How We Moved To Australia From The UK

As a young(ish) couple with a young family, we had big dreams for our future - one of which was to give our kids the best opportunities possible, and so came the consideration of emigrating to the other side of the world.

Making The Decision

In 2014 Ben had an idea to emigrate.  He wanted to move to Canada… I didn’t!  However, I was interested in moving to Australia if he was open to it.  He wasn’t!

After a few frustrating conversations about compromise and being open to each other’s ideas, we made each other an empty promise to consider each other’s ideal country to emigrate to.

It was not long after making these empty promises to each other that I booked us a holiday to the Gold Coast! Do you see what I did there?!

While in the Gold Coast we went all guns blazing trying to work out if Australia would work for us.  We checked out houses, we compared costs (after our first grocery shop we nearly said ’no’ to Australia!), we investigated our work options, we explored the Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast and we also met with a couple of emigration agents.  The emigration agents that we met with gave us a few different visa options to consider and advised us of the requirements that we needed to meet.

To be completely honest with you, for the first several days of our Australian reccie, Ben and I did not get on, we were jetlagged and really snappy with each other, which was not how we usually rolled!  However, after we had gotten over that, we got on with our trip and it turned around.  We fell in love with our surroundings, with the Aussies and with the life that we knew we could have in Australia.  So now, we just needed to go home and make it happen.

 After we had landed at Heathrow, we got in a taxi, looked at the grey sky and wished that we could just get back on the plane straight away!!  That taxi ride REALLY reaffirmed our decision to jump ship and haul ass to Australia!

Working Towards Being Visa Ready

When we spoke to the agents in Australia, we were told that there was a qualification I would need, to be able to apply for the visa we wanted, so I immediately enrolled in an online course.  To tell you the truth I found it really hard going back to education after so many years, and also having to write a certain number of words about a topic, instead of just explaining it efficiently – I am not known for my patience… or doing what I’m told!  But anyhoo, I found the secret to getting chatty in my essays was to drink wine while studying!  And so the words (and wine) flowed!  In my tipsy state, after a year of studying, and goodness knows how many bottles of wine, I achieved the qualification needed to put in for our visas!

At this stage, Ben and I decided that I would travel back to Australia on my own for 5 weeks to look for work, find an area to live and just to generally work everything out.  And so I left Ben and the girls home in England while I jetted off Downunder to setup our new life.  I stayed in Surfers Paradise and while in Oz, I networked my bottom off, met new friends, went for interviews, looked for houses and spoke to everyone I met!  Oh and I may have gone to the beach every morning and watched Home & Away every day too!

While networking I met with another emigration agent, and this time I was sold!  We hadn’t had too much faith in the first two, and so we planned to do it ourselves, but this time it was different and we knew that she was the right one for us.  As soon as I arrived back in England, we sent our documents off and applied for our visas.  We put our house on the market, sold our cars, cancelled our phone, internet etc and our visas did not come!  We packed our suitcases, hand luggage and woke up several times a night checking our emails!  The wait was unbearable! As I mentioned before, patience is not my thing… it’s not Ben’s either!

Every night before bed we checked flight and accommodation prices.  Then finally at around 6.15am one morning, after 6 whole long weeks of waiting, our agent called to say our visas had been granted!  Within half an hour we had flights, accommodation and 2 rental cars booked.  We said goodbye to our friends and family and flew to Oz to start our new adventure that evening!

It’s fair to say that we are pretty impulsive and when we decide we want to do something, we struggle to wait!  Some people love the build up to these events, but for us we always just want to get on with it and throw ourselves in the deep end!  My Mum was very similar, and so that’s probably where that erratic behaviour comes from!

Whether you take 30 minutes or 3 months to book your flights, it doesn’t matter, as long as you do what works for you.