7 Years In – Do We Regret Moving To Australia?
When we first moved to Australia, 7 years ago, we were a bit naïve, full of hope and threw ourselves into our new dream life, head first!
We lived in an extremely small 3 bed townhouse, which we thought was awesome. It was a few minutes walk from the beach, had a heated pool with BBQ area and no garden, so we had no work to do! We had an au pair, so Ben and I had one bedroom, the au pair had one and then the 3 girls shared the other, it really was a bit tight, but we lived there for 5 months, until we bought our first house.
Sometimes naivety is a good thing, as if we had known what was coming, we might have reassessed our options when considering the move to Australia.
We had a dream mapped out of what what we wanted from moving to Australia. We wanted to go for beach walks, we wanted to live in a big, modern, double storey home, we wanted a stress-free life, with enough spare cash to enjoy new adventures. Oh, and we were happy to work hard for it, obviously!
We’d be lying if we said that the last 7 years has been easy, it did take us a good 3 of those to settle! It took time for us to settle financially, as we got through a lot of money when we first moved. It also took us time to settle socially, as when you first move to a new country, it’s not unusual for friends to come and go to begin with. It takes time to settle and find your people.
That first 3 years also gave our relationship a bit of a beating. You have to be on very good terms to emigrate together, as even the closest of relationships can feel those stresses. We both worked very hard to stay on the same page and not let our stresses get in the way of our relationship. Luckily, we both wanted the same thing.
When we considered moving to Australia, one of our non-negotiables was that in an emergency we would always be able to fly back if we needed to. We always have kept money aside for that situation. What we hadn’t anticipated though, was a pandemic that would cause border closures! This meant that one of our ‘non-negotiables’ of moving over was suddenly up in the air!
In 7 years, we’ve encountered a few natural disasters, which have required us to really pay attention to what’s going on around us, for the sake of our safety. We’ve had to learn a lot about how to handle situations that are completely alien to us.
Despite the problemos that we have faced over the last 7 years, we have managed to turn it around, out of sheer determination, and create the dream that we wanted Australia to be.
It took a while, but we found our friendship circle. We have surrounded ourselves with friends who we adore, and who have similar values to us.
It’s pretty BAMing hot here where we live in the Sunny Coast, so we have created an outdoorsy lifestyle for ourselves here. We love nothing more than to get out in nature, and one other unexpected bonus is that my hayfever is nowhere near as bad as it was in the UK!
Another unexpected twist to our ‘7 years in Australia’ story, is that we ended up living on a 10 acre hobby farm, this hadn’t been in our plan, but it’s enriched our lives, with a whole lot of new experiences and challenges. Living in Australia seems to brought a lot of unexpected adventures in our direction!
We have a big fat ZERO regrets about moving to Australia, because the hardships that we may have faced along the way have taught us a lesson, and life isn’t a challenge if everything is too easy! The reason our family is thriving, is because we’ve worked awfully hard at it, even when we’ve struggled.
