.
Many of you may well live in older homes, {clearly Liz! enjoys comfort of an old village cottage - for one}, don't forget majority of English housing has been constructed by private developers for the last fifty decades. These developers have speculated on mass production with profit, resulting in condensed accommodation. Bedrooms seem apportioned in ratios of two double to one single bed accommodation. Living space is most often "open-plan" lounge/diner with separate kitchen. Fashion became to, similarly, knock the two small reception rooms of Victorian terraces into one living room.
There will be those, among readers of this, who might plead their home is different. There is no dispute that larger homes exist. Equally, don't forget the "inspired" designs that speculative developers, such as Wimpey introduced. Those two storey cubes, for instance, that provided one bedroomed accommodation in groups of four.
Near the end of the programme the couples have to compare prices of food and mortage in UK with Australia. Australia usually comes out more expensive yet they still opt for Australia. Healthcare helps put the bill up in Australia.
One couple were bickering all the way through one programme as he wanted to move there, but she clearly didn't. I don't think their marriage would last long if they did.
Pongo, couples do get to go to New Zealand sometimes on the prog.
I agree with Lolli about the lack of fitted wardrobes in these places it'd be one of the main things I look for.
It should be a law that there is enough space to live a life in any home. Council houses used to have a ratio for each room and are often properly proportioned.
Friends bought a show home, the furniture came 'thrown in' - they soon found out why. It was smaller than average - especially made for show homes to make the rooms look bigger. His 6+ foot wouldn't fit on the sofa.
We do have a cottage, and unusually large rooms in that cottage. Not a lot of rooms though Lolli - there are two sitting rooms and one has been made into a work room/music room for OH - sometimes he edits programmes at home. The study/library is mine and is only 14ft by about 10. The bedrooms are big though, ours is 16 ft x 12ft at least.
Certainly for about 20 years houses have been built very badly and far too small, but surely the majority of houses have more space than that? We lived in a 70s house as children and we had big rooms and a big garden. In fact another house has been built on the garden now.
Space can be created quite cheaply by going into the roof in children's rooms - our architect put our son's sleeping area over the bathroom , you don't need a great deal of roof space to make this work. It's accessed by a ladder from his room and he had a futon base and proper mattress up there, books bedside table etc. Then his bedroom became so much bigger, and just for fun.
oops...think I did that wrong. Anyway, I totally agree with Dora. We emigrated to Canada when I was seven. We stayed there for four years and returned to England as my parents were missing the family so much. While we were in Canada, we moved a couple of times and by the time I was 11 1/2 and in English grammar school, I had been to 5 schools in 18 months. Terrible! Also, moving to Canada for a seven year old was exciting but moving back as an eleven year old was such a culture shock and I took about four years to settle in.
As parents, I think you really have to think how so much uprooting is going to affect the kids!
In what way, Cath?